Oral history interview with Jesse Hummingbird

Little Thunder: My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Monday, April 7, 2014, and I'm interviewing Jesse Hummingbird for the Oklahoma Native Artists Project sponsored by the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We're at the Wheeler Taft Abbett Library in Tucson, Arizona, where Jesse met me. Jesse, you're a Cherokee tribal member who's painted professionally for a long time. You've always had a very distinct style, and in addition to winning top awards at major art shows, a feature article in Native Peoples magazine, numerous books, and being designated Indian Artist of the Year by the Indian Arts and Crafts Association (IACA), you've done a lot of fun commission work, so I look forward to hearing more about that today. Thank you for meeting with me.

Hummingbird: My pleasure.

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

Hummingbird: I was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, February 12, 1952. That's Lincoln's birthday. I at least had that in common with someone famous. I was 1:00born at the city hospital turns out, not the Indian Hospital. Why? I don't know. When I was a little bit less than a year old, (my dad, he'd married my mom, he had five previous kids to support, and learned and became a welder) we moved to the Deep South, South Carolina. He worked on first reactors that they put in down at the Savannah A-bomb plant, as we used to call it. Off and on through the years, Oklahoma, the South, and eventually worked for TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority], so we ended up in Nashville, Tennessee, where I went to junior high, high school, and part of college. I have a southern background.

Through the years, maybe a year, half a year in Oklahoma during layoffs and stuff like that, or an illness, my mother had to tend to family back there, and 2:00it kind of separated our family. My brother Eddie and some of his brothers, they grew up more in Oklahoma than I did and lived with my Grandma there in Tahlequah. My Dad's folks were all gone, so my real connection to Oklahoma is through my mother's family, the Bracketts, and my grandma was a Batt. We had uncles and aunts that lived out in Welling, Oklahoma. I know about Barren Fork and the Illinois River, and I have a lot of fond memories from summers on my Uncle Buzz's farm.

Little Thunder: Yeah, I was going to ask you about your relationship with your grandparents on either side.

Hummingbird: I only had the one grandparent, and that was my grandmother, Jane Brackett. My grandmother Ragsdale on my dad's side, she had passed way before I 3:00was born, and his dad took him and his twin siblings to Sequoyah to be taken care of there. At that time, it was kind of like a boarding orphanage. Then his dad would take them out so they could help on the farm and stuff in the summertime. Really, he was almost brought up like an orphan. My grandma was the only one, although I think of my Uncle Buzz as my grandfather figure. He kind of played the more traditional Indian uncle. My mother's brothers had their own families and could care less about being Indians.

Little Thunder: Were you around the language at all?

Hummingbird: When I was small, my grandmother could read and write Cherokee, and throughout the years she lost the ability to write it fluently. In the old days, whenever I was a pre-teen, I remember her friends and a couple of medicine people, and they would sit and converse in Cherokee. Os i yo, do hi tsu [hello, how are you] is about all I can say, and a few words. It really is a use-it-or-lose-it language, even though my Navajo friends say theirs is the hardest language. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Did you have any artists in your immediate or extended family?

Hummingbird: My dad, he did a little bit of bead work, and he drew a lot. Then as he got older and worked more over time, he lost that ability. Everybody else in my family, I thought, was so much smarter than me, that art was the thing 5:00that could separate me from them. Being the dumb one, it turned out the difference was they took books home, and they worked harder at school. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: So you're spending a lot of your primary, elementary school years in North Carolina or in Tennessee?

Hummingbird: South Carolina.

Little Thunder: Yes, South Carolina, sorry.

Hummingbird: There is a big difference. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Yes, there is a big difference. Were you often the only Native kid in your classroom?

Hummingbird: Well, about the only decent housing they had whenever we went down there was government houses. They weren't projects; they were individual little houses. For one year, there was an Indian family, and they had three boys: one about my age and the other two older. Every now and then, they would say, "Okay, let's play Cheyennes and Cherokee." (Laughter) Other than those folks, no. It 6:00was pre-"I got a grandma that was a Cherokee." It was pre-those days. If they would've been, they wouldn't have probably admitted it. We always were Indians with my last name. If you saw my dad, you'd think he stepped off the nickel. His profile and everything looked like that, so we were always the Indians.

The school board actually met when we moved down there, (I wasn't in school) whether my brothers and sisters were going to go to the black school or to the white school because it was the segregated South, Apartheid, probably pretty much like South Africa. I mean, I grew up with black and white water fountains and no integrated restaurants and things like that. Luckily I was a cute kid, 7:00and so it was no big deal being a cute little Indian boy. We had a visit from the Ku Klux Klan one time at the house when I was young, over an incident on the school bus. My mother overreacted, and turned out this kid's dad was a Klan member. He had a little cross, and they knocked on the door. Some threats were made, but my mother didn't take threats kindly.

Little Thunder: Thank you for sharing that. What is your first memory of seeing Native art?

Hummingbird: Well, my dad was working on a vocational education degree, and he went to Bacone [College]. I kind of remember going to Agency Hill and seeing the Five [Civilized] Tribes Museum. It was the good old stuff, Tigers, and Crumbos, and Acee Blue Eagle. That stayed in my mind, and whenever I got older and 8:00started painting, I was more of surrealist. (I call myself a distortionist. Thought I'd be real creative.) I didn't want to do Indian art because I thought it was a dead end street. The good stuff had already been done. It turned out one of my relatives was Cecil Dick that lived there in Tahlequah. I would go and visit him whenever I got into college age, and we spent a lot of good time together, have beers, and smoke, and talk. The man was so well versed in art. Everybody thinks, "Indian art, Indian art." If you don't know, Cecil was one of the first non-Kiowas that went out to Dorothy Dunn's studio in Santa Fe.

