Oral history interview with Bobby Martin

Little Thunder: My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is January 5, 2013, and I'm interviewing Muscogee Creek artist Bobby Martin as part of the Oklahoma Native Artists Project, sponsored by the Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We're at Bobby's studio in Tahlequah by the Illinois River. Bobby, you're currently an associate professor of art at John Brown University. You also taught at Northeastern State University. You've been involved in the Native art scene for many years, combining personal imagery with social and cultural statements in multiple exhibits around the country and abroad. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Martin: My pleasure.

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

Martin: I was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where we are now, at the W. W. Hastings Indian Hospital. I grew up most all my life in Tahlequah from literally--well, we moved around a little bit until I was five. Then my parents 1:00moved back to Tahlequah when I was five, and then went through the Tahlequah school system from kindergarten on through high school. Then I went to Northeastern here for a couple of years and then dropped out of school. I've been in Tahlequah for almost that whole time with a few little stints a couple other places. Except for maybe three or four years here and there, I've been in Tahlequah the whole time.

Little Thunder: What did your folks do for a living?

Martin: My father was a counselor for the State Employment Service for the State of Oklahoma for many years. That was his career. He passed away in 2010. Had retired early, so he'd been retired for quite a few years. My mother worked in the social services area, first for the Bureau of Indian Affairs when they had 2:00an office in Tahlequah. Then, when they moved their offices to Muskogee, she worked there for a bit. She retired from there and started working for the Cherokee Nation. She retired from there, as well, after a couple of years. She worked for various government agencies.

Little Thunder: What about your grandparents on either side?

Martin: On my father's side, they were both educators. My grandfather, my dad's dad, was superintendent of schools at a little school near Checotah, Oklahoma, Onapa, which was where they lived. That's my memories of them, is going down to Onapa. There was a school down there until the mid-'60s, and then they consolidated, I think, with Checotah Schools. He was the superintendent of schools, and his wife, my grandmother on my dad's side, was the fifth grade 3:00teacher for many, many years. They were both educators. Both had got their master's degrees here at Northeastern back in the '30s.

Then my mom's side, her dad--Heron was their name. He was Ransom Wesley Heron. He was a horse trader, general, kind of a whatever-he-could-find-to-do. Owned several little stores, same area, around Onapa. My mom's mom, my granny, was full-blood Creek and spoke fluent Creek, really more fluent in Creek than she was in English. They lived on Highway 69, just about halfway between Onapa and Eufaula, and that's where they lived. She was a homemaker and did the garden and 4:00kept the farm and all that stuff. That was my earliest memories, is being on their farm down in Onapa.

Little Thunder: What is your first memory of seeing art or perhaps Native art?

Martin: I think the first art that I remember seeing was not Native art. Probably what got me interested in being an artist is my dad was sort of a hobbyist artist, more of a cartoonist, really. He'd sent off for this correspondence course on how to become a cartoonist. It came in these big spiral bound notebooks and all these pages of how to draw these cartoon figures, how to draw a face, and how to draw the figures in cartoon style. Of course, I didn't 5:00know anything about art at all, but I thought this was so cool. He never actually finished the course, but I would take those books and try and practice. That was my first experience with art, and it really stuck with me for my life, I guess.

My first experience with Native art was--I was aware of Native art growing up in Tahlequah because there is just a lot of it. What I thought of Native art was the very traditional, flat-style art. Cecil Dick's work was around a lot. In fact, I'd see his work a lot in pawn shops and different places. So I was aware that there was something different about Native art versus the art that I would see mostly in people's homes.

My parents weren't necessarily that interested in art. We didn't go to museums. We weren't really brought up in any kind of artistic sort of culture. I was 6:00aware of it, but I wasn't really surrounded by it or in that world, necessarily. It wasn't until I got to college, really, when I started being aware of it, way far down the road, as an adult.

Little Thunder: And aside from your dad, no other extended family members that dabbled in art or were interested in art?

Martin: Not that I know of. I think some of them--like my grandfather on my dad's side, he really liked to work with wood. I remember projects in the summer. He'd have me and my brother help him build these little--I remember building some little planter out of wood. It was a little cart drawn by a mule, and we cut it out, (Laughter) those kind of things. Nobody was formally trained in art, and nobody pursued art as any kind of a living or hobby, really. We had a few relatives that I knew just from being around them, like cousins, that were 7:00good. They liked to draw. I'm really the only one that I know of that really pursued art in any kind of professional setting.

Little Thunder: And how about brothers and sisters?

Martin: I have one sister. I'm the oldest of three. I have a sister who is a year younger than me, and a brother who's three years younger than me. Both of them still here in Tahlequah, but none pursued art although they are both talented. My brother, especially, was a very good draftsman. He drew very well, but didn't pursue it. They're still around here.

Little Thunder: So what experiences with art did you have in elementary school?

Martin: Elementary school, not a lot. I don't really remember too much except maybe some little class projects. My first real memory of anything art-related was probably when I was in junior high, probably seventh or eighth grade. What 8:00was real popular then (this was probably in the mid-'60s) were these little trading cards that had hot rods with these monsters popping out of the top of the hood, or they'd have these crazy monsters with giant gear shifts sticking up like this. (Gestures) They're still popular in some areas. They'd come out in these, like, baseball-type trading cards. My friend and I found that we were pretty good at copying these, and so we would copy these little trading cards and then sell them for like a nickel to all our fellow students. That was my first artistic--

Little Thunder: Your first art sale. (Laughs)

Martin: --yes, my first art sale, my first even, really, adventure into art and some kind of realization that, "Wow, you can make art, and somebody might actually want to have it." It was fun. That's the thing: I thought it was 9:00interesting at the time that, "Wow, I can draw these things, and people want them. They'll actually give me some money for them!" (Laughter)

Little Thunder: How about high school? Did you have any art classes in high school?

Martin: I took art all the way through high school, mainly because I was good at it and it was easy, but I didn't have really any real interest in it. I just found myself doing it. One of the things (maybe it's common or not, I don't know) I had a good art teacher in those years, but she was fairly restrictive on what you could do. Of course, I wanted to do other stuff, and that felt, in my high-school way of thinking, real restrictive on my artistic whatever, so I didn't make very good grades. (Laughter) I would do something that wasn't following the rules correctly. I wasn't very serious at all. I did it because I 10:00was good at it and it was something I knew I could do. I didn't pursue it in any serious way at all.

Little Thunder: So you go to Northeastern for college immediately after high school?

Martin: Yes, the first time. (Laughter) I went immediately after high school. In fact, I went to summer school the summer after I graduated high school. It didn't even enter my mind to be an art major or anything like that, so a friend of mine and I decided, "We're going to be business administration majors," or whatever. I had no interest in that, but it was like, "Okay, I could either go to school or go find a job, so I guess I'll go to school." So we went to school.

I went the summer, and then I went fall semester, and then I basically dropped out in the middle of the spring semester. I was eighteen or nineteen and was 11:00totally disinterested. By that point, I was more interested in playing music and wanting to be a rock star. (Laughs) That's really where I went, was doing music a lot more before I was ever interested in art. I dropped out at that point and didn't ever go back until many years later, to go back and finish my bachelor's. I was in my early thirties before I went back to school. I was a very non-traditional student to finish up back in the early '90s, I guess, is when I went back.

