Oral history interview with Eddie Morrison

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Friday, September 20, 2013, and I'm interviewing Eddie Morrison as part of the Oklahoma Native Artists Project for the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We're at Eddie's home just outside Tahlequah. Eddie, you started out as a painter, but around 1988 you turned your energy to sculpture. You've won awards at various shows in and out of state, including Santa Fe Indian Market, and your work is held in numerous private and public collections. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Morrison: You're welcome.

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

Morrison: I was born at the Claremore Indian Hospital in Claremore, Oklahoma, and I was raised in Tahlequah, though. I was raised by my grandmother. She was a full-blood Cherokee. Jane Batt was her maiden name, and Jane Batt Brackett is her full name. I think she did a great job with me, because I was a handful, I'm 1:00sure. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: So you grew up around the language? Are you fluent in Cherokee?

Morrison: Well, actually, I grew up in that period. I went to a non-Indian high school and grade school, and my grandmother came from a time when they were trying to do it. She tried to encourage me, and she would tell me things and do things, and actually I got interested. At one time I was trying to learn from her, then I got to playing, and that was it. I've always kicked myself in the rear that I wasn't more in tune with what was going on. I think it was before it was popular to be Native American, anyway, around here.

Little Thunder: Right. How about your mom and dad?

Morrison: Okay, my mother remarried when I was just a child, and I spent 2:00off-and- on with her up until my grade school years. She married a man, a wonderful man, named J. T. Hummingbird, and they relocated and went to South Carolina. When they relocated a lot of the Indians, some of them went to the West Coast; some went to the East. He went to the East to Georgia and worked on the atomic energy plant down there. I went back and forth with them, but I had a lot of trouble because of my dark skin with the people down there. So that's how I ended up living with my grandmother here in Tahlequah.

Little Thunder: I see. How many siblings?

Morrison: I have--I'm one of seven, and there's just three of us left now, unfortunately.

Little Thunder: And Jesse is a painter.

Morrison: Jesse [lives in Bisbee, Arizona,] and my half-sister, Nancy, lives in Tulsa.

Little Thunder: Was Nancy also interested in art as a young child?

Morrison: Well, she makes dolls, or did craft dolls and little sewing things like that. I have a few samples, if you'd like to see them, that we have. (Laughs)

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

Morrison: Actually, when I was living with my grandmother in grade school, her sister would come to her house periodically. She was just an old Cherokee woman that lived over in the hills over by Stillwell. She'd come to visit my grandmother in Tahlequah, and she would draw. I was just fascinated with her drawings. I mean, they were so realistic, and she'd just do it with pencil, and I--

Little Thunder: Things around the house, or--

Morrison: Yeah, animals, panthers, anything, and I was just fascinated by it. I never really, you know, tried to do the art. Of course, my grandmother always 4:00crocheted and made quilts and things like that, and the other ladies in the family. I used to watch her and see all those intricate designs and different things with that little needle, and the crocheting was real tiny. She'd sit there and do that, and it'd come out with a little design. The same thing with the quilts. I guess it just influenced me.

I had a best friend that lived across the street kind of from us, and he was a Cherokee. His dad, Lyman Vann, was a cornstalk shooter, and he would make bows and arrows from just raw wood. We'd sit and watch him for hours, carving a bow out of the wood, and it just fascinated me that he could make something like that out of wood from nothing. That's the way I feel today. To see something come from nothing and go into something, it's exciting to me.

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

Morrison: Well, of course, my grade school years, I never really took any formal 5:00art classes, even through high school.

Little Thunder: No art classes were offered, pretty much?

Morrison: No art classes or anything. Once I got out of high school, I got married and had children and I started--and I always had in the back of my mind this interest. Acee Blue Eagle used to be on TV. I'd watch him and stuff like that. Of course, there was Willard Stone and a lot of these guys that are around here, Solomon McCombs and Fred Beaver and some of those guys. I was always fascinated by their work, so I thought, "I'm going to try that." I got some canvas, or not really canvas. I got some poster board and some paint, and I painted a few things, and I did a pen and ink drawing. I guess it was in the early ʼ70s sometime when Philbrook Museum was still doing their Native American show.

Little Thunder: Okay.

Morrison: I submitted a drawing to them, and they accepted it. I didn't even 6:00know what I was doing. They hung it in there at the show, and I was just tickled to death to be hanging in there with some of those famous artists. After that, I got an invite to go to Kansas City [Missouri] to do a show on the Plaza there with Solomon McCombs, (I can't remember some of those guys) Fred Beaver. I think Kelly Haney was just starting out. He was there, and some of the other guys. We went down. My stuff was just, it wasn't even framed. It was just sitting out on the table, and all these other guys had their stuff--. That was my first experience of actually showing my work. Someone bought one of my little paintings. I enjoyed it, but I kind of struggled because I've never had any formal painting or training other than self-taught.

Little Thunder: How old were you then, Eddie?

Morrison: I was in my twenties and still had black hair. (Laughter) Matter of 7:00fact, my youngest daughter wasn't even born then.

Little Thunder: But you were married?

Morrison: Yeah, but I still didn't really pursue it. I went to school to be a--after I got out of college, I was a medical technologist and worked in hospitals.

