Oral history interview with Jon Mark Tiger

Little Thunder: Today is Friday, February 17, 2012. I'm in Glenpool, Oklahoma, interviewing Jon Mark Tiger at the Tulsa Indian Arts Festival where you just won first place in graphics. Jon, you're a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Art. Your fine use of line has made you a presence in Native art for many years. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Tiger: Thank you for interviewing me and being a part of your program.

Little Thunder: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Tiger: I was born in Talihina Indian Hospital in Talihina, Oklahoma, June 17, 1954. My mother is Harriet Scott Tiger, and my dad is Yahola Tiger Sr. I grew up in Eufaula in McIntosh County.

Little Thunder: Are you both Creek and Seminole?

Tiger: We're full-blood Creek. My mother is full-blood, and my dad is full- blood. My grandparents raised me when I was three or four years old. I think I 1:00have ten or eleven siblings. We had a big family. My grandfather retired from the post office in '57. I remember going back out to the house with them, staying with them ever since I was like three or four years old.

Little Thunder: They're on your mom's side?

Tiger: My mother's side, yes, maternal side. We grew up in an area called Artussee, southwest of Eufaula. There was a Baptist church out there, as it is, but Artussee was an old tribal town name in the Creek Nation.

Little Thunder: Was Muscogee your first language?

Tiger: No, English was my first language, actually, but Muscogee was spoken in the home. The thing about that is my grandfather is Quassarte, and my grandmother was from the Hitchiti line, her language. Sometimes they spoke two separate languages when describing objects. For instance, for star she would say kolaswv, and he would say, the Quassarte way was kocvcumbe, so it was like that.

Little Thunder: What is your first memory of doing art?

Tiger: Probably when I was about four or five, at home. I didn't even go to 3:00school yet, and my grandparents' house, it was an old clapboard house, very thin walls. It was cold in the winter time. Of course, we had a log stove, wood stove, but she would make me stay on the bed most of the day, especially when there was snow on the ground. She didn't want me to go outside because in her day, she saw a lot of sickness. There was no clinics or doctors too much around to take care of influenza, even in the day. She was very precautionary about my getting out in the elements as little as I could because we didn't have a car to go to a doctor if we needed to go, and if we did have a car, it would break 4:00down. Some things like that happen.

I'd sit on the bed and draw on the wall, and our wall was covered with cardboard. It was just broken down boxes of large appliances. You spread them out, and you nail them on the wall, and that was our wallpaper, I guess, our decorations. Anyway, my grandmother's the one that encouraged me because I would sit on the bed, and I knew airplanes would come over the house every now and then, so I'd start drawing pictures of airplanes. We had dogs and chickens and pigs. I tried to draw animals, just simple things. She encouraged me. Since that day, during that time, I was encouraged by my grandmother to continue art.

She always said, "Take care of your hands." I did. I played sports, but she 5:00wouldn't ever let me box. My brothers were boxers. My older brother Ben, and Yahola Jr., and George, Mitchell, and Norman, they all boxed. I lived out in the rural area. I didn't get to come to town too often at all, but I did sneak a couple of sparring rounds in the local gym.

Little Thunder: Because she was trying to protect your hands? (Laughs)

Tiger: Yes.

Little Thunder: Did you have any other family members who were artistically inclined?

Tiger: Yes. Let me see. In the home, my grandfather, his penmanship was really outstanding. We still have ledger books at home with his handwriting in it. He'd do that real wavy penmanship, real wavy. It's really, really nice.

Also my uncle, his son, Chester Scott, he was an award-winning artist back in the '60s and '70s, especially with the Five Tribes. Of course, Jerome and Johnny Tiger and Dana Tiger, they're our cousins on our mother's side. My mother is a cousin to Lucinda Tiger, which is Jerome's mother. Jerome's mother is my grandfather's sister. Jerome's daddy was a Seminole Tiger, and my dad's a Creek Tiger, but we're related on our mother's side, through the Lewis side, actually. Then also, we have Knokovtee Scott, shell carver, metal worker. His dad, 7:00Kenneth, designed the Haskell logo at Haskell Indian [Nations University] in Lawrence, Kansas. He's even given me the original logo of that school. He was paid one dollar. I think it was 1939 that they adopted that seal.

Little Thunder: Did Jerome ever see any of your art, or did you see any of his?

Tiger: Yes, I've seen his work. We all went to church at West Eufaula [Indian Baptist Church], and we were, of course, running around in the churchyard. Jerome would be sitting in his car, and he'd be sketching. I'd kind of sneak up 8:00there and look at it, see what he was drawing. He was sketching away with the door open, just sitting in there, sketching away. It was a picture of a naked woman, Playboy-type figure and body. I bet this had to be 1961, and he seen me. He said, "Do you like to draw?" I said, "Yes. I like to draw," but I was too shy. He said, "Draw me something," so I run off. I didn't. I was just that way, real shy. Of course, we were all pretty artistic in our ways. Jonny Hawk, Jonathan Scott, he's our relative, too, on my grandfather's side. We've got 9:00quite a few artists in our family.

Little Thunder: So you went to Sequoyah. Did you go to public school at all?

