A Family Affair: Get to Know the Growing Thunder Collective

School for Advanced Research’s 2025 Native Arts Speaker Series

Cultural Currents: The Role of Mentorship in Native Arts

Explore how mentorship shapes both traditional and contemporary Native arts.

This final event of four features Juanita Growing Thunder, Jessa Rae Growing Thunder, PhD, and Camryn Growing Thunder

Assiniboine and Sioux artist, Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty (she/her), is a second-generation traditional Northern plains artist who has spent much of her life learning from her mother, award-winning artist, Joyce Growing Thunder. She creates traditional Northern plains clothing and accessories adorned with beadwork and porcupine quill embroidery. She also creates soft sculpture dolls that emulate historical Oceti Sakowin attire.

Jessa Rae Growing Thunder comes from the Fort Peck Assiniboine (Nakoda)/Sioux(Dakota) tribes. She is a third-generation beadwork and quillwork artist whose work has been shown in multiple museums, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Heard Museum, and the Joslyn Art Museum. Jessa Rae is a Great Plains tribal art historian. She holds a Ph.D. in Native American Studies from the University of California, Davis. Her work applies both recognized (archival and oral history) and traditional creative forms of knowledge transmission through analyzing beadwork as living testimony. 

Camryn Ahhaitty Growing Thunder (Assiniboine/Sioux/Kiowa/Comanche) is an award winning third-generation artist from the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. Camryn learned traditional beadwork and quillwork while growing up from her mother and grandmother, Joyce and Juanita Growing Thunder. She was a self-taught painter until attending The Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she is currently pursuing a BFA in studio arts with an emphasis in painting and currently has work exhibited at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska

This event is free to the public and takes place at the School for Advanced Research. The events can also be viewed live on SAR’s YouTube channel.