Little Thunder: Let's talk just a little bit about college which was at NSU [Northeastern State University]. Is that right?

Morrison: Right.

Little Thunder: You didn't take any art classes there, either?

Morrison: No, no, I majored in biology and chemistry. I had to draw a lot because of the different things you had to draw for biology, body parts and things like that. I was still doing my little painting and drawings on the side, though, kind of just as a hobby.

Little Thunder: And trying to catch shows periodically?

Morrison: Actually, I never did another show. Well, I did a few little smaller area shows around but nothing professional. I think I did the Trail of Tears 8:00show when it was first started and different things, and people would buy the little paintings.

Little Thunder: What were you selling them for?

Morrison: Oh, I think I sold one for ten dollars. (Laughs) I never got any major money, but what I got I was pretty proud of just because someone thought enough of it to buy it. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Well, then at some point I guess you're working in medical technology, and you decide to take up sculpture.

Morrison: I started, actually, carving. When I was trying to paint and draw, it just didn't feel natural. I thought, "Well, I'm going to try carving or something." So I got my pocket knife out and whittled out some pieces in wood, and it just came so natural, just a natural flow. I could think of it up here, 9:00and it'd come out my hands. I could do it, and I was amazed at how--and it's kind of exciting, I think. That's the mystery of creating this, I guess, because you really don't know where it comes from. It's just a gift you have, the good Lord, the Creator's blessed you with, and that's the first time I just felt really natural doing something.

So I kept on carving, and I saw this ad. Of course, I knew who Allan Houser was because I'd always read about him and admired him. I read about this class I could take through the Art Students League of Denver in Colorado in the early '90s. Actually I don't even know if it was '89 or '90, but whenever it was, I saved my four hundred dollars and went up there and spent the week. I was the only Native artist in the class, and Allan took me under his wing. I learned more in that one week about carving because he said, "You just stick with me and 10:00watch me. That's the best way to learn." Then when I started doing mine--

Little Thunder: You were working in stone, I guess.

Morrison: It was marble--

Little Thunder: Marble.

Morrison: --and I'd never done marble before. He came over to where I had a big piece of marble, and he said "Where's your drawings?" I said "Drawings?" (Laughs) He said "You get me a drawing, and you come back tomorrow and show me what it's going to look like." I'd never even sketched it out. I took a drawing back, and he was happy, and then he gave me some pointers. From then on, we went through the rest of the class. I'd sit over and watch him. He'd say "Get you a beer out of my cooler and drink it and watch me." (Laughter) He was the most--I mean, for a man of his prominence, I appreciated him more as a man than as an artist because he was such a nice man.

When I got through, I said something about, "Do you think it'd help me if I took more class?" He said "I think you should go to the Institute of American Indian 11:00Arts in Santa Fe. I'll help you get in if you want to go." So I applied, and I got in the school and got a scholarship or whatever it is they give. Went there and got my two-year fine arts degree in three-dimensional arts.

Little Thunder: That's a big transition because you're having to talk your wife, I guess, and your kids into a move from Oklahoma to Santa Fe.

Morrison: Actually, they did not move with me.

Little Thunder: Okay.

Morrison: I was fortunate enough to have a degree in something I could work at out there. I worked at the St. Vincent's Hospital there in Santa Fe while I went to school, which helped send money home and also pay my rent there and support me. The whole time, I'd come back and forth to do that. I was living in--

Little Thunder: Every couple of months, or--

Morrison: Yeah, that's the way that worked out for me, and enjoyed every minute 12:00of it. I was fortunate enough to receive the faculty departmental award for Outstanding Student of Three-Dimensional Arts. I enjoyed all the classes. That's the first time I'd been around a lot of the other Native tribes, and I think that was the biggest education I got right there, learning other Native tribes' cultural traditions and things like that.

Little Thunder: And being exposed to a lot of different motifs. I was wondering--because you're an older student at this point, right? You're in your forties.

Morrison: They were calling me Grandpa at school. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: But it was--you enjoyed it?

Morrison: Actually, there were about three of us in there about the same age, and they called us all Grandpa. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: So you three hung out?

Morrison: Yeah.

Little Thunder: What do you feel like you really came away with from the 13:00Institute? What are some of the things?

Morrison: I think it was learning to think beyond what you think you can do. They really wanted you to stretch your creative imagination to go beyond something that's like everybody else is doing. They wanted you to be your own man and learn that. I got to experience different art forms, ceramics, painting, and drawing and things like that I've never had before. Of course, the sculpture is what I went there for, the three-dimensional.

Little Thunder: And did you work in wood as well as marble or was it--

Morrison: No, I actually was using mostly alabaster when I was out there in school. I still was trying to do my little shows on the side, too, because that was the first year I'd ever got accepted to Santa Fe Indian Market, too. I 14:00applied for that and went to Santa Fe Indian Market when I was going to school out there.

Little Thunder: What was that like, doing your first Market?

Morrison: Well, I had set up there. I had some little trinkets I'd carved, and I had this piece that I have up here on the table. I had some other simplistic--which my work is kind of simplistic. It's not real complicated. Allan Houser came up to see me, and he said, "Hmmm, I find some of that pretty interesting." (Laughs) That's all he said, and I thought "Well, I better study some more." (Laughter) He really liked my relief carving and everything. He said, "That's something if you can do that." That gave me some encouragement, too. I think he was a consummate teacher, though, as far as teaching.

