In South Dakota, Apprenticeships Give Traditional Arts a Bright Future

By Jennifer Vosters

For Tonya Mandy, there’s a science to the art of rosemaling.

“I’m a chemical-engineer-turned-rosemaling-artist. My mentor was a surgical tech in an emergency room,” says the Rapid City, South Dakota, native. “There’s this part of coming from a technical background [that] makes you more apt to do the work and research and approach it in a methodical way.”

Rosemaling—Norwegian decorative painting—requires a surgical level of precision. Since the 1700s, generations of rose painters have kept the practice blooming in Norway and the United States. Through the South Dakota Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, Mandy has played a key role in passing the brush . . . as an apprentice, and as a mentor.

Despite only starting in 2014, Mandy has risen to acclaim in the rosemaling community. A major milestone was studying with award-winning artist Judith Kjenstad through the apprenticeship program in 2018.

“I was a decent painter before that, but when I started painting with Judith, I almost relearned how to paint from the beginning,” says Mandy. “She’s a freehand painter, painting directly from old pieces, using old-style materials. Almost no one else paints like that.”

The program offers grants for South Dakota folk artists and culture bearers to seek a mentor or take apprentices, ensuring a vibrant traditional arts ecosystem in the state. Mandy was drawn to the rigor and tradition in Kjenstad’s work, which had earned her the rare Gold Medal at the National Norwegian-American Folk Art Exhibition.

During her apprenticeship, Mandy visited Kjenstad four times in Minneapolis, Minnesota, painting and absorbing as much instruction as possible before returning to Rapid City with homework. Between sessions, she emailed Kjenstad pictures when she got stuck and got feedback over the phone.

“That’s really what it is: access to someone that can give you critique,” says Mandy. “That’s what an apprenticeship gets you that no amount of YouTube videos or classes, nothing on Zoom, gets you anything close to.”

In 2024, Mandy earned her own Gold Medal. “That’s Judith’s success too,” she emphasizes. “It was my work, but none of that would have happened without the apprenticeship.”

Mandy has now mentored through the same program twice, most recently to artist Amber Zora in 2024-2025. Zora, who like Mandy has Norwegian heritage, was drawn to rosemaling because it reminded her of her grandparents.

“As an artist, I initially thought this would be something I could pick up easily. But the process is much more challenging than I expected,” says Zora. “The biggest challenge was allowing myself to be bad at it…but Tonya was very supportive about teaching me while also letting me know when it wasn’t quite right.”

Only a small number of rose painters worldwide practice painting in old ways, on traditional surfaces, directly from old pieces. For Mandy, the tradition is the point, the driving force behind each brushstroke.

“I think that preserving rosemaling sometimes has a very heavy weight to it,” she says. “If you don’t have people that paint in old ways, from old pieces, and keep that going, who teaches the next generation?”

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This story was originally published by Arts Midwest, a non-profit amplifying Midwestern creativity with Creative Commons License

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Photo credit: unsplash