Oral history interview with Holly Wilson

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Wednesday, January [29], 2014, and I'm interviewing Holly Wilson for the Oklahoma Native Artists interview collection. This collection is sponsored by the Oklahoma Oral History Research [Program] at Oklahoma State University. Holly, you're Delaware and Cherokee, known for your small-scale bronze and mixed media sculptures, figures that you often capture in sort of dance-like movements to express shades of emotion. You show in multiple galleries, many of which don't particularly have a Native focus, and I look forward to learning more about your work today.

Wilson: Thank you.

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

Wilson: I was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. I grew up initially in Lawton, and then we moved to Cherokee, North Carolina. My dad taught at the Indian boarding school in Lawton and then got transferred to the Cherokee Indian boarding school. We lived up there for a couple of years, and then we moved back to Lawton. He finished there until when they closed the school, and then he started 1:00working for the military. We did summers in Colorado while he was getting his master's.

Little Thunder: Wonderful places to be. So you mentioned what your father did for a living. How about your mom?

Wilson: Initially, my mom was just a housewife, and then when we got into junior high, she started selling real estate. She did that until she just went back to being Mom. She always did crafts and art-type things, and they built on the house incessantly, is the best way to put it. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Brothers or sisters?

Wilson: I am one of five. I have an older sister, Alicia Wilson, Alicia Sams. Then there's me, and then I have my brother, Robert Wilson, and then there's April Wilson, and then there's now Nicole Muñoz, so all five.

Little Thunder: What was your relationship with your grandparents on either side?

Wilson: My dad's parents passed away before I was born, and then my mother's 2:00side, I only knew my grandmother. We didn't know who the grandfather was. She told history, interesting lady, a little dark. (Laughter) That's the best way to put it.

Little Thunder: In terms of the Delaware and Cherokee, are they on different sides of the family?

Wilson: No, it's all through my mom's. My dad's side, they think, is Chickasaw, but it is untraceable. He was born in Idabel, Oklahoma. They burned all kinds of records that would prove any Native American heritage, so with his, there's no tracing back through. With my mom's, she's Delaware, Bob, and then Cherokee through the matriarch side.

Little Thunder: So you were back in Lawton at what age?

Wilson: When we moved back the final time, I started Kindergarten. I think that's, like, six, roughly, these days, seven.

Little Thunder: They've got a lot of different intertribal influences there. Were you, sort of, aware of those growing up?

Wilson: Our growing up was interesting in that because my dad was white and my mom was Indian, I refer to us having a fit in two worlds but belonging really in neither. Because of the history that my mom grew up and just the Native experience that she had, she worked very hard to shelter. We got all the awesome stories, and the beadwork, and the artistry, but they really kind of sheltered our--. We went to powwows that had to do with the school. We went to donkey basketball. My aunt likes to refer to it as, "You grow up white-Indian," which I 4:00think is funny, but she had had such a hard time that they were very cautious as to what we were exposed to and how much you did outside of that.

In Cherokee, my dad taught, and he was the white teacher. We had friends, but most of our friends--it was very select. We actually lived on top of the mountain at the high school, and so we were one of these houses--there was like six in the ring. Then it went to the ceremonial burial grounds. We were separated from, you know, the regular reservation just because of our location. It was kind of different. It was kind of odd. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: What are your earliest memories of seeing Native art?

Wilson: It would have to be the beadwork my dad did because even though my dad was white, he picked up beading in Cherokee. It was one of the things that--and I don't know the legitimacy of it, but he brought beadwork to some people that 5:00had forgotten how to bead or they had lost the tradition. He could sit down and count out, draw a picture of--because he did a peace pipe, and he did this beautiful drum thing. He could count out, draw it out, and then that would be the last time he would look at it again. Then he would just do the beads by memory. That would be the first connection, is watching him bead because he was in charge of the science club and the art club and the dance club. He would take them to dances, and the kids that didn't have dress, outfit, regalia, he actually made it for them. Like they couldn't afford bone plates, so they would do reeds and do those up. Whatever it is they needed, he figured out how to make it so they'd have something to wear.

Little Thunder: So really creativity on both sides. (Laughs)

Wilson: Yeah, very much.

Little Thunder: Did you have any other extended family members who were artists?

Wilson: I don't think so. My dad was a painter, originally. I mean, he painted in Idabel. He had murals. I remember there was some painter that came from Idabel. It was like he had more talent in his little finger than this man had, and the guy's a reputable painter. It was that whole age where it was, "Get a real job. Support your family," so he stopped painting. In fact, I have one of his paintings in my house. Whenever I think of art, I think of my dad first.

Little Thunder: Did you meet any Native artists growing up?

Wilson: I don't remember any. My mom and them talk about people that they knew and about artists they knew. Like I remember hearing Woogie Watchetaker and different names like that, but I don't know how much was story-told or how much they ever met, which is kind of an odd because they--. At the boarding school in 7:00Lawton, there were so many people from different tribes that I would hear stories because they'd sit around and play cards, and all the stories intermingled. So, like, my cigar figures really are the Stick People. That's an Osage story; it's not a Delaware story. I have a hard time because it's all kind of a dream when you think of growing up there, if that makes any sense. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: What were your art experiences in primary school?

Wilson: None. We had no art in primary school that I remember. I remember theater and P.E., and making art at home. My parents were always building on a house, so I used a table saw in fourth grade. If we were going to paint a room, we'd knock a wall down and very physical kind of art making, a lot of stuff with sticks and creating shrines and odd things in the woods because we backed a 8:00creek in both Lawton and--

Little Thunder: That's what you did to play.

Wilson: Yeah. I played more making odd nature creatures (Laughs), is the best way to put it, but no art that I remember at all growing up in grade school. I made a turkey once, I think. That was the extent of it.

Little Thunder: How about middle school or high school?

Wilson: Actually, I was going to add one thing. The one thing I do remember is my mom's stories of--I used to get up with my dad when he was taking architecture classes in Colorado. I'd wake him up at five, and I'd have his pencils and coffee cup, and I'd sit and draw with him. I have little drawings from just drawing with him because he was studying architecture. We'd draw in the mornings, and that was, like, the only thing I remember. I always made storybooks and images like that, and I have those still, which is kind of amazing.

Junior high and high school, junior high I took Mrs. Moody's art class in seventh grade. I remember she'd walk around, and she'd rub her pencils through 9:00her rings, and you'd hear, "click, click, click, click, click." That's the only noise you were allowed to make because it had to be very quiet to make art. (Laughs) You had to be very serious to make your art. You'd hear, "click, click, click, click, click, click, click." It was all perspective. That was seventh grade, so eighth grade, I wasn't going anywhere near it. Then in ninth grade I had gotten hurt, so I got to take, I took art. I was doing gymnastics, but I got hurt, so I took ninth-grade art.

It was Mrs.--oh my gosh, Mrs. Pitchwer? No. I can't think of her name. She was such a dear. Mrs. Carter! Hers was the opposite. She was in the attic, kind of like the stepchild art teacher. It was loud music and "Let's express ourselves!" It was like, "I love art!" (Laughs) And we learned. That was the first time I learned printmaking, and I actually sold a print from that year. The first thing 10:00I ever sold in my life was a print I did. It's a circle, and it has a bird, my birds, breaking out of the circle with these strange things. That was where it was like, "I like this!" (Laughter) It was like real different perspectives on what is the appropriate way to create art.