We'd talk Renaissance and everything else. He said, "Jesse, when you going to do Indian art? Jesse, when you going to do Indian art?" I said, "I don't know, Cecil," because Cecil painted old school, too. He was right. One day I was 9:00messing around, and inspiration hit. By then, there was more contemporary stuff being done, late ʼ60s going on early ʼ70s, that wasn't in the old traditional style. Don't get me wrong. I love old traditional stuff. That's my first memories, going up to Agency Hill. On the campus of Bacone at that time, you could still see some of the influences from there.

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

Hummingbird: It's probably not until I was almost a teenager because my first experiences that I put aside were horrible. People in my family made fun of it, so I just didn't share it with anybody. I kind of remember buying one of those little long strips of watercolor, and that horrible brush, and some pencils, and 10:00that's probably around twelve, thirteen.

Little Thunder: When you were around your other siblings, were they also experimenting with art or not?

Hummingbird: No, they all had a kind of ear for music instead. Either they were greasers who didn't care a thing about school, or they were very smart. My older brother and my brother Eddie, they all studied science and things like that. My one sister was good in math, and art might've seemed like a waste of time to them.

Little Thunder: Did you have any art experiences in the public schools at the elementary or junior high level?

Hummingbird: In junior high, I had an art class. I had a friend at the time, and 11:00we just were a couple of goofs. They gave us a bunch of crayons. I mean, here we are teenagers, and they gave us crayons and some paper. We started doing monster pictures of each other, and the teacher actually came by and encouraged me. That was the first encouragement I ever got. Her name was Ms. Gilcrease, and I'll always remember her for that. For an hour a day in this horrible inner-city school in Nashville where people were aging out in the seventh grade (they were going on eighteen, they had to quit school) this was like an hour of heaven. (Laughs) My first year, the principal came by and said, "What's your name?" I said, "Jesse. Jesse Hummingbird." He said, "How come you're in the hall all the time?" I said, "I'm a hall monitor." He said, "No one's hall monitor for five periods, boy." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: How about your art experiences in high school?

Hummingbird: That was another good experience. Actually, I had some of my work put in competitions from other schools. I'm still going to an inner-city school at this time, but the art supplies were better. We would compete against the kids from Belmont area and stuff like that. They had oil paints, and we had water colors and pastels. I think I won a couple Honorable Mentions a couple years. You just kind of mounted it on a piece of poster board, and it'd be shown at the local mall. They'd have a little ribbon saying Honorable Mention. Those were good years. By then I'd determined that I wasn't going to be a bank president, or president of anything, or chief or anything like that. I was going to be an artist. Why? Because you could be odd, and it looked like an easy life 13:00at the time. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: When did you sell your first piece of art?

Hummingbird: When did I sell my first piece of art? It might have been in Dallas. I was doing Prismacolor drawings from the Dee Brown books and stuff like that, real chiefs. I think I was selling them for fifteen to--they were all under fifty dollars. It seemed like I sold a bunch of those then.

Little Thunder: You were in your twenties then?

Hummingbird: Yeah, I was still working full time.

Little Thunder: I think the first school of higher education you went to was Watkins Institute of Art and Design.

Hummingbird: Well, now it's a very--I just got some information from them this past year. Now it's a very prestigious school. At the time, it was downtown Nashville, and it was a lot of genteel Southern women that were learning to do 14:00still lifes. And at the time, it was an adult institution, but my mother persuaded them to take this troubled kid in and give him something to do on a Saturday. I started going there, and I think I went two years, every Saturday, about fifteen, sixteen years old.

Little Thunder: It sounds like your mom was supportive of your art.

Hummingbird: Well, I was a pain in her butt forever, and so if she thought she could encourage me, or if I was happy doing something and got out of her hair, she was all for it.

Little Thunder: So what prompted you to go on to Middle Tennessee State College?

Hummingbird: I didn't really want to go to college, but it was like, "Go be a teacher. Go be a teacher." Well, it lasted about nine to twelve weeks. I lost my 15:00student deferments, so I automatically was eligible for the draft. That's how bad I wanted to get out of college. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: So you went to Vietnam?

Hummingbird: No. Lucky duck. I grew up in a trailer park in Nashville, and all these guys had been to Vietnam once or twice Some of them that were professional soldiers said, "Birdman, you don't want to go to ʼNam. Birdman, you won't live if you go to ʼNam." They said, "Wait and get drafted." Well, by 1970, which is whenever I hit eighteen, they went to the lottery system. I had number 340 or 342, and nobody over fifteen went. I'm one lucky duck. I'm proud of all my friends and family that have been in the service, but I took it from my veterans in the neighborhood that they knew what they was talking about.

Little Thunder: How about University of Tennessee, because you took a couple of art classes there?

Hummingbird: Sandy's got--art classes. I took all the art classes until they finally said, "This is an academic school, not an art school." It was a nice school. It was a branch of the University of Tennessee, nice instructors and everything else. I really didn't want to go to college, and I couldn't afford an art school. I finally was two classes from graduating, and going to school at night, and working all day and everything. After--let me see. How many years did it say? After four years, you kind of go, "Enough's enough. What am I going to do with a degree?" Now I wish I'd done it.

Little Thunder: What kind of base do you feel like you got there for your professional artist career?

Hummingbird: Well, I learned the principles that I think all people, unless 17:00you're just savant, needs: design, 2D design, learned to sculpt a little bit. Learned the fundamentals of oil painting and things like that, (of course, I'm not an oil painter today) just a good, solid, basic art education. Being in night school, I actually had one instructor in oil paints that had taught Jamie Wyeth. He was a semi-professional artist, himself. He was a professional drunk first, but that's another story. Then had one Russian immigrant, you know, whenever they let the first Jews out, who brought a whole different perspective, that East European perspective on art. He wasn't one of these Russians I see in 18:00California that can copy old masters. He was actually into Paul Klee type of stuff.

Little Thunder: Chagall.

Hummingbird: Yeah, he didn't buttonhook. I had friends that went to college full time and got their BFA, and they painted exactly like their teachers, which is not uncommon for art schools. At least going to night school, you never had the same professor over and over that you fell into that trap. I didn't do printmaking. That was the only traditional art form I didn't get into at that time. I studied that later.