Tiger: I went to Eufaula public school all the way up to the tenth grade.

Little Thunder: Did you have any exposure to art in public school?

Tiger: No, they did not have any art classes at all. In fact, I got in trouble a lot, drawing in my books in study hall, and sent to the principal's office. I played football in high school at Eufaula with the Selmon brothers, Lee Roy and Dewey Selmon. They were always good friends, and we played on the same team.

They did not have an art class at all in Eufaula. My brother, George, had went 10:00to Sequoyah, and he said, "They have art class at Sequoyah," so I transferred to--well, actually, I went out to Santa Fe when I was sixteen years old.

Little Thunder: Right after graduating high school?

Tiger: No, I was actually in the eleventh grade. I was in the eleventh grade, and my grandfather said, "There's a school out there in New Mexico that you should go to and check out. It's for Indian kids with skills." So I got enrolled with the help of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Muskogee. They got my ticket and gave me eighty bucks to get a coat. That's what I bought with my eighty bucks was a coat because I didn't have a coat and they said it snows out there, so that's what I did.

I went out there for a little while, and Otellie Loloma was my high school 11:00painting teacher. I believe she was Hopi. Then I got to know Allan Houser. He was on campus, and he was teaching the older ones sculpting with gigantic alabaster stones. I was in his class, pottery class. I sat down at the table, and he gives me a stone, said, "Here, make something out of it."

I look at it, and it's a soapstone. I guess that's what they start you off on because it's the softest stone and it's easy to work with, so it kind of helped me to get form going. I looked at it and looked at it, and it's a duck. I carved into it, and I said, "I want to make me a duck, a sleeping duck." I still have 12:00it to this day, the soapstone duck. Then Ms. Loloma, she came in for the clay class, pottery class, and she helped him along the way in that class. I did two masks in there.

Little Thunder: Sculpted or pottery?

Tiger: Pottery masks and then one bowl. I've still got the bowl. Well, my mother's got the bowl in her house, but I've still got the two masks and the sleeping duck.

Little Thunder: You get to kind of experiment with a variety of media. How did you decide you didn't want to do sculpture?

Tiger: Well, I liked sculpture, but it wasn't always the media where I come from. Pencil and paper was the quickest thing to what I wanted to get after. Pencil and paper's the only thing I really knew. Painting classes out there were 13:00always filled up. This is 1971. My grandfather got sick around Thanksgiving weekend. I came home, and he didn't have too long to live.

Little Thunder: Was this your first semester?

Tiger: Yes, first semester. I told the school, I called out there, said, "I think I'm going to stay," and enrolled back in Eufaula again for a little while. He died in May of '72 of prostate cancer at home. My brother George was going to school in Sequoyah Indian school at Tahlequah. Graduated that day that he died. We had to go tell him. My brother-in-law, Yahola Jr., and I went to Sequoyah to 14:00tell my brother and bring him home with the family. Anyway, my brother was telling me that they do have art class there at Sequoyah, and that interested me, right there. I said, "Well, that sounds really good. I'm kind of interested in that."

Little Thunder: Were you thinking of yourself as an artist?

Tiger: Yes.

Little Thunder: How early?

Tiger: In high school, about that same time. Ninth grade, probably. Eighth or ninth. Everybody in my class always wanted me to draw them something, this and that. I even did a Eufaula Ironhead mascot one time. My football coach--I think it was him--gave me an eight-by-four feet plywood. I took it home and laid it on my mother's--it's like a box. It's got a bunch of clothes in it. I laid it on 15:00that. They let me go out of school at one o'clock because I had to catch a bus at three-thirty to go home.

I went back out to my grandmother's house, and I worked on it down there. What they was going to do is cut it out and put it in the homecoming float each year. It was just Ironhead man. It looked like a Trojan-type. That was my assignment. I left Eufaula and went to enter the Sequoyah Indian School my junior year. I did my junior year there and my senior year there. Graduated at Sequoyah in '73.

Little Thunder: Who was teaching art there at the time? What did you get from the art classes?

Tiger: His name was Riley White. Riley White at Sequoyah. I didn't really learn 16:00a lot from him, but he showed me how to cut mat, just basic tools, a sharp X-Acto knife and a steady hand and a ruler if you need to use it. He showed me a little bit of color combination that way for painting, appreciate what goes with this color. The least amount of color should appear in your mat somewhere. Sometimes it works like that. That's not right to say that, but yes, I guess I learned patience in his class. I'll put it that way.

Little Thunder: Did you continue doing art outside of class? When did you sell your first piece of artwork?

Tiger: Well, we had a fine arts festival at the school, which was put on by the 17:00Muskogee area BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs], as I can remember. We had the fine arts festival at Sequoyah, and all like Carter Seminary, Jones Academy, (I can't remember all the school that were involved) they all sent their pieces down.

Little Thunder: It was a competition?

Tiger: Yes, and I got the grand award in '72 and '73.

Little Thunder: For painting?

Tiger: Yes, for a painting. It was Lady Pounding Corn is what it was. I graduated out of Sequoyah in '73, and I knew I was going to go back to Santa Fe. I went back out there in the fall of '73. Couldn't get in no painting classes out there, so I went to the painting room, the studio room. A lot of Navajos 18:00down there painting, and they were really nice, really outstanding work. A lot of oils and a lot of acrylics, but the styles were different to me.