Little Thunder: So they had a little art sale at the--

Wilson: They had where you could submit, you know, like competitions. I got into some competition she submitted at the state or the--it was at the building, the Education Building. My piece was there, and somebody asked to buy it, so I sold my first piece for, like, twenty-five dollars. That's not bad for a ninth grade. I was pretty excited. In high school after that I took art at least one, if not two or three times. By the time I got in there, I took Mrs. Brown, and she was a nice blend between the two. I did sculpture, plaster, no clay. Well, no, I guess 11:00we did do clay, and printmaking, and batiking, and it was all--and then photography.

When I got to do photography, that was it. I was entranced. Then I went to Quartz Mountain [Oklahoma Arts Institute] my senior year. At the end of my senior year, I got in for drawing and photography. It was a real tough choice because the instructor for painting was--I can't think of his name. He died. Big, Oklahoma native artist. Not R. C. Gorman, younger than R. C. Gorman, but I can't think of his name. This is terrible. Beautiful stuff, though. I can't think of his name. His art's all over Oklahoma, though. Then there was the photographer person who had no idea, but photography was real. You could go out into the mountains and take pictures, and go to villages, so I chose that instead. It was wonderful.

Little Thunder: What a great experience.

Wilson: Thank you.

Little Thunder: So how did you end up at the Kansas City Art Institute?

Wilson: This is my favorite story, and I always get told, "Why do you tell this story?" I got a scholarship to go to Cameron, actually, University. I went there, and I failed all my classes. (Laughter) Art, every class of art, I failed. I had Benson Warren and Kath[erine] Liontas, and I just was not--. It was not what I thought art school was going to be like, studying art. I was not committed. Instead I--first I failed all those classes, and then I did a Christmas speech class. In the spring I tried theater or something. I got smart, and I figured out how to withdraw. Then I went back to Quartz Mountain. I said, "I want to do art, but this isn't working. What do you recommend?" David Blust, who I can't even tell you how awesome this guy is, he's out of Tulsa. He was the 13:00darkroom tech.

While I was there, my camp counselor was Shana Parke and Bobby Harrison, who now are ParkeHarrison, really very well-known photographers. Amazing stuff. They said, "You should go to Kansas City!" She was a recruiter for Kansas City, and he was a student there. I said, "Okay what do I need to do?" They told me how to apply, so I applied. I actually got in like a month before school, which is funny because I had no money. Earlier that spring I originally was going to apply to the Chicago Art Institute. I went to some people that were professors, (I won't say who) and I said, "I want to go to the Chicago Art Institute. Would you give me a letter of recommendation?" They says, "Well, we'll give you a recommendation, but you're not good enough to get in." I just let it go.

That was in the spring semester. Then finally by summer, I as withering and dying inside, and that's when I met Bobby. They were like, "Oh, yeah, you'd be 14:00great," so I went. I pawned my camera, my lenses, every piece of jewelry I had to get a hundred bucks. My sister and I drove from Oklahoma to Kansas City. I worked as a waitress, so I got a cheap hotel because it was through the Holiday Inn that I waited tables. We got a twenty-five-dollar-a-night hotel. We did the interview, and they're taking us to a nice meal. I'm like, "So when do you find out if you get in?" She goes, "You got in! I'm sorry. Yes, you're in, you're in, you're in!" Then I had to figure out how to get twelve thousand dollars in a month. We did parent plus loans, student loans, and then I got some scholarship money from the BIA, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was a lot of shuffling, and then that's how Kansas City happened.

Little Thunder: That's a great story.

Wilson: Thanks.

Little Thunder: I read that you had a ceramics focus there, but it sounds like you were sort of on a photography track.

Wilson: Well, I got in on photo, and I did their freshman year, which is legendary in freshman years. It's a school that the first semester is, like, you try drawing, and it's all--we called it art boot camp because the whole idea is to wash you out. Those who weren't committed pretty much withdrew or quit within the first semester. Then the second semester, you got to try things. There was a performance thing, there was photobook, and then I got to expand a chair to, like, three times its size, which was awesome. I originally was going for photo, but in that environment I realized that they were going to strip photography down and make me learn photography. For me, photography has always been, I'm capturing fleeting moments that aren't planned. That's how I photograph. I thought, "I can always take pictures, but if they strip my soul away, then I'll 16:00never have it." So I said, "I'm going to keep this here."

Instead, I got very interested in sculpture, so I enrolled, actually, in the sculpture department. Then it was very, "We will move this big board over here." If you didn't walk around going, "Ararararawr," you just weren't really recognized. I thought, "I don't have to make sculpture and have this." A friend of mine, my roommate, was doing ceramics, and I loved it. They did the figure. They were making pots. They were making sculptures. I was like, "I'm going to go do that." I'd made one clay pot in my whole life, which is really funny, and I fell in love with it. The first time I was there, I had to make a whole bunch of pots, and I was like, "I'm done making pots." Then we got to make figures, and that was where my true romance began, is with the figure. I have a ten-foot sculpture, I think, behind the Delaware tribal complex, sleeping somewhere. It was my picture of myself. Right now at the back of my parents' yard is an 17:00eight-foot sculpture I made in graduate school.

I finished my degree in ceramics there, and when I went to graduate school, I realized I wanted to learn how to make things be more delicate on a single toe. The problem with clay is you're fighting the weight of it and the fragility of it and all of these things, and that's when I took a jewelry class and fell mad--(I'm probably jumping your subjects there) I fell madly in love with metal working. I made these tiny figures that are only about this big in jewelry. My MA was ceramics. I finished making large clay figures and plaster. Then when I did my MFA, because I separated them so I'd have more time to experiment, I switched to sculpture. Then I learned the foundry. That's where I left photography altogether, clay, and then to bronze. The funny thing is photography 18:00is always there, but photography has always been--. Like, my first time showing photography was actually at the Heard Museum that I showed prints. And I've gotten in--

Little Thunder: This last year?

Wilson: This last year, yeah, and I sold one of the pieces for the first time. I've been doing photography since high school, which is funny. It's always the backstory. A lot of my pieces begin in photo, and then they come to life in metal or encaustic. It's always, typically, how I capture a piece because you get that fleeting moment that you get in photography. Then you can have that to look at and build on. Did I mess you up?

Little Thunder: So did you go immediately on from undergrad to graduate work? Did you work in between?

Wilson: No, I applied to about six grad schools and got turned down by every one of them first. (Laughs) It's kind of like the way my world goes. (Laughs) Then 19:00it turns out later that I got a less than admirable letter of recommendation from my professor because I wasn't a real--I've never been a, "Here's what you should do." "Yes, sir." "Yes, ma'am." I'm like, "But why?" "Why" gets you in trouble, but my mom and dad are always like, "Why? Why? Why?" I took a year between undergraduate and graduate. I went home to Lawton, and I got my real estate license. I sold real estate with my mom while I went through Cameron again, this time to get my teaching certification, the ol' back-up plan. I got certified K through twelve, and I went through all summer to the next summer and finished that. Then I sold real estate at the same time, which is kind of funny.

While I was there I met a woman who was dating a professor from Stephen F. Austin State University. They were like, "Oh, you should chat with them." They 20:00all knew each other. She was doing a show. So I says, "Well, I did clay and was--." She's like, "Well, he went to Yale, and he went to Harvard." No, Yale and then Alfred [University], big, clay god places. I said, "Oh, this sounds great." I got an interview and got in down there, and that's when I found out about the bad letter because they were all, "You're a troublemaker." I'm like, "No, I'm not a troublemaker. I just don't swim with the fishes all the time." That's where I started, and I did my MA first for one year, got my MA in one year. Then you had six years to do your MFA, and I did my MFA. I was there for a year and a half, but I took a full six years to work on my MFA, partially financially, but I was showing at the same time, too.

