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| Contact Bear Paw Keepsakes |
The Company: Bear Paw Keepsakes Art Gallery
Headquarters: Green Bay, Wisconsin
Website: Click Here
Email:
Phone #: (920) 499-7875
Fax#: (920) 799-7885
Greetings and welcome to the Bear Paw Art Gallery. We are your hosts, Stan and Loretta Webster, we are both from the Oneida Tribe.
In January 2004 Loretta retired from her position as the Oneida Land Management Attorney. In October, 2004 we were offered an opportunity to buy an Indian Arts and Crafts business called Bear Paw Keepsakes; we could not pass it up! Shortly thereafter, Stan retired from his position as Judicial Officer on the Oneida Appeals Commission.
We now own a business that offers a wide variety of unique Woodland Indian handmade items and original art: A major change occurred in November 2008, when we agreed to sharing our site with Duck Creek Coffee. A coffee shop will be open at 2667 W. Mason Street by the end of December 2008. Come and enjoy.
With the need to make room for this new business, we have eliminated the art gallery in the store and now sell original art and prints only on this website. This has decreased the overhead on our collection of art to a minimal amount, and WE ARE PASSING ON THESE SAVINGS TO YOU WHO HAVE ENJOYED AND POSITIVELY COMMENTED ON OUR SELECTION OF ONEIDA ARTISTS over the years. We hope you will take advantage of the new prices and enjoy your favorite works of art in your home.
Loretta concentrates on Iroquois Raised Bead Work using designs symbolizing Iroquoian Culture. Her work, including Yokes, Glengarry Hats, Purses, Scissor Holders, Picture Frames, Moccasins and Oneida Dance outfits, can be ordered by contacting us from this webpage.
To us the store is an alternative to retirement and is definitely a lot more fun since we get to talk about Native American history and culture everyday.
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"Winter" By: Mary Lee Prescott
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17x23 inch framed acrylic. Winter is the time for story telling in the longhouse. In this painting by Mary Prescott, the stories of the three clans of the Oneida Nation are being retold to adults and youth. The people of the Oneida Nation have bear, wolf and turtle clans. Every warrior and woman of the Nation belonged to one of these clans. Each clan member considered each other brothers and sisters. No one could marry into his or her own clan. The children belonged to the clan of the mother. Clan members of one tribe provided welcome, food and shelter to clan members of another tribe. The clan system of the Iroquois united the Oneida, Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga and Onondaga Nations into a strong brotherhood.
Price: $800.00
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"Turtle Story Teller" By: Mary Lee Prescott
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30x24 inch unframed acrylic.The Story Teller is an indispensable part of Iroquois life, because the culture was passed on orally through the generations. Even though we have the radio, TV, etc. today, story telling is still important to the education of each generation. How else would they learn about the Creation, Clans, The Great Law of Peace and the Good Words. The Turtle represents a story teller and it shows him leaving the longhouses, each one marked with a clan. Mary Prescott gives life to all the animals she paints. A Story Teller is an entertainer as well as an educator, and so the Turtle in this picture may be seen as comical, startling, weird, cute....definitely a character that draws your attention.
Price: $950.00
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"The Crow" By: Mary Lee Prescott
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21x17 inch framed acrylic on canvas. Mary Prescott said she loves to paint crows! You find crows in both her Counpounder pictures. The only way you can tell that this is an IROQUOIS Crow is by the moccasins, and the wampum necklace. Mary is always able to give lovable personalities to the animals she paints. The Crow is no exception.
Price: $350 SPECIAL
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| Interview By: Larry Knudsen |
Tell us about yourself? (What nation you're from, where you grew up?)
Both Stan and Loretta Webster are members of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin. Loretta retired as Oneida Land Management Attorney in January 2004, and has managed to devote many of her hours to her lifelong love of beadwork. For the last 15 years, she has worked exclusively in the area of Iroquois Raised Beadwork. Stan retired from the Oneida Appeals Commission for a few years, and then was re-elected in 2007. This has curtailed his time being spent at the store, but his re-election occurred about the same time that Bear Paw Keepsakes hired one, then two, employees. He is still very involved in the progress of the store.
You started Bear Paw in 2004. How were the first few years?
Slow, but exciting. This was the first time we had ever had a retail business, so every day was a new experience. Both Stan and Loretta worked every day in the store for the first few years, with part time help called in when conferences, powwows and art shows were attended more and more often. We purchased a two year old ongoing business from two young Oneida women who had built up a sizable clientele. The income was pretty dependable, and at first we ran the business as the previous owners had. It was soon apparent that some of the products were not selling, and we began to concentrate on how to move this part of the inventory (mostly through sales) and expand in product areas that we felt would best serve our customers. The new product areas turned out to be glass beads and craft supplies.
Tell us about your product line?
