When Tanya Plainfeather-Gardner approached Trey Hill, her ceramics professor at the University of Montana, about creating 500 porcelain elk tooth replicas for an elk-tooth dress, he was cautiously optimistic.

Making teeth sounded like something they could do, but 500 was a lot to make. Plainfeather-Gardner had never done anything like this before, and Hill estimated the project would take her at least the entire semester. She told him that even if she couldn’t make 500 teeth in time for graduation, she’d use whatever she had for the dress. That way, the project would still be a success, even if she fell short of her target.

Tanya Plainfeather-Gardner poses for a photo in her elk-tooth dress. Plainfeather-Gardner, who is Crow, handmade about 1,500 porcelain elk teeth, 900 of which were used to create the dress.

That wasn’t necessary. Plainfeather-Gardner hit her goal in one weekend.

“I started molding, and I was like, ‘Trey, I have 500,’” Plainfeather-Gardner recalled, laughing. “And he’s like, ‘Oh, you weren’t kidding, huh?’”

She didn’t stop there. Over the course of her final semester of college, Plainfeather-Gardner, who is Crow, handmade about 1,500 porcelain elk teeth, 900 of which were used to create an elk-tooth dress.

Plainfeather-Gardner is 52 years old, and studying art wasn’t originally in her plans. She received her associate’s degree in Native American studies from Little Big Horn College in 2007. Afterward, she worked as a law enforcement officer and a truck driver.

By 2020, she knew she wanted to do something different. After her youngest daughter graduated high school, Plainfeather-Gardner enrolled in UM to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Native American studies.

But about a year before graduation, Plainfeather-Gardner took an art class. Then she took another. And another.

“I found I had a knack, and I really loved it,” Plainfeather-Gardner said. “And I wanted to create beautiful art.”

Plainfeather-Gardner switched her major and filled her course load with more art classes. She took classes in drawing, printmaking, painting and ceramics.

She got the idea for porcelain teeth from an old boss, who’d told her that porcelain elk teeth replicas were once sold at trading posts before plastic was introduced.

Elk teeth, also known as elk ivories, refer to a bull elk’s canine incisors. An elk only has two of these teeth, and an elk tooth dress requires hundreds of them, making the dress a symbol not only of a woman’s sewing skills but of her male family members’ hunting abilities, Plainfeather-Gardner explained.

Tanya Plainfeather-Gardner and Michelle Guzman sewed 900 teeth to the elk-tooth dress using artificial sinew.

She could never confirm that the Crow had done this — everyone she spoke to said they used carved bone, not porcelain — but that didn’t stop her from wanting to try it herself.

Making the teeth took hours and lots of trial and error. First, Plainfeather-Gardner and Hill made a plastic mold that she could use to shape the porcelain into elk teeth.

Once the teeth were molded, Plainfeather-Gardner had to fire them in a kiln. Finding the right temperature was tricky, and hundreds of molded teeth were rendered unusable when Plainfeather fired them at too low or too high of a temperature.

Then it was time for color. Plainfeather-Gardner considered porcelain glazing the teeth, but experimenting to get the right color would take even more time. Instead, she hand-painted each tooth the color of burnt butter. The teeth she sewed onto her dress were painted with such detail that she said some people mistook them for the real thing.

“It was such a process the entire semester, and I just said, ‘My life was teeth,’” Plainfeather-Gardner said. “It was all about teeth, elk teeth, and every day it’s like, ‘I'm gonna go make teeth. I gotta go over and make teeth.’”

Tanya Plainfeather-Gardner's elk-tooth dress on display.

And that was just the teeth. Plainfeather-Gardner also had to make the dress. She chose two shades of purple fabric for it and added stripes of blue, red, white and yellow fabric along the hem and the ends of the sleeves. She used a sewing machine for parts of the dress, but the sides were handsewn, and the yoke was hand-beaded.

Finally, with help from Michelle Guzman, the director fo UM’s American Indian Student Services, Plainfeather-Gardner sewed 900 teeth to the dress using artificial sinew.

The ultimate prize for all of her hard work was getting to wear the dress.

“Oh, it was amazing,” Plainfeather-Gardner said. “Trey was like, ‘Are you gonna wear this, you know, are you gonna wear this?’ And I was like, ‘I’m gonna wear it. I’m gonna sleep in it!’”

She walked the stage at graduation in the dress and wore it to the opening of an exhibition for the department, where she won the School of Visual and Media Arts Outstanding Senior award.

“She wore that dress to the exhibition, and to be totally honest it brought a tear to my eye, seeing her in that,” Hill said. “It was so amazing and just so spectacular. It was a powerful object and really a beautiful piece.”

Now, Plainfeather-Gardner has her sights set on another art program. For her master’s degree, she wants to attend the Institute of American Indian Art, a renowned tribal college in New Mexico. There, she’d be able to work alongside Indigenous instructors and students.

Tanya Plainfeather-Gardner poses in her dress at an art studio.

In the meantime, Plainfeather-Gardner is seeking funding that would allow her to get her own kiln. She hopes her journey will encourage other Indigenous people, particularly nontraditional students, to get a college education and follow their passions.

“You can go back (to school) any time,” Plainfeather-Gardner said. “Go back and follow your dreams. No matter what age, no matter where you’re at in life, it’s never too late to go back and do something that you love.”