Little Thunder: So you were selling a little bit, earning a little bit.

Wilson: Yeah. When I was in Kansas City, they always had a show at the end of 21:00each semester, so I started selling art in ceramics right off. I would sell most of my pieces to collectors in Kansas City. My big coup de grâce in Kansas City is I sold to Lennie Berkowitz at the Garth Clark [Gallery], which I thought was really funny, the little figures that irritated my professor to no end. Then he was like, "Oh, I always loved those," and I'm like, "Yeah, sure, whatever." (Laughs). It's just one of those funny--I love this story. Some people are like, "Are you bitter?" I'm like, "No, they're funny because they're life." That's how it happens sometimes.

Then when I got to MA, I went down and decided I want a real gallery. When I was in Kansas City, I had gone to Leedy-Voulkos [Art Center]--I think it was still the Leedy-Voulkos gallery. It was when Jim Leedy and Sherry Leedy were still married. They had a huge massive space. It was awesome because they had 22:00contemporary stuff going, but they also had student spaces. I said, "Jim, if I clean this up, and I paint it, and I sheet rock it, can I show some art here?" He said yes. That was my first, on my own, solo show in a real gallery. Then when I went to graduate school, I said, "I'm going to go get a gallery." I went down to Houston because my graduate is in Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.

I knew I was going there because I couldn't spell Nacogdoches. It's a tongue twister, too. I go to Houston with a friend of mine during my MA, and I had my little sheet of slides on the day of slides, and my little résumé. I just started on cold quit. Knock, knock, knock. "Hello, my name is--" "All right, thank you." "Hello my name is--" "Thank you." "Hello my name is--" Some people were nice. They were like, "Well, the work is interesting but you need more shows and then more shows." Then I got to the last gallery, and it was Goldesberry. They were like, "Well, when you get the work, let us know. Bring some down. It's interesting." They went on about their business, and I was like, "Oh, that was exhausting. Let's go have pie." (Laughs)

I went to an opening that night for somebody that taught at the school, and I saw them again. He said, "Well, where's this work?" I'd had my first show with Leslie Powell in Lawton at the Leslie Powell Gallery, and it was actually a Native show. It was my MA body, and they says, "Well, when you get that back, let us know. We'd like to see it." When I got the show, they actually came to Nacogdoches. They drove two hours up from Houston, and they took most of the work back. I had a show right off, and I sold really well. I was with them pretty much all the way through, until they closed their gallery. I started--is that like '98? No, it was further back because that was when I moved to Houston. It was early '90s, sometime in there. There was a little break where I stopped showing between, in like 2000 to 2007, and then I started with them again in 2009. That was my first, like, "Dun dun dun, you were at a gallery."

Little Thunder: Yeah, that's great. I know that really helps sustain you--

Wilson: Yeah.

Little Thunder: --that relationship. So was that your first Native show, then, that you had done in--

Wilson: Lawton.

Little Thunder: --that you were doing in Lawton?

Wilson: Yeah.

Little Thunder: How did that come about?

Wilson: Leslie Powell, oh gosh, I don't even remember. She contacted me, and she was having as show. I can't remember. It was like Native Ties, something to do with Native artists. It was me, and I remember Gerald Cournoyer because I was in graduate school. A couple other artists were chosen to be in the show together. It was when she was still above the little chapels. You had to carry your art up those steep stairs. She has been a champion and such an awesome believer in my work from the very beginning. Then I had a show at the military base, Fort Sill, at their arts and crafts center. I had a show there, too, but none of them were representation. That was the first time I'd ever had a show, like in a gallery, represented by.

Little Thunder: Right. How did you know how to price your work?

Wilson: Kansas City was real specific. I have to say Ken Ferguson and Victor Babu and George Timock were very about the business of art, which I feel so many people didn't get the business. To even graduate, you had to have a sheet of slides, you had to have an artist statement, you had to have a bio, and you had to have a résumé. With the sheet of slides, you had to have the name of the piece, the material, the size, the medium, and the price. They really talked to you about pricing and what work is worth, and we went and saw galleries. We went to, like, Jun Kaneko's. Then when I was in my senior year, me and a friend flew to California for the Advancement of Ceramic Sculpture Conference.

It was in its second or third year. That was at UC-Davis. The neat thing about that is that it was before it had transferred. When we first went, we heard Viola Frey speak and Stephen De Staebler and all these amazing artists. It was 26:00seeing their work, and then seeing the pricing and the galleries, and then comparing the age of how old you were as an artist, and the material, and then valuing it that way. When I first started selling with them, we talked about pricing, so there was the assistance of the gallery, as well. Like I said, with Ken and them, we were talking pricing, right off, in the gallery.

Little Thunder: So you really got a good business base there.

Wilson: Yes, yeah.

Little Thunder: When did you move into lost-wax casting. Was it in graduate school?

Wilson: Yeah. Graduate school I took jewelry casting instead of taking how to cut it and solder it. That was the boring stuff. I was like, "I don't want to do that. I want to do the casting part." So my lost-wax casting began in jewelry. Then I went upstairs to my MFA and did it in the ceramic shell. What I do now is actually reverted back to the jewelry method where I use investment casting, so 27:00it's still lost wax, but it's using jewelry casting investment instead of the ceramic shell.

Little Thunder: What do you think your attraction--you sort of explained that there was this very macho sort of attitude on the part of the big-sculpture people. (Laughs) What else do you think draws you to working on a small scale?

Wilson: Well, I love--it's weird you say that because my work is starting to get multiples. My love about the smallness began originally from--it's the size that fit in the kiln, the first kiln I had. A friend of mine gifted me this tiny beehive kiln, which I still have. The kiln itself was only about that big, and so the inside only fit a coffee can. My first pieces I was making were only the size of a coffee can, but even before that, I was making smaller pieces. They 28:00were a little bit bigger, though, but what I liked about them is the intimate quality of them. You had to get up and interact with them, and there was such an intimate conversation that you had with the work.

At the same time, sometimes scale can be deceiving. If you make it, like I--and it's really weird I have this thing. I love big art, and I love little art. Three-quarter size art? I'm good with life size, but three-quarter size art is just, "Oh, there's something wrong with that." I need it, for me, to be either life, really small, or really big. It's always just kind of stuck with me. What I've started doing is making multiples, so that, like, on a wall, you'll have two figures or three or four figures, and they're still small. I have one that's in progress that'll come out next year that's actually twenty-two foot long, but the figures are only this big. It's the same kind of idea of that intimate 29:00quality, and it's something I can do myself. I don't have to founder it out.

Little Thunder: And also each of your pieces is one of a kind.

Wilson: Yes, huge thing. In clay you made a piece, and that was it. Each piece has its own life. This is the part that I always--. You have to judge your audience because some people are like, "What?" But I feel like each thing I make has its own spirit, and I give it a life. It has its own story. I don't make editions. In fact, I don't even have molds. I make my wax, my bronze wax, just like I do my clay. I build it directly in wax, and then I sprue that and cast it. If I lose it, it's gone. I don't go back and remake it, and I don't make more. I have molds that I've made from the pieces, so I have these rough face molds, and I have rough hand molds. Everything gets refined. I have the faces because I realized I wanted to start doing a series with a certain look or sisters or twins. That's a big thing I've started on. I have that, but none of 30:00them are identical, and none of the stories are ever identical.

Little Thunder: You've noted that your sculpture sort of talks about the fragile nature of life and the human body, and I wondered if you could expand on that a little.