Little Thunder: So you're playing music, but you're not really doing any art on the side, not really seeing any art?

Martin: No. I mean, art was pretty non-existent for me that whole period of growing up. Every once in a while I might draw something or maybe create a little greeting card, something just because I knew I could do it. I could throw something together, but not pursuing it at all. I was really serious about 12:00music, especially after I dropped out of college the first time around. This would've been late '70s. Dropped out of Northeastern to pursue my rock star career. (Laughs) Played in a lot of bands, ended up being a professional musician for the next ten or twelve years, playing in all kinds of bands around here.

Little Thunder: Did you ever play up in Tulsa at the Leon Russell Church [Recording] Studio?

Martin: We never--no, actually. I didn't get that serious about the business end of it until a little bit later, probably in the mid-'80s. A friend and I--this was back when bankers were a lot more lenient than they are now. We went in with no jobs, no real security of any kind and asked for some money to start a recording studio. He actually gave us some money, and so we started this little 13:00demo studio, downtown Tahlequah. We started recording our own music, and then we'd have people coming in and recording bands, nothing very serious.

My original partner eventually dropped out, and he sold his part to an older gentleman. That's where I met people like Kevin Smith, Tom Skinner, a lot of guys that are still playing music around Tulsa. They would come. They were in that same circle that I was, and they would come down and record. This was twenty-something years ago, and so we did a lot of recording, played a lot of music, and wrote a lot of songs. That was my life for a dozen years or so, mostly in the '80s. That was what I pursued, and art was not even in the mix, really. I mean, I did a few little projects. I created a little logo for the 14:00studio, things like that because I could and I didn't have any money to pay anybody else to do it. I would do that, but as far as art or being exposed to art or pursuing art, music was my life for that decade.

Little Thunder: So what led you back to school and into an art major?

Martin: A few different things. Probably one of them was starvation. (Laughter) I went from wanting to be a starving musician to a starving artist. I don't know how smart that was. I had just met Stephanie, who is now my wife. We've been married for twenty-two years now, but then we were playing in a band together, and we decided that we wanted to get married. At the time, she was the bread 15:00winner of the family. It was clear that I wasn't going to make any money at this recording studio thing, so that was kind of the time I decided, "Okay, I'm going to go back to school," and in the process of trying to figure out, "Okay, if I go back to school then what am I interested in?"

It really wasn't a desire that suddenly was like, "Oh! I want to pursue art." (Snaps) It was like, "I do like art, and I'm good at art. I think I'll try and major in art just to see how it goes, to try it out." Also, they had an Indian studies program there, and so I thought, "Well--" I was getting more interested in trying to find out more about my family and my background and what it meant to be a Native American, so I decided to double major in fine art and Indian studies. That was in '89. I ended up selling the studio and going back to 16:00Northeastern, picking it back up after being out for, it'd been about twelve years or so.

Little Thunder: So how important was your Creek culture growing up?

Martin: It was fairly invisible, really, as far as when you're talking about traditional culture. My mom was half Creek. We grew up in Tahlequah. My parents moved to Tahlequah when I was about five, and so, of course, we ended up being in the midst of the Cherokees as Creeks.

We would go down to visit my grandmother and all the aunts and uncles, but they were not really involved in what you would think of as traditional Creek culture. They were very involved in the Christian church, Creek. My granny's 17:00dad, my great-grandfather, was a Methodist circuit riding preacher, and he was the main pastor at Deep Fork Hillabee [Church] which is down in that area. I do remember going down to some of the church grounds. Our family had their own camp house. Usually it'd be on Easter or big holidays, and we'd go down. That was more the culture. They were all Creeks, but it's not what you'd think of as traditional.

When I think about it now, though, it is still traditional culture. It is still a traditional culture of growing up in a church. That's my background as far as the culture. Then, of course, I never really got into any kind of Native church when we were in Tahlequah, and still not really. About the same time that I went back to college to Northeastern and got married, I also became a Christian in 18:001990. Since then, I've gotten more involved.

Actually, it probably wasn't until I went back to Northeastern, I really started educating myself about not just Creek culture but tribal culture in general, and then started getting more involved in culture, not only Creek culture but Cherokee culture probably maybe as much as Creek culture just because I'm here in Tahlequah. That's really where I grew up is more in the Christian church culture of Native life, I guess.

Little Thunder: So did your Native studies classes--well, let's talk, I guess, about what you're doing in art then, at that point, too, because you're doing Native studies and art. What kind of base skills are you acquiring in art?

Martin: I had no idea what to expect when I went back to school because, like I said, I was at that point thirty or thirty-one years old. That was really a little bit before--there weren't nearly as many non-traditional students then as there are now, so it was a little intimidating at first. I didn't really know what to expect from the art side or even the Indian studies side or even college in general because I'd been out of school for so long. I kind of went in with not a lot of expectations because I just didn't know what to expect.

But it turns out I really enjoyed both areas of studies. I enjoyed the art because I was making art. I can't say I rediscovered because I don't know that I ever knew. I knew I had some ability, but I never really pursued it. I really discovered how much I enjoy doing art, especially in a setting where that's all I was expected to do. That was really enjoyable to find out that, "Okay, I can 20:00paint and draw."

When it really clicked for me is when I had an intro to printmaking class. That really caught my attention, and it put me on the path that I'm still on now. There's something about the press and the ink and the whole process, the whole thing. We can talk about that more later, but there was something about that that really captured my attention. Then, coupled with the Indian studies, that--in a lot of ways the Indian studies program made me think about my heritage, my tribal affiliation even, the whole, what it means, the identity question, I guess. A lot of that fed into the content that I was creating in my art. That's something that still shows up in my art all the time is that 21:00identity question, those explorations of identity. Those things sort of dovetailed in nicely when I went back to school, and that led me in a lot of ways that I really had no idea that it would until I actually pursued it. It worked out real well. I'm glad I decided to go back.

Little Thunder: I'm glad you did, too. Who was a particularly memorable teacher you had at that time?

Martin: At Northeastern?

Little Thunder: Yes.

Martin: It's interesting the way it worked because I ended up going back to, after I got out of grad school, I went back to Northeastern and ended up being colleagues of a lot of people that were my teachers at Northeastern. One in particular, R. C. Coons, who taught drawing and painting and was legendary for being this very curmudgeonly art professor. (Laughter) He was a wonderful 22:00teacher. He was very specific in what he wanted you to do, but he was tough. He was also very supportive in his own curmudgeonly way, and I liked that about him.

A lot of students were freaked out or didn't like him, but I think if you really dug in, he was one of those professors that would really reward. You were rewarded by working hard for him. He also taught printmaking, and so he was instrumental in getting me interested in printmaking and continuing that as I went on because I did some more independent study printmaking projects after that. He was very helpful and very inspirational to me. That kind of helped me 23:00to realize that this is a really interesting way to express myself that I hadn't ever thought of before. R. C. Coons was probably one of the main guys that spurred me on to really think about art as a serious career.

Little Thunder: So after you graduated from NSU, did you go on immediately to grad school, or what happened?