Little Thunder: How would you describe your style and subject matter, then, right after you got out of school?

Hummingbird: Well, like I said, I was doing a pseudo-surrealism thing that I 19:00call distortionist, like a Magritte type of thing, looking at mainstream art magazines and things like that. Then, like I said, one day inspiration just hit me, and I've been doing Indian art ever since. I started out doing pen and ink, colored pencils, and then for the longest time now I've been using acrylics.

Little Thunder: How did you meet your wife, Sandy?

Hummingbird: In Nashville, Tennessee I was still messing around with college a little bit, but I decided I needed a vocation. I went to (what's the name of it?) Nashville Tech and studied graphic art. I learned the ins and outs of the print business from binding to printmaking, collating to paste-up, and design, 20:00stuff you don't do today in the business. I took this job I got at Peabody College, which is now part of Vanderbilt University, but at the time it was a small private teachers college of Nashville. I got this job on this federal grant money at this little college, and it turned out Sandy was a road person for it. She went out and taught teachers seminars and things like that. We finally started going to happy hour together. Don't do that if you're young. We got to know each other, and eventually I guess it was meant to be.

Little Thunder: How did you first go about marketing your work?

Hummingbird: I really didn't know how when I became an Indian artist because it 21:00was totally different. When I was a trying to become a regular artist, friends of mine in Nashville, we would rent space and throw our own shows. One time, The Tennessean did even give us an article on it, but we barely sold anything. I still had to work for a living in those days. When it came to Indian art, thank God, I was around a lot of nice people in those days that kind of mentored me. Bill Rabbit was just hitting his stride then, kind of took me under the wing. I don't know. We probably did too much drinking them days, but it seemed like you did a lot of networking in bars. At least we convinced ourselves we did.

Between them old guys like him and some of the other folks, I just started doing powwows. Next thing you know, you meet an art gallery owner that someone has 22:00said, "You ought to look at this guy." "Oh, yeah, he can do a show with us." Then find out museums have competitions. Today I do art markets. I do very little gallery business. I got in the habit of being my own marketing person. Whenever I introduce myself at a political thing or something, I say I'm a small businessman because in my town everybody's an artist.

Little Thunder: So did your getting involved with Native art correspond to that period when you were back in Oklahoma?

Hummingbird: I started my Indian art full time when we left Dallas. We were only in Dallas two years, and then we went to Tulsa. I got to look it up here real 23:00quick. I don't know when it was.

Little Thunder: It was in the ʼ80s.

Hummingbird: Yeah, let me see. No, it was probably mid-ʼ80s, yeah. Then I decided I'd get on the powwow trail because that was about what my prices were. I was kind of still trying to get my feet under me for doing Indian art, so I was doing very traditional-looking things and trying to learn what my contemporaries would be doing. I was on the powwow circuit probably about two, two and a half years, even joined a club, the IICOT [Intertribal Indian Club of Tulsa] Club there in Tulsa. I used to be able to drum and sing a little bit of Southern.

Little Thunder: How did you figure out how to price your work when you started 24:00doing the Native art circuit professionally?

Hummingbird: I don't know if I've even learned today. As old as I am, as long as I've been doing it, I'm generally the cheapest guy at an art show. Some of my friends really ask a lot of money for their work and get a lot of it, but I kind of feel like everybody should be able to afford art, I guess. I do have a print line, giclées, and my originals, but I'm pretty prolific. I'm no Bill Rabbit, but I'm pretty prolific, so I don't worry about pricing. It's probably by size. Living in Arizona is good because we have a year-round art market close at hand, but we've been in a recession. I haven't raised my prices in probably eighteen months. I've got to, though. It won't be much, but I got to raise them.

Little Thunder: What's the best business tip you got from either another artist or maybe a gallery owner or dealer?

Hummingbird: Just to be upfront and honest with your buyer because if you have that buyer, you should have a collector. A collector means they're going to buy more than one. Try to be as friendly as you can. People really want you to be their friend, too. I mean, I see all types out there, but sitting back, if you're not selling your stuff, the guy next to you is selling. They're going to buy from the person that makes them happy or gives them something to think about, that they know they can come back and you're going to be in business, and 26:00that price would be a good price when they come back. That's all I can say.

Little Thunder: What was your first major award in Native painting, in Indian art?

Hummingbird: I think it was at Agency Hill. I won the Graphics, I think. It was at that time. I was doing pen and ink, and I think I won honorable mention there once or twice before. This time I took a blue ribbon. It was a pen and ink panel, about five little drawings matted out to be a long one. Linda Greever who had the Art Market in Tulsa was always great about letting artists come in. 27:00She'd work with you, or you could do it yourself. You could do unusual things in those days. I did a good job matting it, and I didn't have to worry about the size because of Linda's shop, because she had that frame business, too. That was probably the first big one I remember because now they have (well, they did then, too) the Masters show. If I was going to live in Oklahoma, which at the time looked like it was a possibility, then you might as well try to become a Master there.

Then things started changing. All of a sudden people start asking to see your Indian paper, and this is about the time I was leaving Oklahoma. That certainly caused a big rift in the Indian community then because we'd all been doing shows. I got my papers back in the ʼ70s, and some people--. Our Indian Cherokee 28:00community club had someone in the other day, and there's really nothing you can do for people whose folks didn't get on the Dawes Rolls. I had nothing to do with it, but for some reason it caused such a rift. Like I said, I was moving out here at the time. I'm glad I escaped from a lot of that.

Little Thunder: Why did you decide to move to Arizona?

Hummingbird: I always went where Sandy had work and she got a good job offer out here. I don't know. I'm one of those Okies that catches the wind and just rolls along. Do you know that there's two kinds of Okies? Ones that'll never leave Oklahoma, and the other one that wouldn't mind getting on a bus and trying someplace else. I'm that guy. (Laughter) I love Oklahoma and my friends and family, but I love this desert and the mountains.