Navajos did a lot of the desert-looking and sky, big landscape, whereas a lot of the other tribes did more real bright color, acrylic on canvas. What I did is each evening I would go down to the studio and grab a color and bring it back to my room. I didn't take the best tube or the best jar, just one that's been used, and I'd smuggle my material back into my room and work in my room. Worked in my room.

Little Thunder: Then would you show each other, would you show some of your classmates what you'd done?

Tiger: No, it wasn't like that at all because we were housed in the, it's 19:00actually old Army barracks from World War II. Each one had the room, some two to a room. Not everybody was single to a room. I didn't show much of my work out there, but I did bring it home with me. I gave it to my mom when I got back, after school was out.

Little Thunder: So you were teaching yourself the basics of painting?

Tiger: Yes, and I'd ask questions and study people's work, what they were doing, how they were approaching this and that. I remember in high school, Ms. Loloma--when I did my first canvas, it was a man's face, and he was wearing a necklace. The background, I started on the background, and I put it on real thick, and she got angry at me.

Little Thunder: Was it oil?

Tiger: It was oil. She said, "No, no, no, no! That's too much, too much!" She got a rag and just wiped the whole thing, like that. (Gestures) "Okay." She 20:00said, "You start off slow and go thin. Lay your colors out first, and then you go into it. That's how you learn." That's how I learned, trial and error, and I'm glad. She taught me a lot, really.

Little Thunder: You, at some point, got more into acrylics than oils?

Tiger: Acrylics was introduced to me at Santa Fe because a lot of my friends were on the big canvases, and the colors seemed to be brighter. It didn't take very long to dry. You could paint over it, tape it down. A lot of symbolism out there, and a lot of abstract artwork at that time.

Little Thunder: Were you at all interested in that?

Tiger: No, it didn't really touch on me that much. Color was really what I got out of it, just the different colors I've seen of the blues and the reds, what 21:00color can go with what other color. Seeing a lot of other styles of people from different parts of the country has amazed me a lot. Acrylic is one of my favorites now because it dries faster. I've learned to work with it pretty good.

Little Thunder: Did you consider staying in Santa Fe?

Tiger: No, not really. In '61, there was nothing to it. You could walk downtown, you wouldn't hardly see a car go by. (Laughter) That's not what it is now. I could walk all the way down to the Plaza and look around and walk through the galleries and walk back to school, just to burn time until suppertime. It's a 22:00whole different--you have to appreciate the desert. I like rain and grass too much, I guess.

Little Thunder: Green trees. (Laughs)

Tiger: Yes.

Little Thunder: Was Philbrook Annual going on at all when you started painting actively?

Tiger: Yes, they were, but I wasn't really invited or notified of those shows. It seemed like my cousins, Jerome and Johnny and Chester, the older ones were invited to that one. I was just growing up. I did my first show in 1971 at, I think it was the Southroads Mall. They had a show over there. I remember Fred Beaver being there, Bert Seabourn, David Williams. There might've been a couple of other people I don't remember right now.

David Williams really took to my work. Fred Beaver was a really close friend of 23:00our family because he's from Eufaula, also. He knew my grandparents real close. He was an inspiration, too. David Williams, I got to know him through my brother-in-law who is Kiowa, also. Got to know him and look at his work, study, ask questions about why is this and why is that.

Little Thunder: At the mall show, did you have some Muscogee images and some Plains images? Did you have Plains images?

Tiger: Mostly they were pencil drawings, what I had.

Little Thunder: Just mainly portraits?

Tiger: Seems like they were just human faces and then a few wildlife, animals. The thing about that time is I just drew out of my head. What I could remember 24:00is what it looks like. I only had maybe six or seven pieces on a two-day show. I got fourth place. I was the youngest one there. I was like seventeen years old, I think. My aunt Ruby Scott, Chester's wife, she encouraged me to go to that one. She said, "We'll take you up there every day if you want to go show your work," so we did.

Little Thunder: You made a trip back and forth every day?

Tiger: Yes. I'd sell something, and I'd go buy me a box of model planes or something in the hobby shop down in the mall, or a car, a model car assembly.

Little Thunder: Did you start doing booth shows as you could at the malls?

Tiger: No, that was just a one-time deal. I did the high school show at the Five 25:00Tribes Museum, let's see, '72, '73, '74, '76. I started getting in at the museum show, and I won Grand Award at the Five Tribes in high school. Got my picture on the Muskogee Phoenix.

Little Thunder: That's a big award at that age.

Tiger: That was a big award for me, just to see my mug in the newspaper like that.

Little Thunder: Was it a pencil drawing or a painting?

Tiger: It was a painting. Actually, there was two paintings I entered, and they were both watercolor. One of them was called Creek Homestead, and as far as I know, they still have it in their collection, Creek Homestead. It depicts an old log cabin in the background, and a lady pounding corn up front, and a man making 26:00ball sticks. He's weaving under a tree. Then you have your chickens there, and you have a corn field on the side.