Martin: I did. I did. At that point, it would've been '92, and I would've been thirty-five or something like that, mid-thirties somewhere. I thought and talked it over with my wife. You know, a lot of people will want to sit out for a year 24:00or two and then go back to grad school. I thought, "At my advanced age, if I'm going to go to grad school, I probably need to go ahead and go straight on to grad school." I looked around a little bit, and it turned out that I was able to get into the grad school over at University of Arkansas and went straight from graduating Northeastern into the MFA program at Fayetteville.

Little Thunder: How was that different? What was different artistically for you at that level?

Martin: It was very different. In fact, it took me a semester, at least, to get used to the fact that all they expected was for me to do art but very focused art. My first application, I didn't even get in because I was not--I mean, the artwork was okay, but I was all over the map. I didn't realize until later on 25:00that most grad schools (and U of A was no exception) are looking for an artist that was pretty well on a path, focused on what they're working on.

I had no focus at that point, so I think what that certainly did, once I got to grad school, was focus me very specifically on thinking about not only the mediums that I was working in but the content, the direction, the goals that I was even doing art for. When all you're expected to do is do art in your little cubicle, in your grad student cubicle, then yes, you have to really get serious about it. I think that more than anything was what was beneficial to me about grad school is it really focused me in on what I was doing with my art.

Little Thunder: So can you expand upon that a little more, then? What were the media that you were focusing on and the subject matter?

Martin: I really wanted to continue doing the printmaking. It really grabbed me 26:00at an undergrad level, and I really wanted to pursue that more because I was interested. At that point, I was probably more interested from a technical standpoint. I really liked the materials and the processes. Once I got to grad school, my major was printmaking and then a secondary, like a minor I guess you could call it, was in drawing. I ended up actually doing more painting in grad school, and printmaking. In fact, my MFA show was probably primarily painting with a pretty liberal sprinkling of printmaking.

I guess it focused me more on not only what I wanted to do from a media standpoint but probably more from content. It really got me thinking about, "Okay, how can I use this art to say something, to communicate?" I think, frankly, in undergrad it was more about getting the projects done, hitting the 27:00deadline. I really wasn't thinking so much about what I was trying to say, which, as I see my students, still hasn't changed that much. (Laughter) If there's a definite benefit to grad school for anybody (and it was for me) is, like I said, that focusing on especially content and on why you're creating art. It does refine your technical ability, sure, but I think it certainly more refines how you think about your art and yourself doing art.

Little Thunder: So did you start doing photo collage, for example, in graduate school, using old photographs?

Martin: I really started the old photographs probably my last semester in undergrad. I didn't really have any agenda with these old photographs other than I thought, "This would be cool to make a print out of." I did that in some of my 28:00printmaking projects as an undergrad in my senior year, and then when I got to grad school, I really started thinking again in that focus and what I'm trying to say.

I started thinking and started really concentrating on, "These old photographs are more than just interesting things to copy." They talk about identity. They talk about history. They talk about family. They talk about a lot of things that I'm really interested in. That really captured my imagination on how I maybe could reuse these things in a lot of different ways, whether it's collage or as source material for prints or paintings or whatever.

Then somewhere along the line, it wasn't until I got to grad school when I started integrating the text and the other materials like the Dawes Roll names and Creek hymns and scripture and things like that. That's really when it 29:00started taking off for me of trying to include all these other bits and pieces of information into these photographs.

Little Thunder: Yes, and let's talk about that a little bit. As you say, the photographs are both universal and have universal appeal, but they're very personal. Yet when you juxtapose them with those Dawes Rolls lists, what are some of the associations that you're evoking there?

Martin: I think probably, for me, when I started using those--and the reason I even started using the Dawes Rolls names to start with was kind of an accident in a lot of ways, which probably most things that artists do come across from accidents. (Laughs) My mom pulled out--I don't even know why she even showed it 30:00to me. Maybe it was to show me where our relatives were. From her BIA days she'd had a book, which I've got over there, a book of all the Muscogee Creek and Freedmen, everybody listed. It's a Dawes Roll enrollment book.

As I was looking down those lists and lists of names and numbers and tribal blood quantum and all that, I was looking at all those names and numbers and thinking, "These were all individuals, but they've all been codified into these names and numbers." When I see these photographs, they're my family, mostly. I always try and use something that's from my family, and those are real people. You know, they're real people. They just happen to be Native American people because that's my family, and yet there's these names and numbers that have been listed.

The other thing for me was it also was a connection because even today, obviously, to get any kind of free health care you have to be able to find some relative or some ancestor on those rolls. It's still got a political play today. So to combine what was real for me with what was real to the government or whoever, it was an identity thing. It's really what got me interested in the fact that, okay, here's one kind of identity. Here's another kind of identity. They're both real in their way, but if I combine those--

I don't know. It just seemed to be a natural mix of ironic, maybe, and politically--well, I guess maybe I was trying to make political statements, but 32:00I think it was about identity. It was about the struggle for me, too, about, "Okay, here's what was real for me. Here's what the government says or whoever says. I've got to have a card that says I'm connected to somebody on these lists."

Then it was a natural progression from there to include other bits and pieces of texts and words and scripture and things like that. Actually before I even got to the Dawes names, I was using quotations. I need to go back to some of that. I found some really cool quotes from Special Collections at Northeastern's library. Do you know Delores Sumner over there?

Little Thunder: Yes.

Martin: They had those [Indian]-Pioneer Papers and I had gone through them. It was some of the Indian studies courses I had, and I was doing research through that. I found some wonderful old quotes from some of the early Native settlers, really. They were talking about all kinds of things, and so those were really the initial text that I used, were some of those quotes from some of those 33:00Pioneer Papers. Then it progressed from there to the Dawes. The Dawes thing was when I really got more into the identity question.

Little Thunder: After you received your MFA, you were Artist-in-Residence at Gilcrease museum for a year. How did that come about?

Martin: It came about, well, providentially. The last year of my grad school at University of Arkansas, I had applied for this new fellowship. It was brand new. I think it had been only the second year it started through the College Art Association and it was called the Professional Development Fellowship.

The idea was you got a grant or an award for your last year of grad school, and then they paid, like, half your salary to transition to a job or some kind of 34:00position somewhere. I applied. I had no expectation, but I was selected to get a College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship. That helped me to finish up and get my MFA thesis exhibition all put together.

That's how it led to the Gilcrease position because I had talked to a couple of places. I'd talked to the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, not the Ivy League Dartmouth. There's another [University of Massachusetts] in New Bedford, Massachusetts. I talked to the art program there, and they were interested in bringing me out. I flew out there for an interview. Their expectations were not what my expectations were, so that didn't match up.

In the meantime, a good friend of mine, Kevin Smith, who was Curator of Education at that time at Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, had been working. He knew I'd got the fellowship. He knew that they could bring me in pretty cheap because the fellowship was going to pay up to a certain amount of my salary. He convinced the curator and the powers-that-be over there to bring me in under this position called Artist-in-Residence, which is great. It was a great pitch. I followed in the footsteps of Woody Crumbo. Who else was there? Willard Stone.

It was great. What it really meant is I was able to work there a year under that fellowship funding, and I taught. How he pitched this and how he was able to sell this is they were just beginning to offer educational programming for 36:00students, like afterschool programs for adults, weekend classes. This was a new thing then. This would've been in '95.