Little Thunder: Some artists have to experiment for a while before they find a style, but I remember in the mid-ʼ80s that you sort of had your style, I think, at that point, when you were showing with Linda.

Hummingbird: Well, this lady came in from Indiana two winters ago and set up an appointment, spent some time down in Bisbee at the house. Her husband had collected almost fifty of my pieces, and it's back when I was more a traditional artist. I can see where I started changing then and moving more into folk art style. From that point I went into this, I don't know, geometric movement thing, but I ran out of stories, and I felt I was in a corner. Today I tell people to 30:00think of Peter Max meeting Grandma Moses. (Laughter) Pop art is kind of where my head is, but I'm doing this style because I want to tell stories. I want to start a Caddo story when I get home, and I like to try to do complicated stories on one panel.

So far, the four or five I've done has been really a good way to go commercially, but also intellectually satisfying. You sit in your studio, and I do, day after day, even if I can only be in there an hour. I paint. I paint. You get yourself going on these things, and sometimes you get in a rut. You got to challenge yourself. I think at a certain age, too, (I'm in my sixties now) you can't be complacent just because you've been there, done that, been there, done 31:00that because you find out when you get to my age, the next important thing is the up-and-coming artist. An old man's got a stay on top of it. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Can you talk a little bit about the design elements in your work because they seem to be a connective thread?

Hummingbird: Well, people always said Aztec and Mayan, and I say, "Yeah, from the Mounds." Then at the same time, like I said, right now it's just, you know good design when you study art. No one's that unique that you can go out and create your own style, so don't be afraid to borrow. Try to camouflage it; try to make it your own. I think that's been as successful as it could. Now, my art, if you go online to my websites, you'll see I cut myself a very small piece of 32:00the Indian art pie. It's not for everybody. I have been lucky, and I have had my share of collectors.

Little Thunder: What I like about your painting is that I think it has often a joyful feeling. Are you conscious of working for that?

Hummingbird: No. People say, "This will be great for a children's room." I think it's a backhanded compliment, but I think, yeah, that child still lives in all of us unless you really had a horrible childhood. That's all right with me. I don't want to put anybody down, but one reason I put off doing Indian art, because it was always so sad, the end of the Trail or something like that. In the beginning, I purposely didn't want to do the melancholy. I wanted to do the Indian humor side that all of us Indian folks know about. Not enough, I don't 33:00think, non-Indian folks know about. So, yeah, I think I did it purposely, and there's nothing wrong with it. A lot of my work is romantic. People come up to--one time I was doing angels. Someone said, "Indians don't believe in angels." I said, "What?!" (Laughs) It's like some people don't think Indians believe in romance, I think, too, holding hands, walking together and stuff. Come on, folks. It's the twenty-first century. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: In 1996 you won the Indian Arts and Crafts Artist of the Year award. What did that mean to you?

Hummingbird: Well, like I said, Bill and Karen Rabbit were really strong mentors of mine, and they talked me into going to--. IACA was a wholesale show. At the time it was probably on its way down for the painters, but it was still good. I 34:00got in there, and I got a handful of those ol' traders that would support me and started wholesaling a lot of my stuff across the country. That was when business was good. Bill had been Artist of the Year.

This was when my style had changed again. I was really unsure, like my heads were squares and stuff like that. I was really unsure of the style. I did a romantic kind of American Gothic piece in my head, but my style, and it won. They gave me fifteen hundred bucks, so I was pretty happy. By the time I won, it didn't mean what it used to mean. I am that guy, "You should've been here last year. You should've been at this show last year." I'm that guy that's always the 35:00year behind, or two years behind, but I was happy. Fifteen hundred bucks is fifteen hundred bucks, I'm sorry. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: You also around that time got a fellowship from SWAIA, the [Southwestern Association for Indian Arts] that works with Indian Market, and you used it to study printmaking. Where did you study?

Hummingbird: I lived in Cochise County, which is a southern-border county here in Arizona. We have a good community college network down there, and so for, like, fifty bucks a semester (and all supplies are given to you) I went in and learned how to become an engraver, do monoprints. I did it for a while, probably three years, but it just wasn't for me because I started out doing black and 36:00white. Monoprints, I guess it's still hot, but it was really hot back then. You sit there, and you paint up a plate. I couldn't get past my old brain, "Why don't I go home and paint on a piece of paper or canvas instead of doing all this other rigamarole stuff?"

I fulfilled what I told SWAIA I was going to do. I know the ins and outs of it, but I'd moved on. My nephew Travis Hummingbird got his MFA from Tulsa University, and he's a printmaker. I gave it to him, but so far he hasn't picked it up from my brother Eddie, and so we were looking. There was a young Ryan Smith out there that was working with some Cherokee art education. He was supposed to pick it up and take it to someplace where the students could use it, 37:00so I don't know where my press is. It's in limbo. (Laughter.) If you're interested, Eddie Morris in Steely Hollow, if you need a printing press for students or something like that, will be more than happy to donate it to you.

Little Thunder: Speaking of Eddie, when he decided to get into sculpting professionally on a full-time basis, did you guys have a few conversations, because you had been doing the professional art thing for so long?

Hummingbird: He was carving those wooden pieces he's so well known for, and so he had joined IACA. He was telling me about how he went one summer and studied under Allan Houser, so it sounded like he was going to do it. I kept thinking, "Well, geez, what's he going on, a senior scholarship?" He's not that much older 38:00than me, but he was probably reaching fifty by then. I joke to him today about it. I think Eddie's found his talent. He's been very successful at it and everything else. Like I said, he was one of the smarties in the family because he went ahead and stayed at something and got a retirement. He's able to be more free, I think, in some way than an old guy that has to make a living doing this.

Little Thunder: You've done a lot commission art for posters. Are there challenges with doing that kind of poster art?