Little Thunder: Because of that--

Morrison: Yeah, he was another one that always stressed that you should try to find your own identity and do your own thing.

Little Thunder: So what did you do after the Institute?

Morrison: I came back. We were living in Kansas then, and I started doing my shows and still working part-time as a medical technologist.

Little Thunder: You had taken a medical technology job in Kansas, after?

Morrison: Yeah, yeah. I had started doing, around that little town we were in, and was doing the Wichita Indian Market and some of the other shows and still doing the Santa Fe Indian Market. I don't know. Someone there in town--the Chisholm Trail ran right through this little town I lived in. This lady came and wanted to know if I could (her husband had just passed away) do a monument for 16:00that Chisholm Trail dedicated to her husband. I had never really done a large-scale thing like that before, and she commissioned me to do it. I worked on it and worked on it, and went up and had the stone cut, drew my drawings and everything. She liked that. Did a big relief into this big slab of limestone, which still sits there today. They dedicated it and had a big dedication for it. It was something that I did while I was there, and it's still there today.

Little Thunder: What was the name of the town again?

Morrison: Caldwell, Kansas, they call it the Border Queen. It's actually where they lined up for the Cherokee Land Run across there. I felt kind of conflicted in a lot of ways. What I did was take this piece, (it was titled Those Who Came Before) and it depicted Native Americans and early day settlers, and then some 17:00of the old buildings. I put buffalo in one corner. I put Native Americans on each corner watching them take our land, but that was kind of-- (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You were able to get your statement in.

Morrison: Yeah, it was also dedicated to Jesse Chisholm. He was half Cherokee.

Little Thunder: Right.

Morrison: The Chisholm family was there, and they gave me a blanket. I was pretty honored. It was really something. They were proud, and I was proud.

Little Thunder: And how did you decide upon limestone for that? Had you been working with it a little bit already?

Morrison: Well, actually, there again I have to credit Allan Houser because when I was at the marble carving class up in Colorado with him, he said "Have you ever tried any of that Kansas limestone?" I said, "No." He said, "Well, you should try some. It's really a pretty yellow stone, and it's easy to work with." 18:00Someone gave me one of those little fence posts, and that thing just worked out well. Someone bought it. Then I started making others, and people kept purchasing them for their homes, which I think as an artist, you feel honored that someone thinks enough of your piece to take it home with them and live with it. It's the ultimate compliment, I think.

Little Thunder: Absolutely. I always feel for sculptors because their work is so heavy, and transporting things is always an issue. How did you get your piece, for example, the Chisholm commission?

Morrison: Well, actually, she paid for someone to come in with a forklift and lift it and help me get it. I just made the piece, and they did all the other work on that. They framed it and everything.

Little Thunder: And you were in the same town.

Morrison: I will say that, yes, being a sculptor, especially a stone sculptor, is dirty, hard, heavy work, and it will take a toll on you, any type of thing 19:00like that. I don't know if you remember Bill Prokopiof. He should have been and was one of the fine sculptors that, I think, it was detrimental to his health, working. I wear a mask and all the safety equipment. Actually, when I first started probably twenty years ago, I was lifting one of those heavy pieces, and I felt something pop in my chest. I popped my sternum, and it was really something not to do. (Laughs) I learned a valuable lesson there. Anymore, I make my wife help me. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: You weren't working for a couple of months, I imagine.

Morrison: Yeah, I had to lay off until it healed up and everything.

Little Thunder: You've done several shows in DC, right,--Morrison: Right.

Little Thunder: --with the Indian Arts and Crafts Commission? What was that like, going out East for the first time?

Morrison: Well, actually that wasn't the first time. A lady named Sandy Chapin met me and started buying my work, and she had a little gallery in Long Island, New York. She just really liked my work, especially the cedar. She liked the limestone, too. She invited me to do a gallery show up there at her gallery. She said, "I'll fly you up there, and you can ship some smaller pieces." She had some bigger ones she had bought and shipped up there, too. She's the widow of Harry Chapin who was a singer. She had wrote that song "Cat's in the Cradle."

She flew me up there. I remember on the plane on the way up there, I was thinking, "Here I am, a little Indian boy from Oklahoma on my way to New York to land at JFK airport." When I got off the airplane, they had all these guys lined 21:00up in these little hats because she said, "I'll send a car to pick you up." There was a guy standing there, and he had his little sign that said "Eddie Morrison." I looked behind him to see if anybody was--. (Laughter) He had a limousine out there, and they pick me up. There I was, riding in the limousine with holes in my shoes. (Laughs) We went over there and stayed at her house. It was quite an experience. Actually, I went back a couple more times. Mel Cornshucker and I drove up there, and Ron Mitchell that one time. We drove up there.

Little Thunder: Wonderful memories.

Morrison: Yeah, met the people from the Interior Department there that run the Indian craft shop. Started buying my work. I've gone back and done several "Meet the artist" shows, and I'm going back again in November to do another one. I've been pretty blessed, really, to have met these people, and they like my work.