He brought me in to help organize and teach the classes. Also, my role, probably more my main role, was they were also looking for somebody that could do some graphic design, to design some of their signage for the museum and, like, the quarterly members newsletters and things like that and other PR materials. Of course, the interesting thing about that was I had no experience as a graphic designer, zero, (Laughter) so it was interesting that I was really, literally, learning by the seat of my pants on that deal.

The cool thing about it was at the end of that first year the funding ended, and 37:00they were able to keep me on. At that point, I think my title was not Artist-in-Residence anymore. It became Graphic Designer or Graphic Design Coordinator or something like that, so I became more the graphic designer for the museum and then worked there for five years.

It was a great experience. I loved working at Gilcrease and learning about museum culture and everything. The nice thing about that job is I was teaching classes, I was doing graphic design, I was doing a lot of different things, a real variety of things all related to art. It was a neat experience.

Little Thunder: And in that first year, were you also expected to produce outside of that graphic design area?

Martin: My own work, you mean?

Little Thunder: Yes.

Martin: No, not really. It wasn't the same kind of Artist-in-Residence that, 38:00say, Willard Stone was expected to do or Woody Crumbo, although a lot of their role had to do with advising, too, advising Mr. Gilcrease on purchases and stuff. But, no, it wasn't really expected, although I did do a lot of work.

That first year one of the really big things I got to be involved with was a show that Kevin put together called the Masters--shoot, I can't remember the official title. It was something like Masters Exhibition. He picked five different artists to be featured and then a collection of other contemporary artists, and so I got to be one of the featured artists. It was me and--who else was featured? Edgar Heap of Birds and Virginia Stroud, I think. Anyway, it was a really nice show, a really well-done show. It gave me a lot of confidence in 39:00myself. It was also good for my career at that point, too.

Little Thunder: And then you also started Berean [Intermedia] Studio.

Martin: Yes, Berean was my freelance company, I guess you'd call it. It was just me. At some point between that first year at Gilcrease of being Artist-in-Residence and then the next four years of being a graphic designer, I somehow turned into a graphic designer and stopped making very much art at that time. Didn't do a whole lot of art. I did the one big show at Gilcrease and kept making a little art, but the more graphic design I kept doing, the farther away I got from studio art, to the point of where the next part of my life was getting a teaching position at Northeastern. The reason I got the teaching 40:00position is because I had the graphic design experience at Gilcrease, so I was brought in as a full-time graphic design professor.

At that point, I wouldn't say I totally abandoned fine art, but I was doing mostly graphic design. That's where Berean Intermedia came in. I was doing a lot of freelance work, graphic design work, web design work, and that was my freelance company that I still use whenever I do any kind of freelance design work.

Little Thunder: You've had a couple of exhibitions within the Muscogee Creek community: one at Checotah, I guess their community center, and then one at Creek Nation Elderly Senior Nutrition Center. Let's talk about the Checotah show first, which was called Through Our Ancestors' Eyes. Did they have an opening for it?

Martin: Yes, that was an interesting show. This was more recent than the Elderly Nutrition. This was probably in 2008, I think. It was another providential thing. Actually, it was a cousin of mine who was the director of the--what is that official title? The Checotah Creek Indian Community Center. They provide help. They have a meeting building there, down in Checotah, and they also provide help to the Creek community in Checotah.

Somebody, one of the officers of the community center, had just seen a photograph. I don't know if it was in the Creek Nation paper or somewhere. It was a photograph of a pastel diptych that I had done from a family photograph. It had my granny in it, and it had several other matriarchs of the Creek 42:00community. It caught her eye because she knew all those ladies that were in the photograph, and she was actually related to at least one of them. That caught her eye, and she didn't know at the time that the director was my cousin. (Laughs) She showed him that, and she thought that was really neat because there was a direct connection to the Creek community there in Checotah. Of course, he says, "Oh, it turns out, he's my first cousin." So that's how that came about.

They were really interested in seeing that image. What was fun for me is I really didn't want it to be--because the community center is not an art gallery. Really, it's just a meeting place for folks to hang out. I didn't have any expectation. I didn't want to bring in a bunch of paintings and fine-arty work that people didn't understand, necessarily. I really thought it would work neat 43:00because it was a tie into their community if I made it a collaboration between me and the community.

What I proposed was for them to send out a request to all the community members to bring in their old photographs and I would curate those. We did. We got a lot of folks bringing in old photographs. I selected, I don't know, thirty or forty photographs, and we Photoshopped them a little bit so they'd be all consistent looking, and then ended up matting and framing those choices. The ones we didn't pick we ended up printing them all into, like, a photo album so people could look through all of them at the opening of the show, through the whole show, really. Then I put a scattering of my own work mixed in with their photo that they brought in.

It was a neat way to collaborate with the community. I liked it because I wanted 44:00to make what I was doing more connectable and more real to people that probably were never going to go to an art museum, never going to go to an art gallery. I wanted to make what I was doing relatable to their lives and their experiences, and it worked out really great. I was really happy with the response, the response of putting the show together and the response of when it got up on the walls. I'd been using a lot of these photographs for several years but didn't really know some of the people in them. It really helped me identify a bunch of people that were in these photographs because a lot of these people were related to them. It was really a fun project.

Little Thunder: That's neat. How about the Nutrition Center exhibition? What was that?

Martin: Actually, that was a continuation of my MFA thesis show. After the 45:00thesis exhibition at the gallery there in Fayetteville, I had two other showings of basically that same show. It was a re-creation of a lot of images from Dwight Mission. All these were photographs that my granny had. She was there maybe two or three years from 1917 to, like, 1919 or so. We didn't even discover these photographs until after she had passed away, in all her stash of photos that she had. It was amazing how many photos she did have. I was really blown away.

Anyway, that whole MFA thesis show was all related to Dwight Mission. I showed basically the same show. I showed it at Holland Hall School in Tulsa. They have 46:00that big gallery. Is it called Walker, I believe? [Holliman Gallery] I can't remember. Anyway, it's a really nice gallery. I showed that show at Holland Hall in Tulsa.

Then a lady from the Creek Nation came up and saw the show and was very interested in it and proposed that I show it in Okmulgee somewhere. The only place that was really big enough to do it was the Elderly Nutrition Center, a big giant room. It was neat, too. It was my own work, but I did put a book out trying to say, "If you know anybody in these images, let me know," and trying to get some feedback from the community. It was fun.

We had a nice little reception, served sofke. A lot of the older folks came out and looked around and really enjoyed. I did find a couple more names that I 47:00didn't know before. "Oh, I recognize so and so." That was a fun one, too. Both those shows, to me, were unique because they were out of the ordinary venue. You're taking it out of the accepted venues of galleries and museums and putting it into a place where you don't necessarily expect to see art. I like that. I like getting out of those expected scenarios.

Little Thunder: That's real important. How did your position at John Brown come about, John Brown University?

Martin: Well, it came about from my wanting to get out of the graphic design mode, I guess because, like I mentioned, I had gotten a position at Northeastern. I left Gilcrease to go to Northeastern specifically to teach 48:00graphic design. That was in 2000. I guess I had been there for three or four years, yes, four years, working with all my colleagues that were my teachers ten years earlier when I was an undergrad, which was interesting.