The other one was called Two Worlds. Two Worlds was probably about a sixteen-by-eight. It was divided right down the middle. There was a face in the middle with a line down the middle of it. On this side was the city. You see the cityscape, airplanes, and on the other side was the natural world, trees and like that. Tipi, I think, I put in there, too. I think they still have it at the Five Tribes in the permanent collection. I'd like to see them again since I 27:00haven't seen them in years.

Little Thunder: Did you get with a couple of galleries later on as you got into your mid-twenties?

Tiger: No, I didn't do any galleries. My problem was you've got to have a phone, for one thing, and you have to have a car, another thing. I hitchhiked everywhere. I did. Went to a lot of places on my feet and never really did get in no galleries. I didn't start really getting into the art until I went to the [University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma] in Chickasha.

Little Thunder: Oh, okay. What year was that?

Tiger: In '76 and '77. Then I transferred to Okmulgee Tech [OSU Institute of Technology] in Okmulgee and took commercial art there for a little while. Then I 28:00took up odd jobs, started working here and there, but I did paint on the side, nothing real permanent, just, I like to do that. I felt a need to do that. I guess just tried to stay busy. A lot of the time, I wasn't really out to make a lot of money or make any money at all. It was just something I liked to do. People were noticing it, though, and they liked it, and when they started buying my work, it started building up from there.

Then I started buying equipment. My first table was my bed in junior high and 29:00high school. That's the one that Five Tribes has now on their permanent display. I painted on my bed, chair here. (Gestures) My bed was my table, and that was it. About the Santa Fe deal, after high school, I went back out to Santa Fe. I'll tell you, I did not graduate there. Some things happened out there. (Laughs) I wanted to go back after I got out the first year, and they told me not to come back.

As far as I can see, it was political. A friend of mine, he's from Alaska, very 30:00talented man. He is not used to the modern technology. Somebody had left the TV on in the TV room all night long, and he stayed three doors down. He was tired of it. He got up in the middle of the night. There was nobody watching that TV, and it was going on. He was tired of it, and he went out there and grabbed that TV and yanked it out and throwed it out that window. He threw that TV out the window, and he went on back to his room.

Well, somebody claims that they seen him do it. Of course, a few days went by, and they were questioning who did it. Nobody knew, but somebody had pointed to him, and he confessed that he did do it. He said, "All I'm used to is radio 31:00where I come from, and I don't like to hear this TV. If they're not going to watch it, turn it off, or I'll turn it off for you." (Laughter)

So during that time, he asked for support from some of his buddies, staff, whoever would help him because he had to go to a hearing in Albuquerque at the BIA. We load up in the car, and we go with him down to his meeting place, but they never did call the other students in for support. They just talked to him. I guess they asked what happened, and he told them. He came back out, and he had a plane ticket in his hand. Nothing was said. We get back in the van and drive back towards the school, and he said, "Well, they kicked me out," and he started 32:00giving his things away.

The Ojibwe friends that he had, he gave a painting to one of them. He gave a basket to another, he made. Some sketches, he'd give to just different ones. He give me a carved snow owl with the claws coming out of it like that. (Gestures) It's pretty heavy. I still have it to this day. He said, "I can't carry this on the plane, so you can have it." He gave it to me. I think because of that incident, we were all labeled after that.

Little Thunder: Blacklisted for standing up for him.

Tiger: Yes, I think so.

Little Thunder: I know that you've had to work different jobs over the course, 33:00starting in your twenties and thirties, but continuing to do the art. Did you get any business advice? What was the best business advice you got from another artist? That's the tricky part of it.

Tiger: Probably about originals. A lot of them say, "Keep your originals or don't show a lot of them. If you're going to make prints, make prints, and keep your originals if you want to. It's up to you." That was one of them. Another one is to keep up with your inventory and let the people you trust handle it for you if you can. Don't let people run off with your goods. In other words, that belongs to you, and don't let them print something in your name without your consent.

Little Thunder: When did you pull your first prints?

Tiger: Probably the first ones I ever did was offset printing press. Did some sketches.

Little Thunder: Was it in Tulsa?

Tiger: I worked in Checotah at the newspaper office there. That's where I learned how to run offset press, too, and a web press, on-the-job training.

Little Thunder: So how old were you when you were working at Checotah?

Tiger: I worked there from 1981 to '88. I worked with ink on my hands. It was kind of a journeyman thing.

Little Thunder: But nice for an artist to be able to--

Tiger: Yes, I was doing that, and I was doing darkroom work. I was doing pay 35:00stub. I did the mail, tie and bundle and take them to the post office and load them on the truck, and they'd take them. I did a lot of that. Guy from Tulsa World said I should've come to their place. I could have got on to, maybe, four of them places.

Little Thunder: You didn't do any cartoons for them, did you, or comics? (Laughs)

Tiger: No, I didn't do anything like that, no.

Little Thunder: Were you going to galleries at all? I'm wondering how the landscape or the Indian art scene looked to you in the '80s. What were the things you remember?

Tiger: Probably those artists that were established. Those were the main people 36:00that I really watched or noticed or admired. Blackbear Bosin was one of the people that inspired me. Of course, Jerome, Fred Beaver, Oscar Howe. Some of the old timers, they inspired me a lot.