Wilson: Well, so I have two phases of work. I have pre-kids and post-kids. (Laughs) Pre-kids was all about actually dealing with my heritage in a very direct way with elders, very much these kind of spirit figures. Then I got married and moved to Chicago. I started working design and this whole other, and my work stopped production. I just started working, trying to work out who I am, where I am. "Well, since graduate school's over, what am I going to do now?" Then I had my son. It was really interesting because right before my son, my work started to shift. I had my son, and it changed everything in my work 31:00because my mom had always told me stories about, you know, you don't leave your toys out at night because of the spirits, and what you did or didn't do culturally when you had children.

Listening to her is almost like the wind. It's like, "That's interesting," but it didn't make any sense. Then you have kids. I had my son. Sure, I'm just like a Nervous Nelly and a helicopter mom, but it really changed how I saw the world because I felt like I became not just the guardian of him but, like, the guide, what I did or how I chose, and the fragility of that relationship, and then the fragility of his own life. It made me realize that that's there all the time, but it's just the blinders because I was this single person. I never saw outside of myself. Now I hear my mom's words, and it makes sense. Some of the things may 32:00be told as things that truly happened and why you watch for things, or they're just that cautionary tale to help guide you. That's where the work--it has to do with my culture and stories that were told, but it also has to do with how I raise my children, and how I watch for them, and how I see the world through their eyes sometimes, that kind of thing.

Little Thunder: It seems like a lot of your figures are women, and I might be not seeing the whole range.

Wilson: No, most of them are women. Most of them are actually little girls. In that even with my son, when I had him, I was still making little girls. The only little boys I have in the work started from a geode piece. The little girls kind of are my story of myself, as well as the story of my daughter, and the story of woman, and the story of female. I was telling someone something I was working 33:00on, and they were like, "You just don't really seem like an activist." I'm like, "I think activists come in many shapes and sizes and different voices." For me, it's about growing up.

My mom grew up on the boarding school. Her mother was a cook, and they lived above the kitchen. For my mom and dad and for my mom, in particular, it was very much what you can do. You can do anything you put your mind to. It was a really interesting thing watching. I tell people now, I feel so bad because as a parent you want your kids to succeed, and it's hard to see the lessons not always lived up to or passed. Then even thinking they said we could do anything we wanted, we could do it all, and that's not really the truth because in doing everything, 34:00something suffers. It may not be suffering to the point that they wither and die, but there's always this give and take of what you can and can't do. I watched my mom try to accomplish all of that and then instill in me that belief I could. I think the best gift was being able to step back and go, "No, I have to succeed at what I love only."

They always said, "Whatever you do, follow what you love, and you'll figure out how to make a living or a life out of it." I wanted children, but I also wanted to be an artist. I was doing design work, and somewhere we had that conversation where it was like, "I can't do it all. Something has to stop." That's why we moved back to Oklahoma, not that it was slower paced, but I could not, I was not going to make myself remove from the job that made the money, willingly. It was a way for me to break that cycle and then say, "Here's what's important." The little girl is me and so many, and my mother, and my mother's mother, and my 35:00daughter, those things.

Little Thunder: I'm really struck by--it totally makes sense your interest in--because they're seasoned. They're very seasoned faces, and they're very seasoned bodies. They're not pretty, and they're not necessarily youthful. Do you see them as being of any particular ethnicity?

Wilson: You know, it's interesting. I don't. In fact, I don't even work from pictures of people. Like when I'm talking to somebody, and my husband gets mad at me sometimes, says, "Turn off the x-ray!" I study faces. If there's something I just love about a face, an epicanthic fold, or a way a nose turns, they'll turn up in the work. This got me in trouble in undergraduate. My work is very much a building of faces from an inventory of life. When I first started making 36:00figures they were kind of a brown color. Then I started doing black patinas. I've been asked, "Are they brown? Are they Native? Are they African American?" I'm like, "They're anything you want them to be because they're not even real people."

They don't have ears, which most people have never picked up on. They don't have ears, and they don't have belly buttons. They don't have genitalia, which I find really amazing. It's on purpose because if you have ears and genitalia and a belly button, you're human. You're born into this world. Ears let you hear. The genitalia defines you as male or female. In my figures, especially in the ones that don't have any clothes on, the only way I want you to know that it's male or female is in their body posturing. That's the connection I want you to get is I want you to feel that sense. I got that from watching my son and my daughter because their movement in the world is so different from each other. That's why they're not one thing or the other.

Little Thunder: So you do explore tribal motifs. Sometimes they're overt, but a lot of times it seems like belief systems or values that just kind of get threaded into the work.

Wilson: Yeah. There are certain characters or specific stories like my birds, especially. All my birds are shapeshifters. It's funny because people are like, "Shapeshifters are bad." I'm like, "No, they're not." My mom told me a story when I was growing up that her grandmother, which would be my great-grandmother, was visited, when they lived on the farm, by a midwife. She wanted her to come and train with her, and the father and the sons were like, "No, no, no. She is staying here, and she's cooking and taking care of us. That's her job." There was no wife, or she'd died. My great-grandmother wanted so desperately to go to school and to go learn this. She would've traveled around and done all these 38:00things, and they were like, "No, no, no."

The midwife leaves, and she comes back. She goes, "I've come again. She needs to come and train. That way she can go and do." They were like, "No, no, no." It was in the day where they had the fire in the front, and the man was like, "Get off my property! No, no, no!" She stepped into the fire and rolled into all these shapes and turned into all these animals, and then stood up and again said, "I would like to take Grammy Num Num--" is her name, which is really funny, "--with me." They were like, "Go! Go! Go!" She turned into an owl and flew away.

Then she comes again, and she asked one more time. They were like, "No, you need to go away." They actually shot at her when she flew away as an owl and wounded her. Well, in the months to come, each one of them befell a horrible event. One of them ended up falling and shooting part of himself, getting his gun trapped. Another one got a thing on his face. Then when she came back, they were like, 39:00"Yes, yes. Please stop whatever, and we'll let her go." They let her go and be trained as a midwife, so then she was able to travel, you know, when someone needed to deliver a baby. It was just the greed of the, "No, you're going to stay here, and you're not going to be educated, and you're not going to be trained."

The shapeshifter, she was a "witch" or a shapeshifter. It wasn't in a way that I ever interpreted that story to be a horrible thing. Then also, birds are the messengers from the spirits that come down. I see that they can be tricksters, and I see how there can be bad things. I know that each culture has a different interpretation, but I've always felt that it is what you make of it, and what is it that the message is taking. In my birds, if you look at them, they're encaustic birds. They're built in encaustic, all of it. Then anything that really comes off, I cut and cast. The key is all of the eyes are human eyes. They're built with the epicanthic fold and the eyebrow ridge and the human pupil.

Then all of them have human hands. You have to get real close because at first they look like bird hands, but they're holding the branch in their human's hands. For me, it's that moment that you caught them shifting, whether it's shifting to a bird or shifting as a man or woman. It's that moment. Some of them, I feel, are hung because both worlds are seductive. Which world do you live in? The world of man? The world of spirit? I feel like shifters have this wonderful gift, but at the same time, they have to leave. In all stories you read of shifters, the otter and all these different animal stories, they're saddened as much as they're happy to go to wherever it is they are because they've made loves and attachments and it's hard to make those shifts. That's my birds (Laughs) or almost any animal. If you see an animal, normally that animal, if it's not its spirit animal, it's the idea that they're a shifter with a message.

Little Thunder: In your work?

Wilson: In my work, yeah.

Little Thunder: We talked about Santa Fe Indian Market briefly before we started the interview here, but tell us about--you did your first Santa Fe Indian Market last year.

Wilson: Yeah.

Little Thunder: What was that like?