They all decided to retire basically within the two years, three years that I got there. They all retired. I was left in my third or fourth year being the senior person, and somehow I let myself get talked into being the chair of the department. (Laughter) So now I'm finding myself doing graphic design, teaching graphic design, which I liked. I enjoyed it. I was also doing administrative stuff, which I didn't really enjoy all that much.

You know, six years in, you can go up for tenure, so I did the tenure thing. I 49:00got tenure, got a promotion to associate professor. So, you know, I was flowing along, eight years in now at Northeastern. I'm basically teaching all graphic design, having all these administrative duties. I'm not doing any art, zero art. I mean, I would finish a piece every now and then to maybe enter at the Trail of Tears show, something like that, but I'm talking one or two pieces of art a year, maybe. I really wouldn't even consider myself an artist at that point. I'm just doing graphic design. I was teaching printmaking, which I really enjoyed, but I really wasn't making any art.

I was thinking about that, and I happened to notice that an opening came up at this little school in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. I knew the name of it, but I didn't really know anything about it. They were looking for a fine art faculty, studio art faculty. Also, the fact that they were a Christian university--I'd 50:00been for several years thinking that as a Christian and as somebody that would like to be in an environment to teach art or design from a Christian perspective, it might be interesting.

So when this came up it was like, "Hmm, okay. It's a Christian university. They want to do more studio art." I had been wanting to get more back into the studio art world. On a whim almost, I applied. Because I already had tenure and everything at Northeastern, I had no reason to leave. I was doing fine there, but I really wasn't doing what I felt like I really wanted to do.

Anyway, I applied, and lo and behold, they called me in for an interview. I went over there and spent all day doing the interviews. Turns out it was a wonderful school. They're very Christ-centered in their educational beliefs, and their art program is stupendous. I didn't know this. I didn't have any idea. I figured, "A 51:00little small Christian school, they're not going to have much of an art program, but I'll go see what it looks like."

I got over there, I mean, they've got their own dedicated building space. They really are interested in bringing in somebody that can teach printmaking. Okay, that made my ears perk up, right there. It was like, "Oh, you want a printmaker. Hmm." (Laughter) It was very close to home, and I really didn't want to move halfway across the United States because we had so many roots here. When I got offered the job, I really almost wasn't expecting it. I'd almost applied out of curiosity more than anything because why would I want to give up tenure and all this stuff? Somehow, I felt like God was saying, "This is where I want you," and so I accepted the job. That was in 2008. I guess I'm finishing up my fourth year 52:00over there now.

Little Thunder: And since that move, you've had more time to produce, as well.

Martin: Yes, there were several things that fell into place to be getting more back into the fine art world. The JBU move was one. At that point, I was committed. If I'm going to teach fine art, I better be doing fine art, so that was a commitment that I had to start being an artist again.

Another major thing that happened at almost the exact same time was a collector named Bill Wiggins, if you know Bill, Bill hunted me down. He had seen my painting that was in Gilcrease for all those years, and he had heard my name around, but that was a whole stretch where I really wasn't making any art at all. He'd seen my name, and he was like, "I don't know where to find this Bobby Martin guy. I keep seeing his stuff and hearing his name, but I never see anything about him or see him anywhere."

I can't remember who he found me through, but he found me, tracked me down. I didn't think I was that hard to find, but apparently I was. (Laughter) He came out to my house. I had no studio at the time or anything. I had stuff scattered around in closets or whatever. He came out to the house and looked at my work and was very encouraging, bought a couple of pieces. Again, that was almost exactly the same time I was starting at JBU. He was very encouraging and really gave me the inspiration or motivation to really want to start being serious about doing art again.

Then maybe a third thing that probably fell into place was I met Tony Tiger, who you know, who is head of the art program at Bacone [College], also an amazing artist. We got to talking and got to know each other. We found out how much we had in common, and we decided, "Why don't we do a collaborative show?" and we did. We did a collaborative show that we opened. It showed at JBU about three 54:00and a half years ago, and then it also showed at Bacone. That experience of collaborating and putting together a focused show, all those three things sort of all came together in this--I don't know what the word would be when things come together. (Laughs) This crossroads of inspiration that made me consider, "Wow, maybe I should really get serious about art again."

Then the final thing that happened that made me realize, "Okay, I've really made the commitment now," is when we found this property where we're sitting. I had the chance at that time to actually have a studio. Until I moved in here and moved my stuff in and bought the etching press and started doing art very 55:00seriously, I didn't realize how much having a studio makes you feel like a real artist.

It's not the same when you're doing it in a spare bedroom or doing it on your kitchen table. There's something about having a studio space dedicated to your art that makes you feel that you're truly an artist and that you're serious about your art. I guess maybe part of it's the investment, yes, physical and material, but it's also an investment of your time and effort. All those things converged to make me realize that, "Okay, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm supposed to be really getting back into doing art again."

Little Thunder: Let's talk a little bit about the piece of work that you have currently at the Hardesty [Arts] Center in downtown Tulsa, part of [Concept/OK: Art in Oklahoma] show?

Martin: Yes, that was a show put together by Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, 56:00OVAC, in conjunction with the opening of the AH HA building [Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa Hardesty Arts Center]. I don't know how they get AH HA out of that, but anyway, this new arts center, which is a spectacular building. The show was to help launch the building opening. I was selected to have a piece in that show. Actually, the original piece they selected, that they originally wanted, I wish had got in, but I had already sold it to Sam Noble Museum in Norman. It was in the show that I had at the Capitol building.

It was about a year ago, exactly a year ago, 2011. It was a large painting. Actually, it was more of a mixed media and caustic painted collage together and 57:00then with oil paint over the top, called Indian on an Indian. It was my mom's sister, my aunt, my oldest aunt on my mom's side, astride this old Indian motorcycle. It was a cool photograph, and I made a large painting out of it. That's the one they chose first, but by the time they let me know that that's the choice, I'd already sold it to the museum.

My second choice, which is the one that's in the show, is called Homecoming Royalty, and it's a photograph that my mom had from her days at Haskell [Indian Nations University] in Lawrence, Kansas. It's a couple in full regalia, but they're the Homecoming king and queen. It was some of my typical combining names and numbers in the background and then with an image over the top of that. The image, it was a lot of oil glazes that I wanted to look almost like a screen print but a little more depth to it. It was a fun painting to do. Content-wise 58:00it's very similar, but technique-wise it's quite a bit different in a lot of ways from what I do. It was a fun piece to do. I'm glad I got the opportunity to show there.

Little Thunder: Let's talk a little bit about your techniques and process, maybe starting with this encaustic effect you've been using, which really has a wonderful look to it. Can you explain what it adds to your work that you like and how you started using it?

Martin: I think I started using it because I was looking for ways--well, going back when I first started incorporating text in collage elements, I looked for 59:00many, many ways to get text onto canvas or paper or whatever it might be and never was really that satisfied with the way it worked. When I started doing my graphic design and getting into programs like Photoshop which have layers, (you have layers that you can manipulate digitally) suddenly it was like, "Ooh! That's what I want to do. I want to layer everything and move it around and change the opacity and all that."