Hummingbird: Well, in the old days people would say, "Okay, we're going to do that piece for next year's posters." It seemed like the last eight to nine years, they want to give you an idea, but the rule of thumb is, whenever I used to get commission work when I started out, if someone wanted a darn train and I 39:00don't do trains, I wouldn't try to do it. Now I say, "Okay, you see my style. Now just tell me the elements you want in it. I'll do a drawing for you, and we'll change the drawing. Then we'll talk color." That's how the poster business seemed to have gone.

I just wound up doing a poster (well, it's already done) for a show this summer, small show up in Apache Country, and it was an old piece that I already had. Overall, most people don't do posters no more. I'm on the advisory committee at a couple of shows, and if we're going to do anything at all, it's going to be t-shirts. People just don't want to spend the money framing a darn poster no more, and it ain't cheap, and everybody wants a t-shirt.

Little Thunder: You've done a number of illustrations for books. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges of illustrating?

Hummingbird: My wife and I have four or five activity books. She was probably the most demanding person about illustrating for anybody. She wasn't horrible, you know, but just goes back to getting a good art education and with my commercial art background, too. You learn these little tricks doing thumbnails and seeing about the flow of it. That's the hardest part about being an illustrator is that it should all look like the same person did it, and it should have a flow to it. That's the hardest thing in most people's head, but it can be done. Like I said, you storyboard it, thumbnail it, storyboard it, do a 41:00final drawing, and then look at it one more time, making changes. Then paint the darn thing if it's going to be painted.

My two children's books, this guy actually looked for a person to work with for about six years, Gary did, Gary Robinson. Finally at this museum show in LA, one of the ladies at the show said, "Have you talked to Jesse Hummingbird?" He said, "No, should I?" She said, "Go talk to Jesse Hummingbird." We had a brief lunch, and I said, "Here's the way I work. The problem is, the reason I won't work with many people is because you already have an idea of what you want and you're not going to be flexible." He says, "No, I don't. Maybe I would have done that six years ago, but I want these things done." I said, "It's not that I don't want 42:00your input. I want you to be happy, but let me run with it."

It's talking about our [Native American] Night Before Christmas. They said in the Santa Fean paper that it was the 800th version of the Night Before Christmas that has really been published. He talks about tipis, and I'm thinking of putting satellite dishes on them and TVs inside of them and things like that, and the daddy wearing bunny slippers. He said, "Just draw it out, and we'll go from there." It was a really fun project, and we had a publisher lined up. Don't do nothing unless you got a publisher lined up. That's the first rule for me. It 43:00got washed away in Katrina, so it took us another five years to find a publisher. Gary's a filmmaker, also. He did these DVD versions, and the Indian PBS version up in Nebraska picked them up and distributed it for him. They were shown on PBS channels at Christmastime, like, three years ago. We were very fortunate about that. If you're going to be a full-time artist, try not to say no every time someone brings an idea to you. Try to be flexible, but don't use your own money. That's the secret. You spend thousands and get back dollars. Okay.

Little Thunder: You did a solo show called Oklazona in 2009 at the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona. Can you describe your goals for that show and its title?

Hummingbird: Well, you can't call someone an Okie unless you've been born there. Otherwise it's an insult. This part of the world in San Diego and the beaches in California, they call us "zonies" as a put down. I wanted to call it Okiezonies, but they wouldn't let me do that. I know they're head archaeologist and stuff over there, really good, Sandy Lynch, and she had an idea to get five contemporary artists, Indian artists, to do something called Beyond the Rawhide Ceiling or something like that.

I was going to be first because she figured I could get my act together. (Like I said, I'm prolific. We could theme it if we wanted to, and I said, "No, I don't want to theme it.") Then this lady friend of mine, Judith Durr, she does these 45:00real traditional still lifes with Indian blankets and pots and moccasins and things like that; then a real well-known Hopi artist that's dead now, Paul Kabotie, was going to be either next to last or last; and Baje Whitethorne who is a pretty well-known contemporary Navajo painter.

We did lose Kabotie, but we pulled it off. We was hoping that we could get a Ford Foundation or something, maybe travel it, but we couldn't. It was the beginning of the recession, but it was a successful show. We could sell, which is unusual for most museums. I think I sold three or four on opening, and I think I ended up selling all but one. I did a series of Booger paintings if you 46:00Cherokees knows what boogers are. I was one of the first ones to start doing them again, not to be blowing my own horn. They are tough ones to sell, but I love doing my Boogers. I think I still got the Booger that I put in that show.

Little Thunder: What is your most important booth show these days?

Hummingbird: Well for me, Indian Market's not a good show for painters. I put Santa Fe in the top five all the time. The Heard's always been a good market for me. It's the consistency. Like I was supposed to have been on the waiting list this year, but I got in. The not knowing of getting in some of these other shows--. I do this small show up in the Denver area, the Tesoro Foundation at Morrison, and it's always in the top three shows. Sharlot Hall is up and down 47:00like a roller coaster. I'm on their advisory board, and we have a small group of Indian artists there, less than ninety. The majority of us, we feel like it's like a little homecoming when we're there that weekend. It generally monsoons one day. The adversity brings us together, too. I do my last show in December up at Pueblo Grande, and I've helped them out through the years on advisory--. I don't know. It's one of those shows that's never been a great selling show. I have a buddy up there that works with somebody on the East Coast, and he'll bail me out if it's a real slow show and gives me cash. I think I do several shows just out of habit.

Little Thunder: You don't do a lot Oklahoma shows, though. Why is that?

Hummingbird: Last time I drove to Oklahoma, it was right at fourteen hours to Oklahoma City, (Laughs) and not the prettiest drive in the world, either, even though I try to make it pretty. Down here in the south, I got to take [Interstate] 10 over to Las Cruces, go up to Ruidoso, and then I can come across and come up underneath Amarillo. Once you hit that other side of where Peter Hurd lived, there in San Patricio Valley, it's pretty ugly until you get up in Oklahoma again.

Little Thunder: You painted an electric guitar for the Hard Rock Café Casino in Catoosa. What did you enjoy about that?