Wilson: Oh, it was amazing. I mean that's the first time I've ever seen all that many different Native people and their work together. It's interesting because I was an undergraduate, and my mother had asked me to show my work in Lawton at an Indian show that was happening at the armory. This is real pivotal in that it was in '88, and so she took my work and put it on the table. It's my old spirit figures and whatnot. She remembers the guys going, "That's one bad hombre. Those are some crazy looking figures." They liked the work. As we walked around and 42:00looked, it was all these beautiful pieces of art, but the guy goes, "Well, let me show you what I really do." Then they would pull the art out from underneath the table, and they would show you what they really made. It saddened both my mom and I, and it made me think, "I don't want to do that."

The problem twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago, is if you said you were Native American and you made art, you were pigeonholed into this very second-class society of what people expected Native artists to make. I veered far away from anything that had to do with cultural markets because of that experience. So Santa Fe, I was real hesitant because my work has stories, and my work has a feeling, but my work is not what people would think of as Native American art from just a magazine cover. A friend of mine, Shan Goshorn, in the 43:00Urban Indian Five, she went the year before, and she was like, "You really need to do this." This is different than what she thought it was going to be. She had a wonderful experience, so I applied and got in. I did win a ribbon for a sculpture, Second Place. It was awesome.

I was very tired, but it was neat because I got to see things that I probably would never have seen in all of my life on my own. I applied for this year. One of my goals when I go this year is to take the time to walk the fair, which last year, as much as I wanted to, I didn't take as much time to look at what was there. What I did do, I went to the Heard in March last year, and one of the things I did is I looked up all the artists I could find online. I didn't get to do that with Santa Fe just because of timing. It was really nice, and the same thing is to try and walk the fair just to meet some of the different artists, to see what is being made and what's out there.

Little Thunder: It's very energizing.

Wilson: Yeah, it really is.

Little Thunder: How important are commissions to your work?

Wilson: (Laughs) I laugh hysterically. I am a terrible commission artist. The reason is commissions are awesome, and I'm supposed to be thrilled to get a commission. I should be so excited that people want to commission my work, but I have a strange relationship with commissions. I am thrilled, I am honored, but they stop my production so fast and so hard because I start worrying about what people think of the work and what they're expecting.

I have a series called Paper Wings, and it's this idea of, again, a shifter where it's a person half bird and half man. The masks aren't--some people refer to them as the plague mask. I'm like, "No, the plague mask covered your whole face, and mine are actual masks." You use them as personas. Anything that's got 45:00a mask is a persona. If I need the ability to fly, you would wear the mask of the bird to be able to fly above a situation, or the strength of the bear so you would have the strength to protect yourself. I made one, the first one, and had the show. Of course, it sold, and people were like, "I want that." I had two commissions. I says, "I will do a commission," and it's the first time I've ever had the commission, and I says, "but the presumption of it is that they will never look the same." They will have a mask, they will have wings, they will be on this thing, but the figure itself has to be distinctly different because I think each one has to have its own life. That's the only way I've managed to do commissions. But I try and go, "No, let's not do that, no." I think if it was something like taking a small piece and making it larger or doing--I think they would be a lot more attractive to me. I'd rather just have the freedom to create 46:00whatever is needed for my soul, I guess, is the best way to put it. I'm a very bad commission artist. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What's been one of the best or worst comments you've gotten in response to your work?

Wilson: Oh, wow. The worst is when they look at it and they go, "Now that's interesting," or, "Isn't that kind of funny," which I find odd. I know that shouldn't be bad, but it's in a snarky kind of way. It's like, "You didn't get it, but that's okay," because there's enough art for everybody. I just kind of step back because, like you said, the figures, though they are modeled off of a child's frame, they're not children. They're this idea that they're old spirits, and that's why the faces and the bodies are very different.

I think the best compliment would be when somebody can actually tell the story 47:00or they feel the emotion of it. I've had people actually tear up on a couple of the pieces because I've started--I never told the stories because every piece is built from a story. No piece is ever made without a story happening first or it being in tandem with a story. I've always kept the stories to myself, and so now I've started kind of letting some of the stories out. I think my favorite thing is when people see the piece, and they go, "I completely understand that emotion." What I'm trying to do is just like in my photography. I want my sculptures to capture that moment of an emotion, that moment of an excitement, a sadness, a choice.

I have a piece where the little girl's head is down, and she's against the wall, and her arms are kind of draped. It's on this beautiful half circle, and it's called Should I Stay or Should I Go? The piece was actually originally built when my mom was in a coma, dying. I felt like her spirit was trapped. She could 48:00heal, but to heal she would be trapped in a shell. So it's your body saying, "Do I stay? Do I go?" You don't want to put that on a wall in a gallery, but it also lays into the idea of anything in life, you have a choice. It's a bad situation. Do you stay? Do you go? Do you cut and run? What do you lose? What do you gain? Though they are very personal to me, I think they have a very universal meaning for most people in society.

Little Thunder: There's some wonderful nuanced emotions in your work, just from the Web. Let's talk a little bit more about your process and techniques. You do mixed media sculptures that combine--you're sort of working with combinations of materials, even with your bronzes.

Wilson: Yeah, I am not a purist. I only went to bronze (and this probably makes 49:00most bronze people cringe) because of what its material can do. I originally--all my sculptures were seated unless they were really large. I wanted the sculptures to stand, and my biggest thing was on their tippy toe. I just wanted that tiny toe connecting them to whatever it is. I use materials based on what the materials represent, so Paper Wings originally was built from a table leg. These table legs at the Indian school, they cut them, (my mom and dad got them when the school closed) and they cut the table legs down to make coffee tables. They had all these little eight table legs, little pieces. They had the old brass caps, and you could see where they had been worn and the life had been in them, gorgeous oak.

She gave them--she goes, "I know you have some purpose for this." I said, "I do. I don't know what." I carried them around for years. It drives my husband crazy because he has to move all my junk. (Laughs) Then I took this table leg, and I 50:00just really loved the idea of the negative space of this leg. Here's this leg, this table. You know it's a table or a chair coming out of the nothingness, and here's this figure. It's kind of like when you're, certain times of the day or night, and you feel these things from the side of your eyes, or this other sense. It's that idea of here's this negativeness, and here this thing that doesn't belong that's in this other place. That's where those things began.

I have a series of little girls with dresses, and there are two of them. One of them is on a branch, reaching, and as she's hanging off the side of this branch, looking around, there's a bird sitting on the edge of the branch, watching her. It's one of the birds, the human birds. It's almost like it's looking and going, "You got yourself into a mess, didn't you, little thing?" There's no conversation, but the look on the bird's face. The bird's made of sterling silver. It's interesting because I call them birds of burden. Birds, anything 51:00that's precious has a value attached to it. The value is that you have to care for it because if you didn't care for it, it wouldn't be a burden to you and it wouldn't be precious.

Things you love in life, though you love them (and some people don't get this) you still--. Like I have two gorgeous children who I love dearly, but I also have to know where their woobies are, and what is their favorite teddy bear, and what is the song they have to sing, and where's this shoe, and where's this toy. You have to have your hand on so many things, so they became birds of burden. The silver birds are made of sterling silver because it's a precious metal. I have another one that I love that I probably should've--it's a little girl, and it's called With Her Burdens, specifically. She has seven birds. They're tucked in her arms, and they're rubbing her cheeks. It's that idea that she's having to care for all these burdens. She loves them, but at the end of the day they can drive you nuts! (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You mentioned you work often from photographs, so does that take the place of any sketching before you pick up--

Wilson: No, they kind of go in tandem. Sometimes I'll just have an idea, a flash. I'll see something in life, and I'll do these really cryptic sketches because I've never considered myself a very good drawer. In art school, and even in high school, I could make things, but I just--my dad could draw, my sister could draw, and their paintings, and I thought, "Aw, I'll never do that." I can, which is really kind of funny, but I never considered it my forte. I use photos when I'm actually out somewhere and I see that exact moment, and I can just capture, capture, capture. Then I'll bring them home, and then sometimes the two become one. Really there's no one or the other. Sometimes I'll sit down and just innately start working and see what comes of that and let the subconscious take 53:00over in those moments.