I did that, and that's a lot of my art output in that decade where I was doing more graphic design. My fine art output was digital because I really enjoyed that ability to move layers around, digital layers. I have to admit I was never, ever happy with the output. Inkjet prints, giclee prints, whatever you want to call them, they're still just ink on paper printed by a machine. I was never real happy with the results even though I really love moving layers. It was so 60:00nice to be able to do that, and it looked pretty good on the screen, but the final output felt lifeless. I was never happy with that.

I guess it's been pretty recently within the last couple of years where I sort of stumbled onto this process of encaustic, which is making a resurgence now. For a lot of years the only person that was doing encaustic was Jasper Johns and a few other assorted artists that were working with this weird beeswax-based material. You find lots of books about it now. It's making a comeback, I guess. Not a comeback. It's becoming more popular.

When I started looking into it and then started playing around with it myself, that's when the light bulb started going off. It was like, "Wow, I can actually 61:00physically layer things, embed them in layers of wax that are transparent that I can see through physically to lower layers, and then build on top of that." Suddenly, instead of this digital world, I can create real, physical layers and get even a totally different look. In some ways it's the same, but I love that depth it's created. Also, the wax itself, somehow it creates, to me anyway, a sense of age in ways that canvas doesn't.

I've been really interested lately in that whole idea of embedding and layering, and then painting on top of all that. Also, you were talking about process or technique. One of the things that's really interesting to me--and we can look at 62:00that later with that painting over there. Something that I'm really interested in trying to pursue is I can draw into the wax and then fill those lines with, like, oil stick and then clean off the wax surface, and it leaves the incised lines filled with ink or with oil stick paint.

It looks very much like a print, like a dry point print or an etching, and then I paint over that. It's got the look of printmaking, which I love; it's got the layering of the computer, which I love; and it's got the painting on the surface, which I love. It combines everything I've been interested in all in one neat package. That's what's really been interesting to me lately is pursuing that idea. It's the first medium I've found that I can do all those things to an extent that I feel like it's really worth exploring more.

Little Thunder: Right, yes, it's really neat. So when you're talking about the kinds of printing that you like to do, you're mainly talking about this sort of etching?

Martin: Yes. The three main techniques of printmaking are lithography, which is usually on stone or metal plates, relief printing, which is linoleum cuts or wood cuts where the ink goes on the surface, and then you put the paper down and put pressure on it. The third kind, which I'm mostly interested in, is intaglio, which involves creating lines or some kind of marks into a surface, and then the ink is held in that surface. Then you polish off the surface, and then the ink that's below the surface gets printed. That's etching, dry point, engraving. All that involves an etching press. I didn't do any kind of printmaking, especially etching, for that whole decade after I graduated from grad school because I 64:00didn't have access to an etching press, so I just didn't do that. That's what I've been interested in. I've really become re-interested in it now that I've got my own etching press, which is a great blessing.

Little Thunder: Right, we can take a quick look at that. How important is preliminary sketching to your work?

Martin: Now, don't tell my students, but not that important. (Laughter) Because I do work a lot from photographs, I don't necessarily sketch those photos out. I find different ways to transfer them. Like these large paintings, I will use a projector and project the photographs. I do draw them, but I don't necessarily draw a bunch of preliminary drawings out. I usually try and work the idea out on a sketchbook, but really more frequently I use the computer. I use Photoshop as 65:00my preliminary sketchpad where I will use that program to arrange where the photograph is going to go in relation to the text or the other elements that are in it. That becomes, really, my preliminary sketch is what's on the computer. Often, whether it's a print or whether it's a painting, whatever it might be, often my preliminary work is done in the computer, and then that's my basis for where I go from there.

Little Thunder: How about, occasionally, have you used some deliberate distortion in your drawing? I'm thinking about like Sonny and Son II, a work that I saw on your website.

Martin: You mean distortion of the proportion or figures?

Little Thunder: Yes.

Martin: Sometimes but usually, though, I try and be fairly faithful to the original photo. I mean, I will change a lot of things in the composition of the 66:00photo probably. I rarely use the photo as-is. Yes, I have used some deliberate distortions occasionally, but usually if it's some distortion, it's probably my lack of artistic ability to get it right. (Laughs) Typically, though, if I am using a photograph, I try and stay at least fairly faithful to the subject, especially the literal subject person that's in the photograph, but then I'll change lots of other things about it.

Little Thunder: Do you feel like with some of your projects you're getting more involved with three-dimensional media? That's separate and apart from encaustic, but I'm thinking about the project that we're going to talk about here at the end.

Martin: Well, I have been getting more interested in installation-type work. I 67:00just did a piece for a show that Heather Ahtone and Tony Tiger and America Meredith created, that H2OK show that showed in Norman, Mainsite [Contemporary Art] Gallery, and also showed at Bacone. I put together a little installation, an actual working water fountain thing. It involved some steel-cut names, the Dawes names, and some old photographs, my usual shtick, but it was put together in a way where the water ran through the steel and trickled down the names. Then it was backlit where the photographs were backlit and glowing in the midst of all that steel and water.

It was interesting to me because I'd never really tried anything like that before. I mean, when I've put shows together, usually there's some element of installation a little bit involved in putting it together. Like my thesis show, really, my idea was to put even a large six-by-ten-foot painting, instead of 68:00stretching it on a stretcher on canvas, I put the canvas on the wall and put these wooden corners that were cut in triangles to look like old photo corners. I've always had this inclination to do installation-type things, but recently I've been going more full-blown, purely installation construction-type things. That water feature was one of the things I worked on.

The thing you were mentioning, collaborating with Tony Tiger on, is another that's a major installation that we're working on. The fact the encaustics become, themselves, a little more three-dimensional in the fact that you're dealing with these multiple layers of wax, (the wax melts and runs all over the place) you don't really have control. I like the drippiness of it, and I like the tactile quality of that material. I don't see myself becoming a sculptor or 69:00anything like that, but I do really enjoy the three-dimensional quality of the stuff that I've been working with.

Little Thunder: What is your creative process from the time you get an idea?

Martin: Well, it varies, I suppose. Usually, at least for the past, I don't know how many years, fifteen or more years, I've really been using these old family photographs. A lot of it comes directly from the photographs, looking through those photographs, and I've been blessed that my mom's side of the family were photo bugs. (Laughter) They all took a lot of pictures every time we'd get together at family events. We have a Christmas get-together every year, and it 70:00seems like they always show up with more photographs that they've found somewhere. They know that I do this, so they all bring their photos in.

It often starts with the photo. I've used a lot of the same photos multiple times just because I love the photo, but I'll do it in different ways with different media or reuse it in some way. I've reused a lot of the similar images a lot, which I like that. I like to be able to continue to use these. It's the consistent thing that I've done over the years is use a core collection of photos that I love and rework them in different ways.

It mostly usually starts with the photograph, and the next thing, maybe decide, okay, what medium I want to use because I get really bored if I just work in one medium all the time. I'll skip around from printmaking to painting to encaustic. 71:00The process is, a lot of times, I'll take which photograph I want to use. I will then play around with it. Again, that's my preliminary sketches is working with it in the computer. I've got a collection of different kinds of materials, like the Dawes names, and I've got a little-bitty Creek hymn book. It's in Muscogee Creek language that belonged to my granny. It's got a lot of her handwriting and notes in it and things. I've used that a lot. I'll scan some of those pages and incorporate those elements into it. A lot of it, the preliminary sketching and the idea generating, comes in the computer.