I didn't have a chance to go to a lot of galleries growing up because I didn't go to Tulsa very much. When you're in a rural area, you just don't have that opportunity or benefit to go anywhere. You have to make do with what you had. Where I live at is economically depressed, even to this day.

Little Thunder: You began working for the Creek Nutrition Center down there in Eufaula in 1990?

Tiger: I worked there--August will be my twenty-third year, actually, come to 37:00think of it. They needed a driver to take meals to the people in the rural area, to the elders in the rural area, the shut-ins, and the single widowed people. I've been doing it all this time, and they are also an inspiration to me.

Little Thunder: I was wondering how they impact your art.

Tiger: They're not all Creek people. There are some Cherokee and there are some Pottawatomie, Choctaw, and they all have their own stories, and they like to talk. At least, they confide in me. If they need something, they go through me to get it. I try to listen to them whenever they have something to say. I look 38:00at their house. One man's a very decorated veteran, a Choctaw man. He's ninety-two years old now, I think. I talk about his growing up. I think he likes to tell somebody something, and I talk to him.

My only [thing] about that job is you'll see them, and they'll go. They'll pass away on you. That happens a lot in my line of work. You get to know them and everything, but really it was the fact that you try to serve people and make them feel good.

There's one incident when I first started that job, kind of took me in the heart because I didn't know the man had a garden behind his house. I didn't know it. 39:00He was a new client on the route. I went to take him food, and he's always sitting at the kitchen table, looking through the screen door. He says, "Come on in. If I'm not here, just leave it on this table." I said, "Okay, that's fine," because sometimes they might be in the bathroom or doing something else, takes them a little longer to come to the door. So I did. I would come to his house, and he wasn't there, but the door was open, and the meal was on there. So, "Maybe he's all right."

I leave. The next day I come there, the meal's still there, and the door's still open. I said, "Uh oh." I called his name. Nobody answers. His neighbor, she comes out, and she says, "He's been laying in his garden for the past day and a half. We found him out there. He had a heart attack." Now, I did not know he had a garden behind that house, and I felt bad because they had to hurry up and bury 40:00him. It's kind of wrenching on you sometimes.

He was an inspiration to me, too. He'd always come to my grandmother's house when we were kids. My grandmother always had fruit trees. She had an apple tree, and he liked her apples. He'd always come out there and get a peck of apples. He'd bring a nail and get a hammer and knock that nail in that tree. He said, "This tree needs iron. They like iron," so he would run a nail in it every year. That thing would bloom for twenty, twenty-five years. Longer than most apple trees last, really.

Little Thunder: There was a time when (and it's still true today) artists from the Five Tribes would often do more Plains images because that's what people 41:00wanted and expected, and it was sometimes difficult to do Seminoles or Muscogee people. It seems to me your work has always balanced both of those. I don't know if that's so or not. Did you start out doing a little more imagery from Plains tribes and then gradually come back around?

Tiger: My interest, some of it grew out of Anadarko area because my aunt lived in Anadarko for many years.

Little Thunder: Oh, did you all go out that way, then?

Tiger: She lived there, so when my grandfather and my grandmother would go visit her, we'd go out there. After school was out, we'd travel. It seemed like it took us forever to get out there, especially with Grandfather driving forty miles an hour. (Laughter) We got out there, but Anadarko in the '60s, to me, 42:00you'd see the men with the braids, and they would talk sign language across the street to each other like that. (Gestures) I thought that was pretty interesting. Out there, that's where they have galleries that I like to walk into. They did have galleries by the local artists that were painting and selling.

Little Thunder: So you went into them, browsing--

Tiger: I would look around in them. I would look in them, and I noticed their paints were real bright, a lot of red and blues, blankets, scenes, peyote scenes, and horseback riding. Those things kind of stuck to me there, and I just started doing some Plains at first because of the features.

I started drawing out of the history books, actually my own art course to myself, to draw from photographs out of magazines, to get the face, wrinkles, 43:00eyes, the features. I'm pretty hard on myself when it comes to what I want to see. If it's not right, I'll leave it alone, throw it in the closet, come back to it three or four days later and look at it again. Then I can see what I did wrong.

Little Thunder: You let it rest in between.

Tiger: Yes, I just don't ever look at it, and then come back and look at a with a different eye on a different day. That works for me. The Creek imagery didn't come until a little later on because there was a lot of people didn't understand it.

Little Thunder: Maybe in the 90s?

Tiger: Actually it started in the mid-'70s, well, actually in the early '70s, like Creek Homestead, that was my major student art piece. That was intentional 44:00for people to see the Creek side. I didn't want just to show the Plains. There's more to Oklahoma than just the western plains. We're eastern tribes, and we have our own ways and language and stories.

Little Thunder: Your primary medium is still pretty much acrylic?

Tiger: Pencil.

Little Thunder: You never did try your hand at sculpture again?

Tiger: No. That's just because I didn't go out of my way to find it. I did one piece at my mother's house on a stone I found. After the grater grated up these stones, I kept seeing this certain stone on the side of the road, so I pick it 45:00up one day, and I'm going to throw it in the back seat of my station wagon. It's shaped like a buffalo. It is, it's shaped like a buffalo, but it's square. It's broken in that shape. I get me a nail and a chisel and a hammer, and I start chiseling out this design, and it's a buffalo. My mother still has it in her house or around her house to this day, but that's about all, just homemade stuff.

