Lee Steen's Tree People
Great Falls, Montana
For thirty years, self-taught artist Lee Steen 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 in a local museum.