From there, it depends on what technique or what medium I'm going to use. Sometimes it doesn't come out of the computer. Sometimes I use the computer mockup and work from that. Other times it'll get printed out, say, for example, 72:00a photo etching. The output itself will come out as a transparency, and then that gets exposed to the plate. So sometimes it's the actual physical, digital file that becomes the basis for it. Other times, like encaustics a lot of times are cut-and-paste in layers of wax. I guess the creative process, at least the majority of the time for me, starts with the photograph.

Little Thunder: What about your creative routine? I mean, you're teaching during the day, obviously, but when you're in the studio, what's your routine?

Martin: In the studio itself, similar. I get bored easily by working on one thing for very long. It's been an amazing blessing to have a studio space because I can keep things set up and I can bounce back and forth. I can work a little bit on this one, and then either while I'm letting a layer dry or a glaze 73:00dry, I can go work on something else.

Also, it's been nice to have a studio like this because what I like to do as a printmaker especially is collaborate. A lot of times it depends on bouncing stuff off other people, having people out here. Often I've had several opportunities to have other artists out and do, like, print parties or little monotype sessions where we all get together and kick around some ideas and put some art out there, not necessarily any finished exhibit-ready work. Just throw some ideas around. To me, that's a lot of fun, swapping ideas and swapping techniques and seeing how other people work.

Little Thunder: You've done that with the Southeastern [Indian] Artists Association?

Martin: Yes, I've done that several times, and our meetings will come out here. In fact, the last meeting we had in November, I think, we had a group out. It 74:00was really neat. We had a group of eight or nine folks, some artists, some not artists. Even the non-artists are willing to sit down and try and make a monotype. It's a lot of fun. I like that interaction of artists creating.

Little Thunder: As you look back over your career so far, what do you consider a kind of fork-in-the-road moment?

Martin: I don't know if it was a single moment that I could define, but that conjunction I was talking about of taking the job at JBU as a studio art faculty, and also the Bill Wiggins push, finding me and then saying, "You need to get off your rear and start making some art." (Laughter) And then putting 75:00together that show with Tony Tiger. It didn't happen all in one moment, but it was all close enough together that it felt like that was the--

Then I guess the final big push was getting the studio. That made it really real at that point, that, "Okay, wow, I've somehow become an artist now." (Laughter) Not just the building, but those things all combined, especially the moment that I actually had a studio to work in really confirmed that, "Okay, I guess I'm on that path now to being very serious about it." I mean, I was serious enough before where I was getting into shows and doing things like that, but I really didn't feel like I was giving it everything I had.

The time spent teaching is good. Probably most artists would love to be able to do nothing but their art, (I would surely crave that at some point) but the freedom that I have in the schedule of teaching is awfully nice. To be able to work on my own things in the summer times and even through the year, I've got enough time that I can devote.

I know myself well enough, and that's probably why I like being in academia, is I need the structure of deadlines, the structure of a time, a concentrated time focus. If I don't have any show or any kind of deadline I'm working for, I'll tend to get very lazy and not do anything. I need to either give myself or put upon myself some kind of deadline or structure or something to shoot for. I'm finding that having a studio is great, but I still need to have something that 77:00I'm working toward, otherwise I'll just float around. (Laughter)

I can think of a fairly recent--and a lot of them tie to exhibitions. Going back, my thesis exhibition was, I think, a highlight for me. It was the first time I could step back and look at a whole gallery's worth of work and say, "Wow, I did this." That was a neat experience. Then I went through the fallow time of doing no art for many years after that. Two highlights that I can really think of in the last few years was the collaborative show that I did with Tony 78:00Tiger that I mentioned. Again, that was a real impetus to get me getting serious about my art again. Our work, our style, and the look of our work somehow seems to complement each other in a good way. I really enjoyed that collaboration I've had with him.

Then probably from a personal standpoint, the show that I had at the Capitol Building in Oklahoma City last January, for me, was probably--it was the first time I really got to use this studio in a really very focused, deadline-driven way, that I had a bunch of pieces I had to finish for a specific show, and it was a big show. It was a show that was going to be featured in the Capitol Building, so it was a fairly large venue to shoot for. As far as a career high 79:00point, I would say that would be way up there.

Little Thunder: How many pieces did you have in the Capitol show?

Martin: I think I ended up having twenty or twenty-two. I can't remember, but they were everything from six-by-eight-foot paintings down to little small prints. I think it was, I want to say, twenty-two, twenty-three pieces.

Little Thunder: And all done for the Back In The Day show?

Martin: Probably 80 percent of them were. There were a few that had been done, that I had finished previously, but they all still fit into the idea that I was going for. But yes, the vast majority of it was all finished specifically for 80:00that show.

Little Thunder: Well, looking back, what's been one of the low points of your career?

Martin: Low points. Well, that's a good question. I don't know. When I think of it as a career, my career has been--I felt like it was interesting. I was really on a roll out of grad school. I was getting some nice shows, and I was doing a lot of work. Then right after grad school my output mostly tanked mainly because, in some ways, I think about it, it's because I didn't have the discipline of deadlines and classes to finish. I had my job. I was working at Gilcrease, and I didn't really spend any time on my own. When I think of low 81:00points, I think of discouragements, but I don't know that I've had necessarily--the low points in my career were probably self-imposed low points because of abandoning what maybe I could've been doing or should've been doing. Bill Wiggins often points that out. "You just quit for a big section there." (Laughter)

I feel like, especially, the last year to two years has been reestablishing what I abandoned twelve or thirteen years earlier. I guess you could look at that abandonment as a low point, rather than trying to keep this. You know, you think your career trajectory is supposed to keep going up. Mine was going up, and then it just quit, and now I'm feeling like I'm picking it back up. I guess if I 82:00could think of a low point, it'd be that I did sort of walk away from it for quite a while.

Little Thunder: Is there anything you'd like to add or anything we've forgotten to talk about before we take a look at your work?

Martin: Well, I've enjoyed talking about it because a lot of this, I haven't really thought through it until you asked the question. It was like, "Oh, okay." Even thinking about my career as a career, sometimes artists don't often do that. Sometimes it's going from one deadline, one show to the next, so it's good to think about it as a career. I think if anybody's looking at these tapes for any career advice, it'd be, "Look at your art output as a career. Try and make decisions that you think are true to yourself but also are going to help establish yourself as an artist, as a person even, as a communicator, not worry 83:00so much about trying to finish one piece to get to the next show." I think a lot of times as artists we do that.

I have been blessed to be able to be in positions where I don't have to rely on my art to make a living, and so I've been able to explore a lot of things that I probably wouldn't have done if I was only relying on art to make a living. I've just been happy to be able to pass some of that knowledge on to other people. I've really enjoyed the educational aspect of my career, of the teaching part of it. I don't necessarily see myself teaching way into retirement age.