Little Thunder: What about titles for your pieces? Are they--

Wilson: Oh, they're huge. Yeah, nothing is ever untitled. The titles are the tiny tidbit to let you know, or the story. I have a series of figures that are falling off the walls. I love how the swimmers would hang on the wall, and then they just, there's that moment where they release and they're in. That's where I first started doing the research, looking online for swimmers. It was because I felt like in my life where I was at, I had to decide if I was in or out with what I was doing. I feel like there becomes that moment where you have to release what you're doing and fall in. I think I lost the train of thought on that. I know it had to do with falling figures. What was the initial--.

Little Thunder: Well, we were talking about titles, but...

Wilson: Oh, yeah!

Little Thunder: --you're interested in those moments of--

Wilson: Threshold, one of the pieces was called Threshold. Sorry, I knew there was some way to get back there. Another one was called Blind Faith because the titles represent that meaning of these figures and what they're doing. Some people go, "Oh, they're running up the wall." It's like, "If that's what you want it to do, that's fine," but it's that idea where the title has to give you that. For me, it gives you the rest of that story. Visually, you see it, and you get that. It's like the Should I Stay or Should I Go? That sums it up. I love hearing that at shows. "That totally makes sense. I get that." To me, the title and the piece is hand-in-hand. Sometimes I can't finish the piece until I know either A) the base, the material, or the title. They all have to come together 55:00in a moment to make them all work.

Little Thunder: Would you need to know what you're going to do for the base, you're saying?

Wilson: Yes. I had a piece that I refer to as Mother, and I worked on her for eight years. She's at Bonner David [Galleries] right now. It was really funny. I began her in Chicago, and it was just a simple study of a woman. She was just beautiful. I took her home, and I had these gorgeous little boat forms, and I sat her on there just to get her out of the way. Then I was trying to finish her, and I kept trying to figure out what to put her on. I'd take her off the boat, and I'd move her around. I put her back on the boat, and I realized that was her base. It's weird. Until I understand the whole story of the piece--. I'll rush things sometimes because I'm like, "Ah!" and I regret because it doesn't make sense. It's really funny because they normally don't sell. Then I'll finish what they were doing, and then the piece all comes together and makes sense.

Little Thunder: Okay, so we've talked a little bit about kinds of research that 56:00you do for your sculpture, and part of it, it sounds just like it involves being around your children.

Wilson: Yeah, and then part of it, also, is I've started for some of the work I'm doing now. I have a piece I'm working called Bloodline. My political activism is very, "Shhhh, quiet." I'm working on a piece called Bloodline, and it's tracing my heritage all the way through my family. Before my mom died (actually it happened when my dad died) I realized that if my mom were to pass, she's the last one who has all our stories. She's the last one that has all our history. You know, young people, you're busy living life, and you don't slow down. We started going through all the records she had and who the people were. It's really interesting because it's different history. It's like this is the one that got chased out of Missouri because they were horse thieves, this family. The history is really, it's littered with these beautiful stories about the people, as well.

The piece is about twenty-two foot long. It's this locust tree that fell down by the kids' school. I was just, "Oh, this wood is beautiful," because the heart of it has this beautiful pink flush to it, and then it has this golden color. I, of course, lugged all these pieces of wood home. My husband loves me. For mother's day I bought myself a chainsaw, (Laughs) which I thought was perfect because he got a grill. I cut the wood horizontally down the middle of the tree. It actually will mount on the wall, and you can see the life of the tree through the lines but on a vertical, going up. It's an exhibit that happens in 2015 in Oklahoma Contemporary, and I'm super excited. All across the top, each section is cut. On top is these cigar figures, and the cigar figures are, again, my reinterpretation of an Osage story about the Stick People.

The Stick People would run along the side of your car. This is how old the car 58:00story is because they said, "your running boards." They would call your name. Or they'd be in the woods and they'd call your name, and they'd summon you. If you went, you would vanish, and you'd die. I always wondered what they looked like, but of course nobody's going to tell you because they would've been dead. But the idea of these stick figures--. So in graduate school (I'll circle around, I promise) I started dating a guy who was smoking cigars. He would put the cigars out, and I thought they were these gorgeous little dresses. They just looked feminine, which I thought was amusing that a man is smoking something that has a dress on the end. Then I started playing with sticks, and I thought, "If I were a Stick Person, I would have a cigar-shaped body," this tobacco, this idea.

I took the stick figures, and I reinterpreted it to be cigar figures. There's the tobacco for the cigar, going back to the idea of our culture and what tobacco represents for different people. Then the sticks from nature, actual cast sticks, and the top of the heads are actually flat silhouettes. From one 59:00side, there's absolutely nothing. They're just the shadow of the figure. The other is this relief of the figure. On top of this twenty-two-foot tree, each section is a generation. The research I did with my mom helped me find--originally it was just me and my siblings, and now it's my children. Then it's me and my siblings, and then it's my mother. Then it's my father, and then it weaves between the two. Anybody I have an image of, I'm working historically from the image for their detail, and also their height and placement.

There are these walking cigar figures across the top, and the act of the way the light hits them, they cast a shadow on the wall. The shadow is the memory because memory is intangible. The picture is not the memory; it's the emotion you carry. The piece has the life of the tree, it has the life of my family, my blood, and then it has the memory of my people cast in shadow. As they go farther back in time and there's no imagery, they become less detailed, but they 60:00don't become less important. Then the other thing I found interesting is there was a reference to children of the mist, children who died. I know this is also in Scotland, and my heritage is got Scottish, both Campbell and MacEwen, mixed in with the Delaware and the Cherokee. I'm wondering how much of that is a crossover. Children of the mist are children who died at birth or right thereafter.

So all the way through this history my mom kept reading, and the writings that people wrote about their children is even if the child died before birth, they referred to it as "the boy." "We lost a son." The family still had five kids, even though only three lived. I found that very intriguing all the way through the history, so any of the pieces that the children didn't live, their head piece is dipped in wax. It's all like they're behind a mist or a shawl. Then their head is pointed down, but they're still counted. They represent things 61:00that matter still. That's kind of where I do the history. Then, just reading the different stories, I love the stories that are like the written mythology stories.

I have a series I'm starting that I put in for next year. Got my fingers crossed. It's also going to happen at this same show. It's called Native American Superheroes because I feel like there's this stereotype of what Native Americans are. I want to take stories like, say, "The Three Sisters" and tell a story about the Three Sisters in a contemporary setting in how we are today. They become superheroes. That's the awesome part. There are going to be three women that are created to look like beans, squash, and corn, but what they're fighting is sugar because sugar is a killer for all society. It was all about the mix of the three, and how they grew, and what their powers were to fight 62:00something like sugar. Then I'll make a sugar crystal monster, so here will be these superheroes. That's how I work with mythology or I tell my story, is not through just telling old stories, but how do I take a story and then interpret it in a way that it has meaning and power for me. That's my take.

Little Thunder: These sound like wonderful pieces. So this exhibit you mentioned, the Oklahoma Art Museum?