Little Thunder: Do you do a lot of thumbnail sketches before you paint, or do you sketch directly on the--do you use mainly board?

Tiger: Both. I'll do some preliminary sketches, rough sketches. Some are real rough, and some are just right to it, and I hit it right on the button. I say, "I'm just going to leave it like that, go with it like that." Then some days, 46:00there's nothing there. It's still in my head. My head to my hand, I'm still waiting for that to come out.

I've got stories right now that I need to bring out. I'm getting back to my histories, my local history, family stories. Let me tell you about one. I'm going to do this. Growing up at home, we had a chicken house at the back of the house. I got up out of bed early one morning, and I see my grandmother. She had a rag around her hand on this side. (Gestures) I look at it, and I see my grandpa over there. He's asleep, but he had a rag on this side of the hand. (Gestures) (Laughter)

I'm looking. I asked my grandmother, I said, "What did you do to your hands?" She said, "We had to fight an owl last night. You was already asleep, but we 47:00were laying in bed, and I could hear a clucking of a chicken out there. I didn't know whether there was a snake in there or what it was, possum or something, but we went out there. We took a lantern out to the chicken house."

The chicken house is only five feet high and maybe six feet deep with chicken wire all around it. "When I look up in there," she said, "there was an owl sitting right next to one of those hens on that one ledge, and it would gradually scoot over. When it gradually scoots over, it'll knock that hen off, hit the ground. When that hen hits the ground, that owl just pounces on top of them. That's the only way they'll attack them, kill them, so we were out there. We opened that door, and I think somebody says, 'Grab it!' Somebody grabs it!" (Laughter)

They put their hand like that, and the owl can see at night in the dark real good. When they went like that, that owl went claws up in that hand. He put his hand in there, and he put claws in his hand like that. So that owl was like this. The claws almost went through their hand, almost. They backed out like that, and she was holding the lantern. She says, "Twist his head! Twist his head!"

My grandpa said he was twisting that owl's head, but it kept going round and round and round. So they finally went up there and got an ax, had to get an ax and just cut that owl's head off. Next day I went out there--my job was to gather the eggs. That was my job. I go out there to the chicken house, and I look in the weeds, and there's an owl's head looking right at me. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Oh, man, that's a story that needs to be painted, for sure!

Tiger: I'm going to do something like that, if not for anybody, just for my family. It's a family story, really.

Little Thunder: Do you work from photographs now a little bit more? Do you ever pose family members and take a photo so you have a particular pose that you can draw, or is it mostly from your head?

Tiger: It's mostly from my head. I have a big family, a lot of nieces and nephews, and can't keep up with all of them. Some of that appears in my art, their face, their image.

Little Thunder: But you're drawing from memory at that point?

Tiger: Yes. The one painting I have, it's called Omen. It started out to be a Trail of Tears picture. It's actually two stories, but it started out to be 50:00Trail of Tears. The lady in the front, she's in a pink blanket. She's looking out. She's going forward. She's in the lead. But she came out looking just like my grandmother did. It just came out like that, so I just leave it like that. It came out real well. It looks like her.

I put the owl in the tree, though, next to it because that's another story that relates to my grandmother when she passed away and my tribe. In the Creek Muscogee tribe, Owl is always a messenger of death or something in that way, a sickness. We just got through having a prayer meeting for her, and everybody left. Me and her was the only one at the house, and she was in the bed. I went to get her a drink of water, and when I went down the hallway, an owl was right 51:00at the door. It hooted real loud. We heard it. I heard it, and she heard it. I take the glass of water back to her, and she drank it. She said, "Did you hear that?" I said, "Yes," and nothing more was said. The whole thing kind of went together in that. That's why I call it Omen.

Little Thunder: I'm glad you mentioned that category. Did you win the Trail of Tears category at any point?

Tiger: I won Trail of Tears category last year, I believe, with a piece called Broken Spirits. It was a miniature, actually, a pencil miniature. It's a small three-by-four, image-size regulation, anyway. I did that and won.

Little Thunder: That's great. You've always had this medium-sized format, but it 52:00seems to me you're doing more miniatures now, which is the reverse of most artists who might spread out.

Tiger: I don't like to waste paper. (Laughter) That's why I do a lot of bookmarks, too.

Little Thunder: Your eyes are still good. (Laughs)

Tiger: Yes, with the help of eyeglasses and sometimes a magnifying glass, too. I don't like to waste paper. I don't if I can help it.

Little Thunder: Do you keep track of your ideas in a notebook, or do you just carry them in your head?

Tiger: No, I just carry it in my head, and sometimes it comes on the art itself. Getting back to the Plains Indian themes, a lot of that has to do with my in-laws, too, my family that married into the Cheyenne-Arapahos, and the Kiowas, 53:00Comanches, Winnebagos. We're just all over.

Little Thunder: So when you're doing an image like that, that's your research, is through family members?