Hummingbird: Well, I have a buddy in Bisbee. He's a guitar guy. He came over and 49:00took it all apart for me so I could just really wail on the painting of it. It's the first thing and the last thing I ever did for the Nation, so I wanted to play it safe. I called Anna Mitchell (at the time, she was still alive) to make sure I was doing the right Eagle Dancers. I tried to do an old-school Eagle Dancer on the front and back of it. Right whenever you go into the Sweet Potato, Wild Potato, whatever it is, the buffet there, it's right in your vision whenever you go in, unless they moved it. It was a challenge, and it was nice little payday. It had never been out of the box, so that was cool. I had to sand it off and everything else, and some of the other guys did some interesting 50:00things. It was probably one of the last things that Bill Rabbit and I participated together with because I think he's got one in there.

I had done another instrument. I was up at the Tesoro Foundation in Morrison, and this woman come up and said, "You're Jesse Hummingbird." I said, "Yes ma'am." She said, "I'm with the Children's Youth Orchestra here in town. For years we've been getting old violins, and artists' hands for them to paint, and then we would auction them off for a fundraiser." I did that, but that fiddle probably hadn't seen a good day in a long time. It was in bad shape. I did this old myth that I created called Buffalo Girl I came up [with] for all the strong women. I wanted to reward them for influencing my life. I do this character, 51:00Buffalo Girl, and she's on the front. She's always teasing this guy called Red Pony Boy, and he's on the back. (Laughter) It's a sky thing. It's very pop-arty. They sold it, and I was first Indian artist to do that because I beat my Navajo friend by a week. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What are the advantages or disadvantages of being a Cherokee artist in Arizona?

Hummingbird: Well, the amazing thing of it is, is that whenever I moved out here, I had to get used to everybody out here conversing into their own language and not being upset about it, but they really have treated me no different. My Navajo friends, I've been around so long that they'll say, "Yá'át'ééh," and start talking to me. My friend, Evelyn will say, "Yata what?" (Laughter) I never 52:00been treated as an outsider by my peers out here.

I've seen a lot of these folks; it's like if I stayed in Oklahoma. Kids grow up, become adults, themself. One friend of mine is from Oklahoma, too. He's a Seminole and Yuchi or whatever it is. When his daughter was small (this was before we all started getting our tents) I was demonstrating. I was still drinking beer, and I was just sweating like a pig. She went over to Randy and said, "Daddy, Daddy, you know your friend?" He said, "What friend?" "Your fat friend. He's over there melting. Can I take him a umbrella?" (Laughs) Now she's pushing thirty. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What project are you working on that you're currently excited about?

Hummingbird: I really have no outside projects at this time. I'm just finished 53:00up two commission works, and I got two more I've got to get done. Right now, I'm just working on inventory, and I'm working on this Caddo story about Thunder Boy and Lightning. I got to see if I can get this drawing done, that it makes sense to me, and then ask someone like my wife, "If I tell you this story, can you see it in this painting?" Then from there, go on. It's really a long one, so I'm going to have to edit it down. Right now, like I said, those are the challenges. If you're in the studio every day and you don't have to worry about thinking of stuff, good for you, but I really got to bend myself every now and then or I don't enjoy it, and I love what I do.

Little Thunder: Let's talk a little bit about your artistic process and techniques. Your primary medium is acrylic on canvas. What other materials do 54:00you work on? Do you work on Masonite sometimes?

Hummingbird: I have, but I don't, as a rule. I use Masonite for oversized projects. A friend of mine for years has been painting on the non-slick side. It's kind of cool. You get this really nice texture, and the paint really works better on it for me. As a rule, only for special projects like that. This lady wanted me to paint a mural for a bathroom, and I talked her into, "Well, if you move, you can take these with." Two full solid sheets of Masonite. I told her, "I'm a fat man. I can't stand in your bathtub all day and paint."

Little Thunder: I was wondering if you had done any mural work.

Hummingbird: That was this close. I always thought I wanted to try it. I had a friend, when he was in good health he lived up in Washington State. There's some 55:00place in Idaho that the town's full of murals. He was working on one, and he said, "Come up. I'll pay you." I never did get a chance to do it because it's got a whole different thing going on, mops and brooms and everything else. It sounded like it would be fun. I mean, hard work, but fun.

Little Thunder: You don't ever work in oils at all, but do you work in pencil sometimes?

Hummingbird: Yesterday I did a drawing. I finished a painting and the process of varnishing it. I didn't want to start on this Caddo piece until I can spend about a whole day with it, so I did a quick pencil drawing yesterday. I don't draw as much as I think I want to do it because I really do keep banker's hours.

Little Thunder: So you don't really do preliminary sketching for your--

Hummingbird: Oh, no. I do cartoons as the old Renaissance artists. I grid my paper, and about once every five years I go to the newspaper company and buy a leftover roll of newspaper and get it to size. I hate working on a piece, and you think you're doing great. Then you get back from it, and the person looks like they're falling over. That's the only reason I do my preliminary because, I don't know, it just goes back to that traditional training I guess.

Little Thunder: How have your colors changed over the years?

Hummingbird: I have a piece in my dining room that when I was in Tulsa, either my varnish had gotten frozen and thawed out, or--. The paint started crawling, 57:00so I never did sell it. It's more my traditional work. I just was afraid that one of these days the paint would fall off of it. It never has. It never has done any more than what it originally did. Two pieces I did for myself kind of, they're hanging in the hallway. I look at my work today, and all I can say is that this part of Arizona must be like the south of France because my palette is so much more brighter and intense. Instead of south of France, this is southeast Arizona. I use liquid acrylics now almost exclusively instead of tubes. Tubes aren't as bright.

Little Thunder: You mentioned that you did get a background in sculpture a little bit. Do you ever experiment with sculpture?

Hummingbird: No. No, it's one of those deals I keep thinking, "I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it." It's Eddie's territory right now. More power to him 58:00because it's not an easy life. He's suffering a little bit from carpal tunnel. I helped him load up a couple of those three five-hundred-pound ones. It has its attractions, good money and everything else, but, dang, that's working. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Can you talk about your approach to specifically Cherokee subject matter when you do that? Is it a very big vein of your work?