Wilson: It's Oklahoma Contemporary which used to be City Arts.

Little Thunder: Oklahoma Contemporary which is in Oklahoma City.

Wilson: Yeah, it's Fairgrounds, and it'll be probably one of the last shows because they're building a new building. I originally had presented this idea of this exhibit to Joy Reed Belt at JRB [Art at the Elms]. She was like, "I think it's just too big for my space." She got me in touch with Julie Maguire, and I got to present my whole concept, which I'm excited because it's actually five 63:00components. The sticks, the trees, one. The superheroes, one. Another one is falling figures. It's a whole bunch of falling figures, so it'll end up taking a span of like twenty feet. They're all still tiny figures, and it's under the influence of gravity. It's really talking to the idea of people say, "Well, I didn't have any option. I was drunk or I was--. It was culturally what I had to do." It's that idea of making choices.

Then there is my first step back into life-sized clay figures. I'm really excited, and this is something that started with my mom and my dad, just kind of reconnecting with them. They gave me buck skin and porcupine quills, and I have a bear skin that my dad and them hunted. It's funny because the dog got it, so instead of it being a big bear, it's a whole bunch of little bear pieces. One of the things I'm doing is I'm making Native American masks, my interpretation of 64:00animal masks that are personas. Each of the seven figures representing the Seven Directions, and at the same time the seven tribes of the Cherokee, will have a mask that represents a persona of strength. They'll be like the porcupine. There's going to be a deer skin. There'll be a fox. There'll be a bear. The bear, though the mask is a bear's face, you're going to see the herringbone stitching. You'll see the scars on the face and how it was healed, and that idea of the fragility of even a bear. The figures are all done in white porcelain, and they'll have glass eyes, and so it works.

My mom always talked about animals and that idea that white is the spirituality and the specialness in that spirit. For the exhibit, the children represent portals between the two worlds. When you look at the eyes, you see through the eyes, the window to the soul, and you see the portal between the two worlds. 65:00They're in real masks made from real materials, and then they're going to be positioned through the room and then all around the room. In October in Oklahoma, you get the birds and the grackles and the starlings. They're an invasive bird. They came from Europe. They'll take over a nest, and they'll plant their eggs and kill the babies that are native. It's kind of my political stance for how, as much as I am happy for who I am, it was a violent way that it came. Then the birds are swarming in a tornado form around the seven figures, and then the masks will come off.

I'm photographing my children in them, and that's another series. It's called Native in America. It's the misperception of what Native children have the ability to do. They go to the mall. They go to movies. They read books. They go to libraries. They're in public schools. Each one of them will wear a mask. They jump on trampolines. They swim in pools. Then I'll do large-format photographs 66:00in heightened color of them in the masks, interacting in daily life. Then the whole thing, the educational component, I'm really excited. It came from a birthday party I did for my son. We're going to have students come, and we're going to tell them stories from history and then ask them questions about it. They have to come up with a story using something that has a spirit figure, like, what's an animal of power for you, and what would you be if you could be something.

Then I want them to write a story in today's time so it makes sense to them in today. Then we'll put them in a book. Then we're going to make the mask, and they'll be photographed. I always loved the old photographs where they're, like, on a burlap. They'll be their self before and then their spirit self in the mask We'll photograph them, and then that'll be put in a book. They get to learn about the history, create a history, create a mask, and then make a book, and 67:00then take that story with them. That's the show. Don't tell anybody. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Wow, that is a major undertaking. Is that one of the biggest solo shows that you would've--

Wilson: Ever.

Little Thunder: --ever had?

Wilson: Yeah, with the five components. My goal is to try, once I have more work done, is to start soliciting for a museum show. It has such, I think, a touch on, "Here's today's contemporary," yet at the same time, you're interlaced with the stories. You're torn because I can't change what happened, I can't be happy about it, but I am who I am. Can we take the history we've learned and then change how we deal with our society? I think that is my role as a Native artist or as an artist as a whole, is how can I bring attention to things that are wrong and find a way to address it to where we can make a change?

I've been working on this show, probably, doing sketches and research and idea 68:00working since before my dad passed in 2009. I think my first write up of it was, like, in 2006. We moved here in 2005, and there was that feeling. It started with that picture I took of my son, one of these feelings of, you know, when the birds are going, and really wanting to make these life-size figures and have you have that feeling. The life-size figures are actually children. They're not really big people. Then in the space, you'll be able to walk in around the feeling, all those birds. That was one of the reasons we got a bigger space is I just didn't have anywhere to work congruently in wax and clay and stuff. It will be the biggest thing I've done, and I'm pretty excited. That is set to open May 5 of 2015. I have just over a year to work on that, and it'll run through all of August or to the end of August.

Little Thunder: I hope it gets to travel. It definitely needs to.

Wilson: Thank you.

Little Thunder: So what is you're creative routine? You sort of talked about creative process here throughout, but what's your routine? Do you work in the day? Do you work at night?

Wilson: Well, it's funny because I used to be the night owl. When I had the kids and they weren't in school, it was mom is mom. I was a human chair and whatever we needed to do. I'd do little things, and they'd do them with me. I have all these amazing photographs of them in the studio, making things with me. Like my son cast his first bronze at five, and my daughter has some we just haven't cast in wax. He used to sit across the table from me, and he'd build Play-Doh figures while I built wax figures, so that was that. It was real staccato. Then I'd get them to bed, and I would stay up until two or three, working, and then get up the next day and go.

Now that they're in school, my routine is I try and get up at five and do computery junk. My husband'll go, "No, its five thirty," and I'm like, "I'm 70:00working on five!" Then I get the kids up and get them to school, and depending on the weather, I either go run, (I've started running, trying to find that healthy place in my life) run and walk. Actually, it's a wounded gazelle run, walk. Wounded gazelle run, walk. (Laughter) I come back, and I work until two thirty, and then I go pick them up. Then it's just mom time with them. When my husband comes home, it's catch up. "How are you doing?" Then I shift back out, depending on deadlines. I'll do stuff, and then I shift back in for dinner. Then kids go to bed, and depending on deadlines, I'll shift back out.

Before, I was in the house. It was easy to kind of step into the room, but I felt like I was always being seduced back out. Even though I worked time, I'd do laundry or something stupid, not that laundry is stupid. It's so nice being separate because I even caught myself when I came home from the studio, my 71:00husband was like, "What? How long was that commute? Oh, two minutes across the yard!" I really felt that division, which is awesome. I don't try and do anything. I don't go shopping or any--not like I like stores, unless it has hardware. I don't blow the day. I use it just for the studio, and the new space is nice because I now have stations. I can start investing, or I could run an encaustic. I could do a painting. I can work on this. Things can be happening at the same time. As you get congested one place, you just pick up somewhere else, and so your flow continues to roll.

Little Thunder: Looking back on your career, which has many more years to go, what was one fork-in-the-road moment when you might've gone one way but you went another?

Wilson: When we moved from Chicago. Initially, because I hadn't started showing again, the debate was my husband goes and stays home, and I stay because I was 72:00successful. I was a lead designer and art director at a real estate company. We did the Donald Trump tower and ran photo shoots, and there was big fancy meetings and good money. It was either I stay home with the kid--because I was still working full time, but I was doing it from home. I'd go in one day a week. I had my son, and it was just like I was working sixty-hour weeks, and I wasn't sleeping, and it was like we had to give. The discussion was if we move to Oklahoma then we could be--I was very pressured to try and get back my family for myself, and a connection back to my community, which I'm really glad because I then lost my parents shortly thereafter.