Little Thunder: You have several sculptures, like, in businesses and restaurants and different places. I just wondered if you ever go see them after they've been purchased.

Morrison: There was a telephone company called KanOkla Telephone Company up in Kansas that owns one, and it sits in their lobby. I've never seen it again. A couple little museums up there have some of my work they've purchased. I've never been back, but I do want to go back someday and see it. There was a gentleman and his wife there in Caldwell that bought a piece dedicated to their son who died. Made a piece of him, a large piece that sits in their--

Little Thunder: It was like a --

Morrison: --business window downtown, too, there.

Little Thunder: --a sculpture of him, their son?

Morrison: Yeah, it depicted him, kind of a likeness of him.

Little Thunder: That was probably a different--

Morrison: Yes, it was. I don't like doing that because my work's what I called 23:00impressionistic. It's not really realistic in its--I go with the impressionism. I just follow the natural lines in the stone or wood or whatever. It's different for me to make someone. It worked out well, though.

Little Thunder: What influences come into play with your animal imagery, for example?

Morrison: Well, when I was growing up, my grandmother would always make comments about the animals. A lot of these things I never paid much attention to until I went to school in Santa Fe. She'd say if you want to run fast, you'll eat a deer or rabbit or something. She would always relate what you ate to what you could do. She'd tell me these stories, but hers were kind of, they're not the complete story of the Cherokee myths and legends and things. I had never heard of that 24:00book, that [James] Mooney book that he wrote about a lot of the Cherokee myths and legends.

When I went to school out there, we had to do a lot of things based on myths, tribal things. I started researching, and I was like, "Oh, wow! That's the rest of the story of what she used to try to tell me." I did a lot, not a lot, but several pieces that were connected to some of those stories, too. I don't do that anymore. Now my work is just kind of, maybe you'd call it generic, but I don't try to depict any myths or religion or anything like that in my works, other than some of the symbols, or anything like that.

Little Thunder: When did you discover, like, the red cedar? When did you start working with that?

Morrison: That was early on. I actually started with the black walnut and the 25:00harder woods, but once I started using that red cedar, it was just so beautiful. It's not real exotic wood, but it has a character all its own, and I could use it. If it had a knot or some kind of a defect, you might say a defect, I started relating it kind of like to people. A person can have a defect in one area, but they still have another beauty that shines through. That's the way I do it still to this day. It didn't have to be perfect because humans aren't perfect. You see a lot of people that might have a handicap, and some of them are just real beautiful people, too. I just kept using it, and I still do it. I can't deny this is what brought me to the dance, I guess, in a lot of ways.

Little Thunder: So I'm not sure, you know, how involved you were with the 26:00galleries, but in 1990 when they passed the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, I was wondering if you remembered how that impacted artists and galleries.

Morrison: Jesse had already established himself as a painter then, my brother Jesse Hummingbird, and I met Bill Rabbit. I mean, of course, I knew Bill, but I got to know him. They belonged to this group called the Indian Arts and Crafts Association, and they talked me into getting into that, too. It was a bigger organization than it is today. It doesn't have the strength it used to, but they were real instrumental in getting some of that law passed and everything. I wasn't part of that so I joined it, and you had to be documented, and they stood up for the laws, trying to enforce it.

Also, there's an Indian Arts and Crafts Board, too, that's in Washington DC. 27:00They came and talked to me. I know that it got to be a problem. It's still a problem in a lot of things today, especially jewelry and copying and things like that. It's easy to do. Some of the not necessarily foreign countries but even people in this country will copy your work and market it as being done by you and sell it. That's not fair.

Little Thunder: Right, right. Once you were, you know, getting really active with shows and active with your sculpture, selling it in public venues, did you and Jesse ever do any shows in the same place?

Morrison: Well, actually, I had a booth out at the Indian Market in Santa Fe, and we shared, tried to share. We got into it like brothers do, and so it didn't work out too well. (Laughter) We are the best of friends.

Little Thunder: And it's hard.

Morrison: Yeah, it is.

Little Thunder: I was just thinking about the space, to have a sculptor and a painter.

Morrison: I think that was the biggest thing that caused the problem, (Laughter) as Jesse's quite outspoken. We got over it, moved on, and we're the best of friends. We have a lot of fun now just doing things together instead of trying to show our work together.

Little Thunder: Just visiting.

Morrison: Or if we do anything together, it'd be kind of like an individual artist at a show or something.

Little Thunder: Have you ever accidentally broken a sculpture transporting it someplace, to a show or competition?

Morrison: Yes. That's something that happens, and you just have to--sometimes 29:00it's a good piece. I haven't had a lot of it happen, but the most recent one that I had happen, I was doing artist-in-residence at the Botanical Gardens up in Denver. They had an Allan Houser sculpture exhibit there at the Botanical Gardens. I think it's been two summers ago, maybe three. I took my pieces up there, and they had a little booth outside for me to sit there since he was a mentor of mine, sort of. We would kind of break it into two sessions. I had gone to rest during the midday because it got hot, and then we'd come back later in the evening. You could just leave your things there, and the security guard and the people were supposed to watch it.