I mean, I've really enjoyed it. I'd love to continue doing it for as long as it's interesting. I think I've drawn a lot of energy from students, too. Every semester you go back. You've got new classes and new students, and a lot of them have some interesting ideas. Some of them aren't practical sometimes, but the 84:00energy that they have has helped maintain interest for me. I really like that part of my career.

Little Thunder: Do you want to tell us about the grave house project?

Martin: Yes, this is a work in progress, a collaboration between Tony Tiger and myself. The inspiration for this was, one of the traditions among Creek and even some Choctaw and Chickasaw, but I think it's mostly Creek Christians are to build--it's not universal. You see them a lot down around Henryetta, Oklahoma, and Dustin and those areas. As part of the burial process, they will bury a 85:00person, and then they will build a little structure over the grave. They call it the grave house. It's actually a little house that's got a peaked roof and everything. It usually has shingles and siding. The idea is that's a repository for the spirit until the spirit goes to heaven. They don't maintain the grave house. They build it, and it's designed to decay, dust to dust kind of an idea.

Our idea on this was we wanted to take the concept of a grave house but make an installation out of it that was more of a metaphor. It's not like a literal grave house that talks about, necessarily, burial, but it does talk about burial. It talks about death of the body versus the body is--and we have a 86:00scripture from Second Thessalonians. It talks about our earthly house, our body versus our heavenly home. The idea was to incorporate a lot of the stuff that we've done for a long time in both our artwork, which is old family materials like photographs and text, the idea of the Christian belief of death, burial, and resurrection, and take all those ideas and then combine them into this metaphorical grave house which an actual grave house.

I don't know how much you can see on the side, here. It's not going to roll around. The idea is to take the lower section, which is what we've got so far, the lower part of the grave house--it will have a peaked roof on it. We've incorporated some of the Dawes names. I've got a lot of my family names on one 87:00side. Tony's names are on the other side. This lower section will represent the earthly, the body, physical body, that goes into the ground and decays. We'll have some backlighting, some lighting inside here. We're going to put some Plexiglas behind here and paint it white or off-white or sepia tone to kind of diffuse it.

What we're hoping for in a museum or a gallery situation, that the light will have this glow from the letters. Then what we'll have on the peaked roof, rather than having shingles, we're going to have like old family photographs. Each shingle will be a photo. The shingles will be transparent in some way, and we'll have it lit from the inside where the idea would be the light shining through the imagery, through the old photos, through our family, shining up into this 88:00idea of resurrection, the light coming up and out. The bottom will be muted and old, and the top hopefully will be more lit and resurrection-like. That's the plan.

We're still debating on whether to maybe build--obviously, they're in cemeteries, but they're usually built on a little a mound. We might even try and construct some kind of little mound as part of the installation. We're still working on some of the details, like especially the roof part of it, the kind of materials we're going to use to get that lighting, bright enough light. Some of the technical stuff we're still working on.

But the idea, we really like the idea, and we really wanted to pursue the idea. We don't really have necessarily even a venue or anything for it. We just liked 89:00the idea, and we wanted to do it. We've collaborated a lot on 2D stuff, but we never really collaborated on any kind of installation. It was an excuse, really, to be able to build something. (Laughter)

Now, the old lumber came from a--it was an old garden shed that was on the property, and I took it down and saved the lumber on that to use for the siding because we wanted to give it, obviously, that old look. We had a local guy plasma cut into steel the names. It's been a fun project. We're just going along. We'll see what happens once we get it done.

Little Thunder: It's going to be great. I'm sure a venue will find you.

Martin: Well, that's what we're hoping.

Little Thunder: Do you want to tell us a little bit about this piece?

Martin: Well, I wanted to show this piece because, from a printmaker's standpoint, it's something I've been working on quite a bit lately. It's called 90:00solar plate etching. The solar plate is the name for the actual plate that's involved in the printing of this. The reason I got interested in it is because, again, I can manipulate layers in a program like Photoshop on the computer and then I can output that actual Photoshop file onto a transparency and then expose that onto the plate.

To me, that's an interesting way of being able to create visually, create things in the way I'm used to creating, but then output it in a way that I can physically print it like I'm used to doing. To me, it's a great combination of the new school and the old school because I can use the computer to create the image, but then I can ink it and print it just like a regular etching. There's 91:00some text comes in. It's Proverbs 31, I believe.

This is a picture of my Aunt Inez. This is my mom's oldest sister. There's so many photos that I have where they're posing in front of their cars. I love the people, but I also love those old vehicles that are in the pictures, too. To me, that's a lot of the charm of it, too, is those old photos with people posing in front of their cars or trucks or whatever it might be. The process involves--creating any kind of imagery that you can get on a transparency that blocks light will work.

You can draw with a Sharpie. You can paint on it with India ink. Anything that'll block light will create an image that's printable. In this case, again, 92:00I use a Photoshop digital file, output it to a piece of transparency, and then expose it to the plate. Once you process that plate, you can ink it and wipe it and print it just like any other etching. This idea of solar plate printing or photo etching has been one I've been experimenting with quite a bit lately.

Little Thunder: That's neat. That's a really neat quality.

Martin: I didn't think about it, but I've hand-tinted those there, too. (Gestures)

Little Thunder: Okay. How about this particular etching?

Martin: This is actually a screen print.

Little Thunder: Oh, a screen print. I'm sorry.

Martin: Yes, it's a screen print, which is new for me. One of the reasons I was interested in doing this is I really don't have a lot of experience in screen printing until I was asked to teach a screen printing class. Suddenly, it's like, "Oh, I better learn how to screen print." I've been to a couple of workshops, and I've actually taught the class a couple of times. Getting ready to teach it again this spring. I wanted to see how I could adapt screen printing 93:00to my usual content, my usual subject matter. This was a three-color screen print. I've got the light tan, more of the darker brown, and then the black.

What I was interested in doing is trying to figure out when I'm taking these old family photos, trying to figure out how to decide where the values are going to fall, technically, how to decide where the shadows and the different colors needed to be. I also wanted to make it look more hand-drawn. In some ways I didn't quite get where I wanted to.

There were a few areas where you can tell where--because I actually hand-drew all the transparencies before I created the screens. Technically what you do is similar to the photo etching. You create a transparency, and then you expose that transparency to the screen, and then you push your ink through that. Each 94:00color has a separate pass. I was trying to figure out how to use these old family photos, still get that kind of a sepia-tone-ish old look to it.

This one's one that's fairly unusual in the fact that I used the straight photograph. I didn't try and add any other content, names, or numbers or anything. I was really wanting to concentrate on just the imagery. I've used this imagery over and over.

This is Aunt Kate. I was too little to--she was a distant relative of mine. She was, I think, a second cousin to my mom, or a great aunt. I can't remember. Anyway, they were related. I never did get the opportunity to know her, but she looks pretty feisty to me. (Laughter) I love this image, and I've used it multiple times in a lot of different mediums, too.

Little Thunder: Yes, I think that's a real successful run at that type of 95:00printing. It really is a great image.

Martin: I like the way it turned out. It was an experiment. I was experimenting with, really, the process of screen printing and how I could adapt it to what I'm used to doing. I thought it worked pretty well.

Little Thunder: That's great. Well, thank you very much for your time today, Bobby.

Martin: Sure, you bet. My pleasure.

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