Tiger: It can be, yes. I'll ask them questions if there's something related to the Creek tribe in some way or another. See, I like to do a lot of history, too.

Little Thunder: Oh, you like to read history?

Tiger: I like history. I like stories. I'm still wanting to do one when the Lakotas came through Okmulgee one time. Did you know that? They came to Okmulgee, the Creek Nation. The Siouxs were having a hard time where they were at, and they offered Spotted Tail, chief, a land base here around Okmulgee. They wrote, they said, "We'll give you some land down here if you all want to come 54:00down here." They were being persecuted up that way, so his band comes down here, stays a little while, looks around, and he says, "Your country's very nice, but we want to go back home."

I don't know who has the photographs of that visit, but there are some available somewhere of Spotted Tail and his group coming to visit. They went to Dripping Springs, went up to the Springs and looked. They made a visit all the way around, but they said, "It's too hot down here, for one thing. It's humid." (Laughter) "We want to go back up north where it's cool." Those are the stories I'd like to show sometime.

Little Thunder: Yes, those lesser known, the ones that aren't as well known. Factoring in for when you're not at work, what's your creative routine? Is it a weekend thing, or does it depend?

Tiger: It's always, all the time. I'm always looking and seeing, feeling. People's telling me stories, and I visualize them. I can sit there and just see it. They're just always with me, always ready to create, but it's sitting down, doing it. My best time is probably in the late afternoon and evening. I used to paint late at night, but I can hardly stay up anymore. (Laughter) I do what I can. I need to rest my head every now and then, take it easy and replenish my thoughts. I'm up pretty early in the morning. I can do a lot of things before seven sometimes. Another trick is to fast before you paint or when you're ready 56:00to paint. Don't even eat nothing all day long, just paint. Things seem to come clearer for me when I do that. That's sometimes part of my practice, to fast.

Little Thunder: Have you done any workshops with young people?

Tiger: I want to start doing that. I thought about it for longer than I should. We have a lot of talented young kids in the Eufaula area, and they are really creative painters. There are some kids that would like to write. I'm not really in touch with what the high school is doing or what the local school is doing for the kids, but they have been introduced to the different mediums, I know. 57:00I'd like to take it a little bit further for them, take it out of the classroom and bring that out to the Indian world, you might say, because I was fortunate enough to grow up with grandparents, elder. My grandparents were born in 1898. They could tell me things that happened all the years ago, but you don't have that anymore.

Now I'm the grandparent, but I would rather pass it on to the younger ones, the stories that I know, because they could be doing the same thing in their young life because they're going to be facing a lot of things in their life. To record this through art is one of the better mediums, I think, without showing it on film. You can do it through art, and the story will come out of it. That's what 58:00I do with my art right now. I put stories behind the back of my prints because people don't understand what I'm painting sometimes or they don't understand the Indian side of it, so they appreciate that.

I'm sure the kids would like to have a workshop or something to work with. That's what I want to do with them when the school break comes up in March. That's my plan. If I even get about three or four, that's a start. If I'm going to leave anything, it's going to be that for them.

Little Thunder: Looking back over your career so far, what is a pivotal moment when you might have gone down one road but you took another?

Tiger: Negative stuff?

Little Thunder: Or positive.

Tiger: Well, I went through my negative years and had my wild times. I think 59:00everybody kind of goes through that, but I'm fortunate to be sitting here talking about it. A lot of my friends are no longer with us. I think in 1985, I didn't do anything. I don't think you'll find a piece of work I done in '85 because I was so disoriented, I guess you might say. I lost my way, and I almost lost my gift. It's a gift from God that was given to me. I later realized if you don't use it, you're going to lose it. I almost lost it. It took me almost a year to sit down and start sketching something, and I started getting my feeling back.

I realized to myself, I said, "Not everybody can do this drawing. Nobody can 60:00just sit down and just draw. They wish they could, but they can't." I was in that area where I can just sit and draw something now. But then I realized, "This is a gift, and I'm surely messing up if I'm not going to use this, if I don't straighten up, fly right." If anything, I could show somebody else how to do art or how to see things and how to appreciate creativity in one way or the other. That was probably my down time. It was a really bad time for me.

Little Thunder: What's been one of the high points of your career?

Tiger: Probably now, I think, because it seems to get better. People seem to appreciate Native American art, anyway. You can't please everybody, and 61:00everybody has their own styles. That's one thing that I see now in a lot of these shows. I'd hate to be a judge. There's a lot of different styles. Some pieces don't get selected, and I think they should have, but I'm not the judge. Now it's pretty exciting. It's pretty good. I like it. Seeing people create things, it inspires me, also.

Little Thunder: Besides sharing technical things with a young person, what would you tell a young person who wanted to get into Native art, doing Native art today?

Tiger: I'd tell them to know their history and who they are. Ask questions. If you have an elder in your house, in your family, ask questions, why is this and 62:00why is that. If you can't find somebody that will tell you, we have elders out there that need to be reached out to. They think they are useless sometimes, and I don't want them to feel that way. That's why I try to get the young and the old together, if they can just spend a little time together, because some of these young ones have never been around an elder person at all, and a lot of them are in nursing homes. I'd just encourage them to draw and paint whatever they can, if they have it. Study their history. You get educated that way, also.