WOODLAND INDIAN ART: This includes paintings, pottery, sculptures, raised beadwork, corn husk dolls, baskets. These products have been about 20% of Bear Paw Keepsakes sales until the recent recession when sales dropped dramatically. In late 2008, much of this product was moved out of the store for storage and is now mainly for sale on a new web site www.bearpawartgallery.com. In 2009, Loretta's attention will be on aggressively marketing this website so it becomes a viable income stream for the business. In order to do this, there is a daunting learning curve that Loretta has to master in such areas as photography, Photoshop software and internet marketing in general. Stan on the other hand, is promoting Indian art on a much broader scale than in the store, and has become actively involved in the development of a Woodland Indian Art Market in Oneida, which will next occur from July 2-4 at the Radisson Hotel, Green Bay, WI. This also has a new website, www.woodlandindianart.com. Stan and Loretta have been collectors of Woodland Indian Art for 30 years, and providing an outlet for this art is what originally interested them in purchasing Bear Paw Keepsakes. Unfortunately, the art market in Wisconsin is at a low point since the effects of our national recession have hit. This should be an interesting year.
GLASS BEADS & SUPPLIES: This mainly includes powwow crafters supplies of leather, needles, thread, sinew, jingles, and whatever else our customer asks for. This area is customer driven (not owner driven as the art is!!) and continues to increase in sales the more products are added.
JEWELRY: We sell silver, beaded , stone and bone jewelry. Because of customer's requests, we do sell some SW silver, turquoise & coral, but we attempt to stay within the parameters of Woodland Indian Art.
CLOTHING: This includes t-shirts, sweats and hoods with the Oneida Nation and Oneida wampum belt on it. We also sell a wide variety of men's and women's ribbon shirts and dresses, belts, and sometimes headdresses.
Do get your pieces directly from the artist and what was the most unique?
About 85% of the art items are purchased directly from the artist, and about 15% are on consignment from the artist. Very rarely do we get any art item in that is not by the artist, but when we do we generally will only take it on consignment. Lately, we have only been able to take art from the artist if they are willing to consign it. We get many beautiful items offered to Bear Paw Keepsakes for sale or consignment, and it is difficult to say what might be considered the most unique. There are many fantastic one of a kind originals on our webpage www.bearpawartgallery.com, if you would care to look there and determine what you think is the most unique.
Do you sell your artwork on consignment or do Artists approach you for showings.
We purchased most of the artwork that is on our website, but we are now going to consignment only. We have never done a showing for one artist only, and since we have taken the art gallery out of the store that space has been replaced by a coffee shop since the end of January, 2009. The coffee shop is a good fit and is working very well. At some point, the coffee shop area might be a good place to hold a small art show.
Were you collectors before changing careers?
Stan and Loretta collected Woodland Indian Art for 30 years before purchasing Bear Paw Keepsakes and developing an art gallery.
What performs best your store or your internet sales?
The store is by far the best stream of income that we have. Next are conferences, selected powwows and Indian art markets, which we try to do at least one a month. The internet has been good for raised beadwork orders, but actual sales of art items are very low. Our webpage is a work in progress, and Loretta will be concentrating in 2009 on getting our webpage to become a viable income stream.
With your long term careers being so different, what was it like when you started working for yourselves?
It's been great from the start. We have always been hard workers, and we put a lot of time in the store, even with the two employees that we have. It is still fun for us, and we are doing what we want to do, rather than working for a paycheck. As Stan said, ???we are independently wealthy ??“ we're both on social security!
Who were your mentor's growing up?
Loretta's sister Nori Damrow owned a store in Colorado Springs in the early 70s. She influenced Loretta to start doing beadwork, and then got her involved doing powwows. Stan's mentors have mostly been people he has met at pow-wows, and Oneida longhouse ceremonies. The Craft and Supply area of our store caters to powwow people.
What is your favorite annual Powwow?
The Oneida Powwow is July 3, 4, 5, 2009. This is the BEST event of the year for Bear Paw Keepsakes.
Do you have advice for young Indigenous Entrepreneur's?
Be very careful to manage your cash flow, especially because you should be able to pay yourself a little . We didn't do this when we first purchased the business so we tended to put a lot of money into what we liked, which was Woodland Indian wall art. Five years later we still have a lot of this artwork that we are slowly selling on our webpage. We were able to overcome this major management error by not taking any money from the business for ourselves. We could do this because we already had an income that would pay the bills (social security and pensions).
What events will you be attending this year?
In March we attended an Indian Artist Marketplace at the Mitchell Museum in Evanston, Illinois.
April 3-5: Indian Art Market at Cahokia Mounds Museum, Illinois
May 2: AIRO Powwow, UW-Stevens Point, WI
June 26-28: Indian Art Competition & Art Market at Eiteljorg Indian Art Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana
July 2-4: Woodland Indian Art Market, Radisson Hotel, Green Bay, WI
July 3-5: Bear Paw Keepsakes will also have a booth at the Oneida Powwow
August 28-30: Art Street, Green Bay, WI
September 11-13: Oneida Village area at Indian Summer, Milwaukee, WI
October 9-11: Cherokee Art Market, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Oneida 3 Sisters Powwow, Oneida, WI
November: Potawatomi Powwow, State Fair Grounds, Milwaukee, WI
Thank you for your time today. Congratulation from the IICOC Staff and your award with us as our Entrepreneur of the Month for April 2009! Larry
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