I had some taller pieces, and they had a real bad wind storm. The tent blew, and a piece of it caught a piece, and it blew it over and broke it right in two. It 30:00was one of my wild onion pieces. That one hurt probably more than any of them because I really liked that piece. Some guy had just called and said, "Have you still got that piece? I'd like to buy it." (Laughs) "Yeah, but it's broke in two." (Laughs) You just have to go on and accept it as, well, it wasn't meant to be.

Little Thunder: Right. Did you take a trailer with your sculptures? Is that how you handled that?

Morrison: Actually we have a large SUV that we load them onto. I've done it so many years, I could put it on a little PVC pipe and roll it easily off. Now, sometimes I have to pay people to help me load them back on. Faye used to help me quite a bit, but she and I both are no spring chickens anymore. Things get heavier as you get older. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Are you a member of any artist associations now?

Morrison: Well, other than SWAIA [Southwestern Association for Indian Arts], I'm not at this time that I can think of. The Cherokee Nation, they used to have one cooperative, you know. Bill Glass and all those guys were in it, and it didn't work out. That's what the new gallery downtown--it's kind of an offshoot from that, and the Cherokee Nation took it over and made a gallery themselves instead of a cooperative membership thing.

Little Thunder: Have you done any pieces for the casinos?

Morrison: They just bought a piece from me for their new Veterans Center, so I'm pretty honored that they are going to put it in there.

Little Thunder: What was the subject?

Morrison: It was a Cherokee legend. It was called The Iceman and the Fire. It's based on a Cherokee myth of the ancient members that were a nation that had a 32:00fire they could not put out. They called this little guy down that had these magical braids, and he stood in the middle of the fire and blew on his braids. All this ice and rain and snow and everything came and put the fire out that they had been trying to put out for a long time.

Little Thunder: That sounds neat. This one was approximately how large?

Morrison: It's probably about a 600-pound piece of alabaster, New Mexico alabaster. It's gray. It's real polished and everything.

Little Thunder: What's the best compliment or most memorable feedback you've gotten on one of your sculptures?

Morrison: Well, the most memorable and what I consider probably the ultimate compliment was (and it's happened to me several times) I remember the first time it happened at the Santa Fe Indian Market many years ago. I had one of my bigger sculptures there and several others. This lady was totally blind, and they came up to my booth, and the person with her said, "Feel this." She put her hands on 33:00it, and she felt all around the face and went down, and several of the others. Then she said, "Beautiful." (Laughs) I thought, "Wow, that's the ultimate compliment."

Little Thunder: Right. So you work in several types of materials. That's amazing to me because, for example, it seems like such a jump from red cedar to marble, technique-wise and tool-wise. How do you make those transitions?

Morrison: Actually the stone that I use is stone that probably a lot of the other sculptors wouldn't use it. It has a lot of the same natural lines that wood has. I go with the natural lines and just let the nature and--actually it's, there again, from my influence from Allan Houser. He stated to me, he 34:00said, "Sometimes you've just got to let the material speak for itself." That's exactly what I try to do. It's kind of the way I've taken my work, letting the material speak for itself.

Like I was telling you a while ago with the defects and the different things in the wood, the same thing with the limestone if it has the little inclusions of fossils, old nails, or anything that people have put in there over the years. Sometimes people have carved their names in there back in the 1800s, and I leave those on there. It makes the piece more interesting, especially the limestone, because it has a life of its own. It's gone from being formed eons ago to those early day settlers coming and making a fencepost out of it. Then I come along 150 years later and make a piece of sculpture out of it, so who knows where it's going to next? (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Yeah, that's neat. Does that mean once you have your materials, kind of letting them lie, and walking around them and seeing what they suggest to you, or does it mean finding that?

Morrison: I think it's a combination of both, really. Sometimes it comes to me just like that. Other times I can sit and look at a stone and have to really let my creative mind go. I have to see what I can put into that space, and what I can get out of it, and keep it to what I want to do with it. I was saying a while ago, I just go with the natural lines. It's something--I can't explain it. I have done things before, and I've gotten through with them, and I've turned 36:00around and looked at it, and I'm like, "Gosh, did I do that?" It kind of gives me a little chill almost.

The same thing with that piece up there when I first started doing it, even that bigger piece I did for the Chisholm Trail. That's the excitement that I feel. I guess I still wouldn't be doing it if I didn't get some sort of--beyond, you know, someone buying the piece. The actual feel and love of doing it, I think, is something that you can't market. You can't explain it, and it's something that unless you feel it, you wouldn't know what I mean. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: In terms of your materials, you showed me a piece of river stone that you found on the property and worked with. Do you get your own materials for the most part? Do you order? Do you sometimes go to quarry and get your stone?

Morrison: Yes, all of the above, I do. Most of the wood I get and split. That's easy to obtain, the cedar wood and black walnut or anything like that. The stone posts I buy from the farmers up in Kansas, and that's where I get that. Now, I do go to the quarry for some of the larger pieces. I just was commissioned to do a large piece this past year for a lady in Santa Fe. It was a thousand-pound block of limestone that I had to have quarried up in Kansas from the Silverdale quarries. I really like, like the piece you were talking about, the river stone, and things like that, back to the natural lines and natural forms that nature gave to it a lot of times. You just go with the flow of whatever is there.

Little Thunder: Right. That piece that's the commission you're working on, that's an upcoming project?