Little Thunder: Is there anything that we've forgotten to talk about that you'd like to discuss?

Tiger: Probably think about it tonight, and I'll let you know tomorrow. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Well, let's take a look at some of your artwork, then. Can you tell us about this piece?

Tiger: This is titled Grandma's Kitchen, and it's depicting three ladies' food preparation. What we have here is a lady. She's stirring the pot. It might be sofke, or corn soup, in it. The lady in the middle is pounding corn in the wood mortar. We call that kitcho or kitchubi. The lady on the end, she's sifting the corn in the sifting basket. Of course, you have your log cabin in the back and your brush harbor out here.

In the summertime or the warm season, they used to cook outdoors a lot. That's 64:00where the kitchen was at, actually. Eat outdoors. This is all done in graphite and graphite pencil. I have two scissortail birds up here, the state birds. You always hear them around my house in the summertime.

Little Thunder: Those clouds are coming up, too.

Tiger: Yes, the clouds are coming up. That's a good sign of rain. We need rain all the time. When it's been really hot in the summer, you always like to have a little shade and clouds and a little rain.

The pot here is kind of tilted because that's the way my grandmother used her pot. She wouldn't lay it flat. She would lean it a little bit. That way she could put her spoon in there better and stir things at a direct angle. That's 65:00why it's tilted-looking a little bit. And, of course, she could be holding corn grits. Sometimes it's meat. It could be pork with the corn. The baskets here, it's a very rare item these days because you don't hardly see any sifting baskets, especially made by the Creek Nation or Creek tribe. Very few people make it.

Little Thunder: Time to revive that.

Tiger: This one is a Creek stickball stick with ball. It's a watercolor. I have these in my house. They were both made by the late Tony Mitchell. He made both of these. He gave me the ball to show that this is the traditional ball that the 66:00tribal towns used in ballgame. They've got the long buckskin string that's all wrapped in buckskin, and they're tied. I tried to show the tie features on there when they're made properly.

Little Thunder: You've really got some nice detail. You can see the different textures so well, too.

Tiger: Yes, the wood in mine is supposed to look like wood. That's the way it looks. When he made it, he polished it down real fine. He used glass to cut it, to shave it. He used broken glass, windowpane. That's what they use. Of course, it's wrapped with buckskin, tied off. That ball's of a buckskin hide, also.

Little Thunder: It's beautiful.

Tiger: This is called New Moon Song. The idea comes from the Cahokia Mounds from Illinois, the ancient Mississippians, where now they have a museum and several mound sites on the property. The large painting is a forty-by-thirty-two original on canvas. The story behind this one is this is the Monks Mound at the Cahokia Mound site. There was a house on top. If you look real good, there's the four men standing outside. I have these men kind of like a silhouette in the 68:00dark part.

The new moon has always been a symbol of renewal of each month, and the moon has always been used to cut hair or plant. I was trying to educate people that you use your lunar signals to do different things that you want to do, like cut hair, plant corn, make medicine. It's always been a renewal time, and it's always for the good.

Little Thunder: You still have that original?

Tiger: Yes, I have the original. I still do. This one won first place at Cahokia, 2011. It got second place at Bartlesville Indian Summer and third place 69:00at the Cherokee Art Market, all last year.

Little Thunder: That's wonderful.

Tiger: I depict the elders, the four of them here. There's four seasons and the four directions. People were close to the Creator and its elements. You live in your environment because we all live there in that same world, so they watched. You have people that watches the stars and people that watches the seasons. You'll have somebody watch the Milky Way and which way it goes. They made decisions according to these surroundings, and so I depict these men, the Cahokia people and the Mississippian, which is what the Muscogee Nation people are since we come from different tribal towns. We are Mound people. That's who we are.

Little Thunder: That's really nice. And then the new one, a brand new print?

Tiger: Yes, it's pretty new. This one depicts a man and woman. She's laying down the law. She done told him once or twice about that. (Laughter) As you see, he's hiding a bottle behind him and holding his arm up against her forceful appearance, and he ripped his sleeve right there in the process. He's got a jug right here. She's just laying down the law and saying, "I don't want this around the house."

Little Thunder: What's the title again?

Tiger: What Did I Tell You About That Drinking?

Little Thunder: In the corner, is that a little--Tiger: A little turtle right here. A little turtle's watching it all going on. People like that. They laugh. It's just to break the monotony a lot of times of serious artwork. You throw little scenes in like that, and people can relate to it sometimes. I think a lot of people go through it more than you think.

Little Thunder: Humor is always good.

Tiger: I try to humor people about different things. That whole thing is alcoholism has always been a big issue in the Indian country. It's not just 71:00Indian people. It's everybody. It breaks up homes. It hurts people. It's a negative drug. It's too bad a lot of people are dependent on it. I, myself, broke that cycle, and I don't want to go back to that lifestyle anymore. It's a reminder to myself a lot of times. You know, we have to live with each other every day. We try to get along and encourage one another to be more positive in your life and hope and pray for the best.

Little Thunder: Thank you for sharing that, Jon, and thank you for taking the time to do this interview.

Tiger: Thank you for your time, too. I'm glad to do it.

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