Lee Steen.
Stick Man With Bucket.
Not signed.
Found weathered limb with attached beer can, peach pit eyes and mixed media.
Expected weathering, very good environmental condition.
65" h x 25" x 10" including base.
Provenance: American Primitive Gallery (consignor purchased this from American Primitive in Sept. 1991 for $1,600), Previously in the Lee Steen Collection of the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art, Great Falls, Montana.
Est. $600-900.
Buyer is responsible for shipping.

Steen's work has been featured in solo shows at The Yellowstone Art Center in 1974 and at The Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art in Great Falls, Montana in 1993.

For thirty years, self-taught artist Lee Steen (1897-1995) lived with his twin brother Dee and was known around Roundup, Montana, for his yard full of mechanical junkyard animals and "Tree People," fashioned from cottonwood branches into humanoid characters (perhaps with the addition of an old flower pot or tin cup hat and button eyes).
Lee moved into a nursing home in 1972 and passed away in 1975.
His mechanical creatures were lost, but much of his scrap wood art was rescued and preserved for continuing display by John A. Armstrong, of the Yellowstone Art Center, and Jim Todd, of the University of Montana, took an interest in Steen's work, and organized an exhibition thereof in 1973.
Armstrong arranged for the preservation of some of Steen's work, and removed some pieces of it to Arizona.
Many of the remaining pieces were given to the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art in Great Falls, Montana; a new wing of the museum was constructed in 1996 to house the sculptures.