Morrison: No, I delivered it when I went to Santa Fe this year.

Little Thunder: Oh, you delivered it.

Morrison: She has about eight or nine of my pieces at her place in Santa Fe that she's bought for the last few years, and they're really contemporary. It's something different that I ordinarily don't do. They're faceless pieces, but they're just the form of the stone, and I think that--

Little Thunder: That was per her request, kind of?

Morrison: Right.

Little Thunder: I see.

Morrison: And she has some of the ones that are more realistic, as I get, anyway.

Little Thunder: So you have a sculpture garden up there. That sounds neat. Okay, you've mentioned that, I guess, since working with Allan Houser, you draw out your images, pretty much?

Morrison: I don't a lot of times unless it's a big, big one, unless it's a big major complicated piece. Now the little simplistic pieces, and quoting him 39:00again, he said, "It's always simplistic. It's not simple." That's what you want to say. (Laughs) I can't imagine all this is coming back to me now, thinking about some of the words he said. I guess I paid attention. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: So others you just go to work directly on it?

Morrison: Yeah, I just go directly into it. I mean, I'll sit, and like I was saying, I'll go look at the piece of wood or stone, and go with the lines that are in it and what I can fit into it. I think it's kind of like Michelangelo said, "There's something in there that wants to come out." I admire other artists, and other sculptors especially. I think it's kind of like a brotherhood for artists, especially the ones that have survived over the years.

You look at Merlin [Little Thunder], and Ben Harjo, and Bill Glass. It's a hard business to survive in and still be here. I know a lot of artists that started when I did that were doing good that are no longer doing art. I feel very 40:00blessed that my art has taken me a lot of places, and I've got to see a lot of things, and I've got a lot of good feeling out of doing it. I'm still being blessed today, even almost sixty-seven years old.

Little Thunder: Do you ever do any on-site kind of research for bigger pieces if you know that they're going to go a specific place?

Morrison: I haven't had that thing, but I had tried to--I submitted a few little drawings to different things. Like when Northeastern was looking for a Sequoyah piece, and some of their medical clinics were looking, I submitted drawings. It's a little different when you have to go get an idea of what it's going to look like on-site and do a drawing and do that.

Little Thunder: Some of your--like the wood sculpture is fully 41:00three-dimensional, and then as you were mentioning, like the limestone is sort of bas-relief. It is this wonderful--you get this emergence. It reminds me of emergence stories because you just get that feeling of something coming out of the stone. Is that part of what you're striving to communicate?

Morrison: I think so. It's part of (what do you call it) aesthetics, but you still want to keep it balanced, too, and make the piece not look like it was still just what it came from. There again, it's what I said a while ago. I think that there's an excitement, too, to see something go from nothing, just a raw piece of stone or wood, and you turn it into something entirely different than 42:00what it was, just an object laying there. It gives you a real good feeling to see that, too. That's part of the enjoyment and love of being a sculptor, I guess. (Laughs) Same thing, I guess, if I were a painter and took a blank canvas and made something come back out of that. You still see that.

Little Thunder: Right. Is the finishing process different, then, for limestone? How is it different?

Morrison: There's three types of finishing for all different materials. The most tedious is probably the wood, because I use a hand-rub finish. You rub (it's a mixture of oils and varnishes) into the wood, and it penetrates the wood. There's about seven or eight hand-rubbed coats. You have to let it dry twenty-four hours between each coat and lightly sand to get it. The more coats you put on it, the more gloss you get on the wood piece. It really protects the wood, and it's some of the best I've ever had. It's more tedious to use, but 43:00it's better than polyurethane or anything like that. It makes it look natural.

Now, the alabaster, it takes a little different type of thing. You have to use what you call an alabaster compound and buff it into the stone. Then you polish it up, and then you put a protective coat on it if you want to get a real high shine. Now, the marble takes another type, too. It's a different type of finish to get it to do that. A lot of my work I do not polish that is going to go outside, especially the limestone. That's something that won't take a real high gloss on it, but the wood pieces and the alabaster and the marble I will polish.

Little Thunder: When you're working, do you often have several going simultaneously in different media?

Morrison: Yes, I do. If I'm working on the limestone, I will probably have four pieces going at one time. What I'll do is, it's easier to get them--first thing 44:00I do is get them to where they'll stand upright and be balanced. I can do what I call rough cutting all at one time, and get what I don't want on there off. Then when I go into it, the first thing I put on usually is the face. It's the focal point for me. I will go in and try to get a good face on it.

Then I go from there with it, and I work until I feel like I don't know where I'm going with it, is the way I could word it, I guess. (Laughs) Then I'll go to the other one and work on it. It's funny how you can go back and pick up on that. I can do four pieces simultaneously, I guess you would say. Now, if the wood is different, I can do probably ten or twelve of those because I can take it up in stages, and I can finish them all at the same time, which is the best 45:00way to do that.

Little Thunder: Have you ever incorporated any other materials in your work like stones?

Morrison: I did start putting some silver and turquoise on my wood pieces, and it really complemented each other. Once I did that, people really liked it. I found it to be--it added another dimension to the piece. I remember in school we used to have to do different combinations of things, metal, stone, and wood together. I haven't done any for myself that way, but I've seen other artists do it. It's great that they can do that.