Hummingbird: It's about 25 percent of my work. The piece, I guess, you'll put on film later is The Stomp Dance piece. I have favorite subjects. I love my Eagle Dancers, just love them for me personally to do them. I love Stomp Dance pieces. The last one that I was really thrilled about, I just sold a Cherokee legend 59:00piece the other day, like one of those more complicated ones I was telling you about. I don't try to have too many Cherokee pieces at once because people out here tend to know Southwest. It's like if I was to paint tipis. Right now, I'm always looking for good stories. There's a couple of Cherokee stories I just I haven't figured out in my head yet, the Rose and a couple of other things that I want to do and probably get done this year before it's over.

Little Thunder: Well, you mentioned a couple of your favorite subjects to paint. We might have covered that.

Hummingbird: Right now it's--I keep sketch books around, but I'm finding I'm using them less and less, and have for the last three or four years. I tend to 60:00get an idea where I'm finishing the last piece I did, unless it's a story I got to research on. I tend to do spontaneous things. I am laying off right now a series I've been doing of old cars done Jesse Hummingbird style with kind of contemporary Indians on a pseudo-Route 66. It's been very successful. I went to the Black Hills last year and did two motorcycles pieces. Just sold the last one the other day, and that'll probably be last motorcycles I do for a while unless it's commission. I'm letting my car pieces rest right now and doing these, I hope, more Indian stories. I do a lot of these music pieces. The things I like 61:00about working on music is that I try to find some titles I like, so, boom, right there. If I don't have an image, then I go and find another one until I start getting these images. It's like shorthand; it's an easy way to be creative. That's been a good series. A lot of those end up being romantical pieces.

Little Thunder: Well, picking up the idea of story again, what do you think is so important about story in painting?

Hummingbird: I don't know if it works in other--. I think minorities are expected to have good stories. I think Indian folks especially are expected to have good stories. I mean, look, we got storyteller competitions, so I think it goes hand in hand with being Native.

Little Thunder: What's your process for coming up with titles?

Hummingbird: Well, (Laughs) I did a Bill Rabbit the other day: I had two paintings in a booth with the same title on it. (Laughter) You can see there is a problem. Sandy says, "That's a good paragraph. Now what are we going to call it?" I think it's my titles. Sandy is considered the CEO, the CFO, and everything else in the marketing management, so we do have these meetings, business meetings, and sometimes it is about titles. I don't know. It's something that's just horrible. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What kinds of research do you do? Say, you're going to tackle a specific story. What kinds of research do you do?

Hummingbird: Well, I try to find old stories, something that's in the public domain, number one. Contemporary stories I won't touch because the author might 63:00get persnickety. I understand intellectual property; no problem about that. I try to find the older ones, and I do research them that way. I used to do a lot more research on different cultures' clothing, and then I find myself now just doing my own generic style of clothing. We all know what a ribbon shirt is, what this is, what that is. I'm not a historical artist. I don't worry and lose sleep over that. I don't read Indian materials that much. I got a whole library of them, and it's something I promised I'd do when I got older. There's just not enough time.

Little Thunder: Can you describe your creative process from the time that you, 64:00like, get an idea?

Hummingbird: Well, like I said, I used to keep drawing, and I still out of habit draw on tablets. I like the spiral notebooks. It wouldn't make any sense to anybody else if they saw my drawings because they're not really drawings. They're just pieces of lines and stuff. Then I would go back and look at that six months later. Knock on wood, I've been blessed with a great imagination. My work overall, unless it's something that's been pestering me, is pretty spontaneity. It's getting it down to a drawing, and then seeing if I can put it to a size I want.

Little Thunder: What is your creative routine? I think you've kind of talked about it. You paint during the day as opposed to night.

Hummingbird: Yeah, most of my friends that I know are night painters. Turns out it's because they had kids. They painted at night when the kids were asleep. Me, I keep banker's hours. I get up early. I got my room blacked out because, if not, you get up so dang early out here with this sun. I get up, I'm up and usually walking the dogs, Sandy and I, about seven, have breakfast, and work out three days a week. Then get caught up on the family chores the other days that I'm not doing that. Then in the studio by eight thirty, nine o'clock and working until five, five thirty.

If you're going to be a full-time artist, don't fool yourself in thinking that because no one's there to say, "You got to clock in, do this, and do that." You got to make a schedule, and you got to get into that schedule and stay with it 66:00because too many things can come up. "Oh, meet me down at the café." Well, you don't get home until ten, eleven o'clock. Then someone says, "Let's go have a beer." Well, you didn't get nothing done all day. You got to approach it as a business because you're not going to make it, unless you're an Osage or a casino Indian. You got to work. It's work. It's good work, but it is work. Nothing's wrong with a routine.

Little Thunder: How about your signature? Sometimes it's a little bit of an art, where you place it and how you decide you want to handle it.

Hummingbird: I try to put it all the time in the same place on the canvas, although I had to put it sidewards a couple of times. It's either a circle-c Hummingbird or "JTH". Those are the only signatures I got unless it's a print. 67:00Then I scribble my "Jesse T. Hummingbird" on it. My brother Ed said, "It looks like you're signing, (because they always called my dad JT) and I said, "I think I'm doing it subliminally to honor him." It's supposed to be Jesse T. There was a movement there for a while in the ʼ70s when I was in Oklahoma of putting your Indian name and your fetish and everything else. When we had a miniature show, one guy from Muskogee's name was almost the whole image by the time he got it all on there, (Laughter) so keep it simple.

Little Thunder: Looking back on your career so far, what's been a pivotal moment when you came to your fork in a road, and you went one way as opposed to another?

