{"id":41798,"date":"2022-03-09T02:21:11","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T09:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lewis-woman-honors-womens-history-month-with-art-exhibit\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:03:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:03:20","slug":"lewis-woman-honors-womens-history-month-with-art-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lewis-woman-honors-womens-history-month-with-art-exhibit\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis woman honors Women\u2019s History Month with art exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brenda
Brenda Belt Ives honors Women's History Month with her art exhibit on view at the Dolores Public Library through the end of the month.<\/span>Kala Parkinson<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Brenda Belt Ives first became a sociologist at 8 years old.<\/p>\n

Although she was born in Cortez, her family had just moved from Berkeley, California, to the Navajo city of Holbrook, Arizona.<\/p>\n

She would peer over her backyard fence and think, \u201cHow can I fix it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Her family wasn\u2019t wealthy, but they had running water. In Holbrook, that translated to wealth.<\/p>\n

Belt Ives became the host of frequent slumber parties for the Navajo children she befriended.<\/p>\n

Later on, her father was the chaplain at Arizona State University, and her parents gave her a pass to the school\u2019s library.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt changed my world, and that\u2019s when I began to read and do art way back then,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She believes the experiences she had at a young age shaped her into the sociologist, educator and mixed media artist she went on to become, as evidenced by her exhibit on view at the Dolores Public Library through March, held during Women\u2019s History Month.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis particular show is a celebration of women\u2019s art, history, creativity and the thousands of years of women\u2019s history that has basically been undocumented,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The art references world figures and draws connections between history and art. Many of the pieces were created as reactions to literature, a practice known as reverse ekphrasis.<\/p>\n

The art is largely about \u201cjust teaching that women rise in the world, that we are coming up,\u201d Belt Ives said.<\/p>\n

One collage in the show highlights women who were considered \u201cfirsts\u201d at something.<\/p>\n

Each March, Belt Ives would create a piece for Women\u2019s History Month. Some of them are on display at the library.<\/p>\n

She got her start teaching out of a one-room schoolhouse in Egnar, Colorado, and she went on to instruct in kindergarten through college, later becoming one of the first women\u2019s studies teachers in the country, she said.<\/p>\n

Her career as an applied sociologist paid the bills, but she dreamed of attending art school. So she incorporated art into her work.<\/p>\n

The late Stanton Englehart, artist and professor at Fort Lewis College, was her mentor.<\/p>\n

He told her: \u201cJust paint, I don\u2019t draw at all. I was failing art school, I can\u2019t draw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Belt Ives moved back to Montezuma County after retiring from teaching at The Art Institute of Colorado in Denver.<\/p>\n

Her art is not professional. The pieces are not framed. And really, anybody could do what she does, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure this isn\u2019t going to be a very popular show,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s OK with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wants others to feel like they can express themselves freely the way she does, even in as simple a way as growing a garden.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it should inspire people to not be so shy about what is or what can be produced, but what is possible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

March is Women\u2019s History Month, and Tuesday is International Women\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exhibit on display at the Dolores Public Library through March <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[363,246,1060,44,28,167,29,1283],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-41798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arts","tag-arts-general","tag-arts-entertainment","tag-dolores","tag-headlines","tag-local-news-lead","tag-newsletter","tag-womens"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85101,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41798\/revisions\/85101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41798"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=41798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}