An artist based in Lovell is receiving the nation’s highest award in the folk and traditional arts.
Ernie Marsh is the second bit and spur maker to receive a National Heritage Fellowship in the 43-year history of the National Endowment for the Arts program.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Olivia Weitz spoke with Josh Chrysler, folklorist at the Wyoming Arts Council, who nominated Marsh for the award.
Marsh will be honored at the National Heritage Fellowships Awards Ceremony at the Library of Congress on Sept. 17 at 3:30 p.m. Mountain Time. A livestream will be available, and a recording of the event will also be posted online afterwards.
Editor's Note: This story has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Olivia Weitz: Before we talk about Ernie, I want to talk a little about you and your role as a folklorist. Some people might not know that Wyoming has a folklorist, and I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about your role and what you do.
Josh Chrysler: As a folklorist, I get to spend a lot of time talking to and visiting and getting to know people who practice these folk and traditional arts. A lot of times I'll get to record ethnographic oral history interviews with people to learn more about the work they do, learn about the history of their tradition. Those interviews and the photographs I take go into the Wyoming Folklife Collection at the American Heritage Center, which is a collection of interviews and materials that tell the story of folk and traditional arts in Wyoming.
Then I get to work with the artists and find ways to help support them in their work practicing their traditional art form.
OW: Can you tell us a little bit about what are the folk and traditional arts in Wyoming? What kinds of arts are people pursuing here in Wyoming?
JC: Folk and traditional arts are usually pretty deeply rooted in community. They're really grassroots art forms. They grow out of cultural communities that are in the state.
A big one is cowboy gear making, things like saddle making, rawhide braiding, bit and spur making. Things that grow out of the everyday experience of working on the ranch, moving cattle, these types of things. They're utilitarian art forms. There are art forms that are made to be used.
OW: Ernie Marsh, he's a silversmith and a bit and spur maker. Can you share a brief bio of Ernie? How did he become one of the leading cowboy artists of today?
JC: Ernie Marsh was born in California in 1962. But he primarily grew up in Washington state. He spent a lot of his youth there as a bull rider and amateur professional rodeo, and spent time working as a ranch hand in southeastern Washington. That's when he really became interested in becoming a bit and spur maker.
At that time, there was really just one person who was offering basically a bit and spur making school. His name was Elmer Miller and he was out of Nampa, Idaho. Ernie went and studied under Elmer and really became well known for the beautiful work that he'd produce.
He moved around a bit to different places in the rural West there in eastern Oregon and eventually out to Wyoming, where he now lives outside of Lovell. He's got a shop there and works with his wife Teresa. But he also is constantly having students at his shop and over time, he just became very well known and became one of the best bit and spur makers and silversmiths in the country.
OW: Before the interview, you shared some photos of Ernie's work and one of the pieces is a bridal bit that Ernie made in 2016. I'm wondering if you can describe it for us.
JC: The bit that we're looking at here it's pretty representative of Ernie's work. It's a beautiful bit and the key feature here is it has a butterfly design sculpted into the steel itself. If you're looking at the bit, on one edge of each cheek piece, you can see a butterfly's body and the butterfly's head, and you can see its eyes and then spreading from that end of the cheek piece up to the other end are the butterfly's wings.
It's just a cool way to do it. It's subtly put in there that you could glance at the bit and not immediately recognize the representation of the butterfly. But if you look at it for more than a couple seconds, you'll see it in there.
It's pretty representative of the type of stuff Ernie does. It's just beautiful. Ernie likes to do these representations of animals of nature. He's had pieces with lizards in them, eagles. It's just pretty cool.
OW: I know Ernie’s super passionate about teaching the next generation. He’s led a number of workshops over the years. There's a worry that the folk and traditional arts could be at risk of dying out if the next generation doesn't take it up. I'm wondering, from your vantage point, what is the status of the folk and traditional arts in Wyoming?
JC: There's always this sort of worry that folk and traditional arts are at risk if the culture changes. People aren't as interested in homemade things as they used to be. [They’re] more interested in things that are sort of fast and easy. That's certainly not what most folk and traditional arts are. They're not fast and easy. They're things that require to be a part of your life. And that's certainly the case for Ernie.
I think it's sort of an interesting thing, thinking about bit and spur making and gear making more broadly with your question here, because these are art forms that also can be looked at as trades. There was a time, I think in the ‘70s and ‘80s where a lot of silversmithing and bit and spur making was sort of waning. Part of that was because some of the old-time makers, you would go into their shop and say, ‘Hey, I'm interested in learning how to do this.’ They wouldn't necessarily want to share their knowledge with somebody, because it's sort of like a trade secret. Like, you're gonna come in here and be a competitor for my business. But Ernie belongs to this generation of folks who have really shifted that mindset to where they're whole goal is, ‘Well, we'll share it with as many people as they want to learn it.’
Ernie has always been very willing to teach and to share his knowledge with anybody who's serious about wanting to learn how to do this.
OW: The Wyoming Arts Council has a folk and traditional arts mentorship program, and that's where a master artist teaches an up and coming artist. There's funds that support that and they get to meet a bunch of different times and learn from each other. It looks like you're able to fund next year's cohort of mentors and mentees.
There's some uncertainty over the federal budget and whether or not funds will be able to continue for this. And I'm wondering if this were to not continue, what would be lost?
JC: I think it's important to keep these kinds of opportunities available for folks to pass on knowledge to others from their community who are eager to learn. These art forms are really representative of what Wyoming is, who Wyomingites are.
I think a lot of Ernie's works really show a connection to ranching and cowboy culture that I think is really important for Wyoming. I think that these traditional art forms, they just really help keep us grounded as a culture and help us resist that temptation to move into everything mass produced, everything AI generated in polar opposition to some of those things.
I think that the culture here in Wyoming really values that mastery of skill that goes into a traditional art form, like Ernie puts into his bits and his spurs.
OW: How big of a deal is it that an artist based in Wyoming won the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship? Does this happen very often?
JC: No, this is a big deal. I think it really shows how deserving Ernie is of this recognition. The National Heritage Fellowship, it's the highest honor for folk and traditional arts given by our United States government. It's the type of thing that really goes to the best of the best, the most representative of the traditions that they practice. So this is a really big deal, and Ernie is very deserving of it.
