MISSOULA, Mont. - Artist Molly Murphy moves a needle and thread through wool with ease, like a champion butterfly swimmer bobbing above and below water on her way to Olympic gold.

While a swimmer might leave a trail of bubbles, Murphy leaves elaborate rows of colorful, shiny glass beads that might emerge as a single hummingbird or a whimsical courtship scene between a magnificent warrior and beautiful woman.

Whatever she's beading takes time - lots of it. But she doesn't like to clock the hours it takes to create a beaded masterpiece.

"I don't want it to be a contest of endurance," she said. "I'm not a patient person. Patience is for teaching small children. I'm a compulsive-obsessive person. Beading is a positive outlet for compulsive-obsessive behaviors."

Murphy - an Oglala artist who grew up in Montana with a Salish influence - has been finishing some big projects in her studio at the Zootown Arts Community Center in Missoula. In less than two weeks, she will enter two beaded art pieces in the Heard Museum's 51st Indian Fair & Market, an art festival expected to draw 20,000 visitors and 700 artists to Phoenix on March 7-8.

This won't be Murphy's first visit to the Heard Museum's art market, where she has been awarded first place for "judge's choice" in her category. As a Northern Plains artist in a Southwest-dominated art festival, she enters her work in the "diversified arts," which is becoming one of the largest categories in the Heard festival.

"The Heard is facing a challenge on how to put all these diversified artists in one category," she said.

Meanwhile, several Northern artists have won the Heard Museum's "best of show" award, despite heavy competition from the Southwest silversmiths, potters and weavers. The Missoula woman is eager to enter her beadwork in the Heard competition, buoyed by her success at the Missoula Art Museum in 2008.

Her exhibit, "Reservations Required," debuted in the MAM's Lynda Frost Gallery, one of the country's few museum gallery spaces devoted to contemporary Indian art.

The artist has additional shows scheduled at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Okla., and the Museum of Arts and Culture at the University of Montana. Also, the Montana Art Gallery Directors Association selected her "Reservations Required" exhibit as a traveling show in 2009 and 2010.

Entries

Murphy specializes in beading on wool-covered boxes, a contemporary art expression of traditional parfleche rawhide containers. Much of her work reflects the beader's observations on politics, history and identity. And while her work emulates splendor, the University of Montana art graduate also crafts functional artwork.

On Sunday, she finished her first Heard contest entry, a sewing kit inspired by 19th century sewing boxes. Murphy has named the piece "She Sews a Flight of Fancy," an intricately designed box with Lakota-inspired geometric designs and birds.

"It's elaborate and reflects the contrast between the sedentary act of sewing and how fast your imagination is going while you sew," she said.

Her second contest entry is a blue cradleboard with a splash of multi-hued flowers. The design draws on the floral tradition of beadwork common to many tribes across the country. Each flower on the cradle's headboard can be lifted up and turned to reveal spaces reserved for photos. The beader envisions the spaces to hold pictures of the baby, parents and grandparents.

Murphy also is sewing hidden compartments in the cradleboard for documents, such as hospital footprints and bracelets. It's a functional heirloom piece that will do more than hold an infant.

"I don't know if anyone will actually put a baby in something this elaborate, but my hope is someone will," she said. "My feeling is someone will put it on a wall.

"One thing about art you have to accept - it might just get hung up."

(Reach reporter Jodi Rave at 406-396-8537 or jodi.rave@;lee.net. Or read her blog at www.buffalopost.net.)