Little Thunder: What role does story play in your paintings or sculptures? I think you sort of touched on that.

Morrison: What?

Little Thunder: Story.

Morrison: Oh, story. In my early years, I really read a lot and researched a 46:00lot, especially the Cherokee stories and history and everything, and at one time, even some of the older tribes like the Mandans and things like that because a lot of their animal stories were things I like to depict, too, and I did some pieces off of that. I think as Native peoples you can't get away from that. It's in your DNA or something, and you have to do it. People are going to ask you a lot of times about it.

There are, you know, like the Kachina carvers, and people like that that depict their spirits. That's something I don't do. That's something they do, and I have found that it's best not to step on anybody's toes or anything because it gets to be pretty sensitive about doing things like that. I don't try to depict any other nation's history or anything because I might get it wrong, and they get 47:00pretty mad. (Laughs) Believe me, people will come to your booth, and it's like, "That's not real." I get to say, "I'm not a realist." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That's true. That tribal stuff gets tricky. How important are titles to your work?

Morrison: Well, I think it's important. My larger pieces, I always try to title. A lot of times when I'm working on them, I always have that title and theme in mind. It's something that keeps your inspiration or whatever going toward that piece with the feeling that you have toward it, and if it comes out depicting it, you're happy.

Little Thunder: Do you ever write down titles or just carry them around in your head?

Morrison: Actually, when I start them, once it starts developing, I usually tell 48:00Faye what I'm going to title it, and that's what it is, but I don't write it down or anything. I just know what it's going to be, and that's what it stays. Now, I've gone to title some things, and people have taken them home with them. They come back the next year, and they say, "I call that Eddie," or something like that. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: They've retitled it.

Morrison: Yeah, they retitled it. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That's interesting.

Morrison: It's a lot different, I guess, than paintings. Easier to do on some of this.

Little Thunder: That is a unique experience, isn't it, that market of having the same repeat collectors?

Morrison: Right.

Little Thunder: Can you talk a little bit about that?

Morrison: I have been truly blessed over the twenty-three or twenty-two (I don't know how long it's been now) that I've done Santa Fe Indian Market and different shows. All across the country I have different collectors that come back year 49:00after year, and it really makes you feel good that they still like your work. Even at Lawrence this past weekend, I had, oh, four or five people come and say, "I bought some of your work twelve years ago, and I still have it, and I just love it." I don't even remember them. They'll say, "Do you remember me?" and I don't remember them. Then they describe the piece, and I remember the piece. (Laughs) I like to hear that. I wouldn't want to hear somebody come up and say, "I bought your piece twelve years ago. I hate it." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What's your creative process, like from the time you get your idea?

Morrison: Actually, mine starts when I'm looking at the stone or piece of wood. I can have a post laying on the ground up there, and if it has a certain form or 50:00shape, you know, it's just like that. Then the thought process for one that's more bland, I have to sit there and think about it sometimes. Faye has learned over the years. She'll say, "You're just sitting around out there at the shop." I said, "I was thinking." (Laughs) I was trying to just let my mind go. She's learned over the years that that's what I'm doing. Actually, I could use it for other excuses, too. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What's your creative routine? Do you like to work early in the morning or at night?

Morrison: I'm a morning person. There are so many artists I know that work at night. I have never been able to work at night. Once it passes three o'clock in the afternoon, I don't like to work. I don't know what the reason is, but I do my best work in the mornings. Of course, a lot of times I have to work outside 51:0090 percent of the time. The way my studio sits in the summer, and even in the winter, but in summertime the sun gets so hot on that side after two o'clock in the afternoon, it can be 110 degrees up there. No matter what you do, you're not going to get cool, and that's when I usually quit working.

Little Thunder: And how about the winter? Are there times when you just can't work because it's too cold?

Morrison: There are times, but there are many days I go up there with so many clothes on I can hardly lift my arm and chisel on stone. (Laughter) I have a wood stove up there, so I'll go inside periodically and warm up and go back out there. I've been up there when it's been brutally cold and snowing and everything when I'm trying to get ready or make a piece for a deadline or something. It's for the love of being a sculptor, I guess, that you do that. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: How big a part of your work are commissions?

Morrison: It's taken off more in the last five or six years than it ever has been. It's at least 30 percent, probably, if I were guessing right now.

Little Thunder: A big chunk.

Morrison: Yeah, I just love going to do the shows, still, though. I used to say, "Boy, I hope someday if I ever get real well known or make enough money, I can quit doing the shows," but, number one, I've never gotten rich at this. I probably established myself as an artist, but I love going to those shows and seeing our old friends and just doing it. I told Faye last year, I said, "I don't know how much longer we can keep doing this." She said "Well, as long as we're having fun at it, we'll keep doing it." (Laughs)

Little Thunder: It is a balance isn't it?

Morrison: Right, it is.

Little Thunder: Looking back over your career, what was a fork-in-the-road moment when you could have gone one way or another, and you made a choice?