I wanted my kids to know their grandparents, and I wanted them to know their cousins. I wanted to not worry about gunfire (Laughs) in our neighborhood, and I didn't want to pay sixty thousand dollars for them to go to a decent education. That was the fork that at first we were like, "What do we do? Wait a minute." 73:00Now we're like, "It was the right decision," because the connection back to my family, back to my roots, and just to focusing on making art. He's made me promise I will never work in corporate America again. In fact, I have been banned from any regular job-job, ever. That's nice because you don't normally get that, that support. He goes, "You're not nice when you're not making art." (Laughter)

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

Wilson: The high points. Seeing my kids work with me. That's honestly--I mean, there's winning awards, there's selling art, there's getting a gallery, but I think my favorite--I love this, and this is really my favorite thing. We've had shows. I love them out in the studio, but I love when we go out. We have a show, and they go, "That's me!" It is, because I will make a piece, but then I'm not--it doesn't have to be exactly right. I had some lady go, "Well, that 74:00clavicle's not right." I'm like, "She doesn't even have freakin' ears. Of course, the clavicle's not right." I try and get close. Sometimes I'll have the kids positioned. I'll go, "Stand like this." I have all these crazy photographs of them doing this, and they're like, "Are you done yet, Mom?" Then I'll take a 360 [degree] photo because I love the way they're--my son is thin. My son, thank God, does not have my metabolism. He has my husband's. They're both like this big, and you can see their collar bones.

He goes, "Look what I can do." He can bend over and show you every vertebra on his back, every rib. The kid eats and eats and eats, but he's just, he's a butterfly or a hummingbird. I think a hummingbird would be better. It's wonderful to get all those angles. My daughter's still thin, but she has a little more curve. It's wonderful to photograph the two of them. They come out, and they love to sit and make things. I won't make it for them. They have a box of wax pieces, and they build what they want to build. My son is finally getting to where I'll let him touch the hot iron to things to seal it, but with the wax 75:00being so hot--. They love to come out here and make things.

It's a wonderful experience because I feel like my dad did that with me when I was three. I drew while he drew. It's a connection. It's amazing. I have photographs of them. My favorite image--we were talking about things that we remember, and my favorite thing is--she didn't talk until she was three. We had to go and start speech therapy. It was interesting because she would take her shirt and put it over head like it was cuffs. She had this long, banshee hair. She'd be in her cowboy boots and a pair of shorts. She'd get my big sketchbooks, and she'd throw them down. She'd sit squatting on one side, and then she'd frantically draw on the other. She is amazingly talented. I'm not teaching her anything. It's just being in the environment. If she wants to know something, or he wants to know something, I'll explain it, but I've never drawn it for them or erased it. I want them to create whatever they create because I feel like I was 76:00always afraid of things, and I don't want them to be afraid of. Just go with your gut; see where it takes you. I think that's the best reward.

Little Thunder: How about one of the low points?

Wilson: The lowest point, actually it's not been the work, making the work. It's been sometimes the reaction to the work like the sale or no sale. It's funny about the Heard and Santa Fe, because the response was I should've sold my booth seven times over. I mean, the response was amazing. People were in awe of the work and not in like, "Yeah, I'm so good." I think my work is so different that people have a hard time knowing what to do with it, is the best way. I also wonder sometimes if it is such an honest look that some people don't want to 77:00look at the mirror because it's not always happy, fun. "It's not cupcakes," as my husband says. He goes, "You don't make cupcakes. You make beef stew, and not everybody can handle beef stew, hearty stew with potatoes and stuff."

Last year was really upsetting because I didn't know what was happening for my work. I wasn't going to change it. That's the beauty is we make just enough to not go on vacation, but just enough that I don't have to go get a corporate America job. I sell enough to cover my costs, but it was really kind of--I was shocked. I didn't know what was going on. The response was, I have people who were just in love with the work, but it wasn't selling like you would think being in love with the work would sell. Luckily, at the end of the year I realized I'm laying seeds. That's what I'm doing. I'm going to continue to work. 78:00The response is what I need, but the sell is not what makes it. I touched all these people's lives, and they understood what I was doing. At first, you get so caught up because you're worried. "I got to buy more metal. I got to buy more investment. How are we going to do this?" But it was just that connection. My low point was just not quite getting it, if that makes any sense there.

Little Thunder: Totally. We're getting ready to take a look at your work. Is there anything we've forgotten to cover?

Wilson: I don't think so. I'm sure I'm crazy as a bedbug, but that's about it. (Laughs).

Little Thunder: Well, we're going to pause a minute and talk about some of your pieces. Okay, we're looking at one of your sculptures on a stand here, on a base. You want to tell us about her?

Wilson: Her name is How About No? It's kind of derived from two points. One is watching my daughter. You can kind of see how the hands are in the back, and how little kids'll kind of put their feet in the ground and stick their chest out and say no. The other reason is it's built on an idea about me saying no because 79:00I said yes, yes, yes. I'll say yes until I don't sleep at night and behind on my schedule to appease other people. My husband was, "How about you start saying no?" This is kind of that marriage. Also a great example of that working between seeing myself in my children and trying to change some of the habits I have and showing them how to change their habits. She's bronze. My construction's really simple. I try and find the easiest way to put things together. The whole thing is bronze, and this is textured from a wood and then built, so it's actually all created.

This is the silly part, but it's the happiest part. They all have ruffled panties. (Laughter) My great-grandmother used to go to town, and she'd always go, "Oh, wait. I have to go get my good pelaches." Pelaches is "underwear" in, I think, Cherokee. I always think of her when I make sure everybody has their good 80:00town underwear on, their pelaches. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: That's so funny. Great. Okay, would you like to tell us about these pieces?

Wilson: This is a series of figures that are what I refer to as my cigar figures. If you look at them, this body is made from a cigar. I make a mold of them, and then I pour wax. The legs are actual sticks. This shows you the face where it has the detail, and the side is his silhouette. It comes from the story. Here's one where you see the tiny little delicate feet, and then they go into a base. You can see how they'll have toenails and knuckles and ankle bones. It's the idea of how far a person has walked, the distance they've carried. All of the sticks are made from real sticks that are cast, and that is part of the cigar which goes into the bloodline piece that I had spoken about previously.

Little Thunder: Wonderful. Okay, how about this piece?

Wilson: This is Threshold. She is from the series about the fallen figures, and the difference is this one actually has a dress. Most of the fallen figures are--not that they're androgynous, but they have no clothing on. This one I wanted that feeling of that female form and the dress. It's that idea where you have to release to go to the next level. Sometimes it's scary, and so Threshold is that. I love to look words up and find their meanings and all the different things they represent. "Threshold" is described as the place between two places, so it's not anything specific. With her, you see where she has let go of the wall, and her face isn't scared. It's more accepting of, "This is what I've decided to do." In my life I feel like I have many times where I've had to let go the reins of control and fall into what it is. It's a controlled fall in that 82:00you know you're choosing it, but it's still a very scary moment when you know that you can't control how you might land. So that's what they represent.

Little Thunder: Do you mind showing us how it hangs because it's got--

Wilson: Yes. This is biggest hitch at the moment. Any wall, sheetrock or wood, it's just a part of the pin, and of course she has nice pelaches, too. (Laughter) Then the pin goes in, and it works on the pivot of the weight. The weight of the body, which is about two pounds, actually holds it in place in the wall, so it's completely free standing. What I love is when you get the shadows on it. You get the negative space around her so it has that, but then you get the shadows around it.

Little Thunder: They're a big part of the total look. Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Wilson: Thank you. I'm honored that you chose me and came out. That's pretty exciting.

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