Hummingbird: I got into art because what I was doing making a living was going through a change. Technology was changing it, and I kind of got myself to a point that there was no turning back from being an artist. I always thought, "I could go back to digging ditches," but realistically, no, I can't, physically. I never tried to figure out what I'm doing, so I've never really come to that fork in the road. I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. That's the only way I know how to answer that, I think. (Laughs)

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

Hummingbird: I think, looking back at it all, it's the community, the community 69:00of artists and not being too bullheaded to listen. I met some incredible people. I got some incredible people that support me, I stay with sometimes, and things like that, people I never would have met staying in a print shop or something else like that. It's truly been a blessing. Sometimes you forget that when you drink or do other bad things. I've seen several friends ruin their careers because of bad things.

It's just really been a blessing. I think it's all been good. There's been times when I haven't sold a darn thing, and there's been times whenever I thought, 70:00"Why did I go there?" There's been times when I wouldn't talk to a friend for a month because he told me to go do a show and I shouldn't have, but overall, it's been the community all around. It's just been a blessing, like I said.

People shouldn't do this unless they feel like they're blessed. It's not given that you're going to be wealthy or anything else. It's like an artist told me one time, "Be thankful if it gives you everything you need because you're always going to want something more, but be thankful if it gives you what you need." That's how I've lived. I've not made a lot of money doing it, but I made my share of living. Sandy's had to do her share, for sure, sometimes a little bit more than mine.

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

Hummingbird: Well, you know, the lowest point is getting to be this old. It hurt 71:00when we was young and we lost a friend. Now old age is getting a lot of us. Bad things happened to them in Vietnam, or they got diabetes or something. It's seeing your contemporaries go by the way, I think. That's the low point. I had one friend, he's a little bit younger than I am, a Hopi artist, promising career. Had a stroke and lost that side of his body. Someone said he's painting again, but I haven't seen him in a while. I hope so. Those are the low and the crushing parts. Knock on wood, not many of us road warriors have perished on the road, but I worry about that all the time. I'm on death row out here on I-10 all the time.

Little Thunder: Is there anything else you'd like to add before we take a look at your artwork?

Hummingbird: Well, I certainly appreciate the opportunity to do this. I'll always think of myself as an Okie. Who knows. I might end up there one day again. I hope I said something in there that maybe can influence someone to make the right decision. You're not always going to do the right thing, but if you don't learn from doing it wrong, then you're in trouble. Like I said, you got to be friendly, be honest, and be sincere in your artwork. Even my goofy stuff, it has an honest sincerity about it. Thankfully, people have bought it through the years and some of these collections have ended up in some very prestigious museums, which I'm honored about. Be sincere, honest, and enjoy. Be dedicated. 73:00Oh, and be humble. Nothing worse than an Indian that ain't humble.

Little Thunder: Okay, we're going to take a break and look at this artwork. Jesse would you like to tell us about this painting, maybe the title and anything like that?

Hummingbird: It's a Stomp Dance piece. The leaders are just starting out, and of course, they're going around the fire that's never gone out since we were given it. The smoke is turning into the Phoenix, and everybody says, "What's with the spider?" Well, Grandma Spider, the little water spider's the one that brought us the fire to start the big fire. The Stomp Dance is mainly religious. They sing prayers, and then it livens up a little bit, and it's done in different phases of the moon. The one I used to go to was always the full moon. Like I said, I 74:00like doing Stomp Dance pieces. The women's got on their turtle shells, shakers, and everything else, and I do some liberty to it. Old Cherokees say you ain't supposed to do it exactly right, anyway. So that's that. I have to look on the back. I never remember my titles. Grandmother Spider, Phoenix.

Little Thunder: Okay, great. Jesse, can you tell us about this piece, which is one of your older pieces, actually?

Hummingbird: Well, it's the oldest style. I'm still repeating the shapes, but the faces have changed through the years. I call them Booger masks even though they're not a representation of a Booger mask. Why we call Booger masks "Booger masks", I don't know because we are really saying mask, mask. That's the way I learned to say it. But it is a little Booger. I've been doing these for 75:00thirty-something years now. At one point I thought I'd do nothing but a whole booth of them, they were so popular. The parrot feathers, they don't always have parrot feathers on them, but the parrot feathers come from people that come to my booth and say, "Oh, do you want parrot feathers?" So I know their names. Should be a name on the back of this one. I always put on the back how I make them, and what that parrot's name is and everything else. Yes, that's been a nice little honey piece for me, I tell you. I was fortunate, whatever reason I came up with it.

Little Thunder: I love them, and that's just a little bit of horse hair, looks like.

Hummingbird: Yeah. Then the matting I get done in Farmington, New Mexico. A person I ran across a long time ago got into the computer mat cutting business. I send him designs, and he sends me back my mat, so I've been real fortunate in that sense.

Little Thunder: That's great. Okay, can you tell us about this illustration?

Hummingbird: Like I was saying in the interview earlier, that Gary gave me a lot of freedom. I actually didn't know what chokecherries were, and him and Sandy got me up to speed on those. I'm showing my age on this one. Whenever I was a kid, on TV on the Texaco hour, Milton Berle, they always had these dancing legs. They had cigarettes or something on them, and all you see is these ladies' legs. I kind of stole that, but there's CD players, and cats, and dogs. They're on the floor of a tipi, you got to remember. I had a lot of fun doing this one. It really was.

Little Thunder: How about this illustration?

Hummingbird: You can see the satellite dish, the Christmas lights. He's run out; he heard something. He's got a spoon, but if you look at his night slippers, 77:00they're bunny slippers. Once again I got to have all kinds of fun with this. My dad actually made us a tipi when we was in South Carolina. Went and got some bamboo poles, and my mother sewed together all these old jean legs. That's my experience. Then I got a buddy called Tipi Rex. Had all the shows out here for his tipi. Generally, Rex is the one that puts it up. It certainly is interesting to watch one guy put up a tipi.

Little Thunder: Oh my goodness.

Hummingbird: Yes.

Little Thunder: Well, thank you so much for your time today, Jesse.

Hummingbird: Oh, no problem.

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