Morrison: Well, probably the fork in the road was when I was working in a hospital in Wichita, Kansas, in the late ʼ80s, and I got fired from the job because I got into it with this other guy. (Laughs) It was over a loud radio. I hate to even talk about this. It embarrasses me today to talk about it, but they fired me and him. I had to go home and tell my family I got fired, and it was really embarrassing. After that's when I got another little job, and I seen that deal with Allan Houser being a guest lecturer at the Art Students League in Denver. I saved my money and went to that. Once I did that and went to art 54:00school, it was no looking back at anything else. That was probably a big turning point as far as being a professional artist, getting fired from a job. (Laughs) It's embarrassing. I don't recommend for anybody. It's a blight on your record. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What would you say has been one of the high points in your career?

Morrison: Oh, I think the highest high point is just knowing that my children respect what I do, and my family, I think. That's a good feeling. I can remember in-laws saying, "Why don't you quit that and get you a job?" (Laughs) Now I do well with it, and I can call it a good job. My kids really respect what I do, and they brag on me, and I just really find that refreshing.

Little Thunder: What has been one of the low points?

Morrison: Oh, I think a lot of times you kind of get down because you don't have any money and you're struggling, and you think nobody likes your work sometimes because you can go to shows and not sell a thing. You get kind of low at those periods. I've learned over the years, just go on down the road to the next show and don't think about it. I can't say that I've had a real ultra-low thing other than a lot of times going through periods of what we call the rollercoaster, the downside, and going back up. The high points outnumber the low points in this for me, personally, more than I can say.

Even this past weekend at Lawrence, when my little granddaughter was going up to--Faye was taking her around to Dana Tiger and Johnny Tiger and some of them 56:00because I know them and they know Faye. She was telling them, "I'm an artist. I'm an artist, too." I thought that's pretty neat because none of my other kids or anybody has ever said they wanted to do it. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: She's interested.

Morrison: Yeah, she is. Draws things at home.

Little Thunder: What's an upcoming project that you're really looking forward to?

Morrison: Well, I think that my major thing right now is I'm going to go to do another "Meet the artist" show in Washington, DC, at the Interior Department at the Indian Craft Shop. They're going to put a couple of my stone post sculptures out in their courtyard. They want a couple for the courtyard there. That's my next upcoming thing that I'm working on and looking forward to. I'm thankful for 57:00the chance to do that.

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

Morrison: No, I'll probably think of it after you leave. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Okay, well, we'll pause everything for a minute and get refocused to look at some of your sculptures.

Morrison: Okay.

Little Thunder: All right, this is an example of one of your limestone sculptures. Do you want to tell us a little bit about this piece?

Morrison: Yes, it's a natural Silverdale limestone.

Little Thunder: What kind?

Morrison: Silverdale is what they call it. That's where it comes from up in Kansas. I like it. It has the little tiny fossils, and it's a stone that's easy to work with. I had made a larger piece, and this was a fragment that came off the larger piece. It depicts a woman that's reclining.

I could remember when I was a young child, and we would go to the river or 58:00something. There would be these rocks and things and people would--especially I can remember after eating, my grandmother or my mom or somebody, they would go sit on that rock and recline or relax. That's what I thought of when I was doing this.

Little Thunder: What's the title?

Morrison: It doesn't really--I call it Reclining Woman.

Little Thunder: Reclining Woman. Yeah, it's gorgeous.

Morrison: I leave the natural in there. Again, it's letting the material speak for itself.

Little Thunder: Right, it's beautiful. Now we're looking at some of your red cedar. Do you want to talk about these?

Morrison: Yes, cedar wood is my first love when I first started, and I still love it. It's such a natural wood. It's not real exotic, but it's a beautiful wood. You can see the grain. I can take an old piece of wood that's been dead many years, and it's just like it comes back to life. I rub this tung oil into 59:00the grain in the wood, and it penetrates. Recently I started using turquoise and some silver to add a little complement to them. It works out well. There again, I just go with the natural lines in the wood, and wherever it flows, it's going to be.

Morrison: I've been real successful with what they call cedar wood bears. If you look at the grain on the back, it's just like the fur on the--. In Cherokee stories, the bears were pretty significant. They were part of our tribe. We went off and became bears, and they told us if we ever needed food or clothing or anything like that, we could take them for it. The Cherokee word for bear is yo-na. I do a lot of bears.

Little Thunder: All right, how about this piece?

Morrison: Okay, this is one of my earliest pieces that I tried relief carving 60:00in. It's an old scrap piece of black walnut wood. Of course, the Trail of Tears is a very significant event in the history of our Cherokee Nation. I think that, I don't know, I was looking for something to do to try a relief, and the way this came to me is one of those stories you hear sometime. I was out standing, watching the clouds. This cloud came along, and it was basically shaped like that piece of wood, and it had that same kind of image in it. I went to the studio, and I started carving it. This is one of those pieces that when I got through with it, I looked at it, and I said, "Did I do that?" (Laughs)

I did that piece probably twenty-five years ago or more, so it's a piece that I keep in my house as my Trail of Tears piece to represent that. I call that Survivors of the Trail of Tears because we're the ones that survived and descendants of those that came on today. Otherwise, we would not be here, as all 61:00tribes have a history like that. We are all survivors, really, all Native peoples. Fortunately, we're still here.

Little Thunder: Still here. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Eddie.

Morrison: Well, you are more than welcome.

------- End of interview -------