Oral history interview with Johnnie Diacon

OOHRP, Oklahoma State University
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Little Thunder: My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Monday, September 11, 2017, and I'm interviewing Johnnie Diacon for the Oklahoma Native Artists project, sponsored by the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. Johnnie, your art has encompassed a number of styles in your career, from the so-called flatstyle to comic book illustrations. You almost finished a BFA at the University of Arkansas. You've gone to school at the Institute of American Indian Art. You've been included in a number of museum shows, and have a piece in a graphic novel called [Tales of] The Mighty Code Talkers. After taking a hiatus from painting, you are now busy on the show circuit again. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me.

Diacon: Thank you.

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

Diacon: I was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, and then, my father--. I was adopted at a young age, and we moved to Miami, Oklahoma. Then, from Miami, Oklahoma, we moved to Springdale, Arkansas, because my father was a sign painter. He followed 1:00around where the work was at, and at that time, northwest Arkansas was starting to really grow, thanks to Walmart and Tyson. They had Welch's Grape over there early on, so he did a lot of work for them.

Little Thunder: That really can be quite an art. Did you work with him, or do your own thing while he was working? How did that--.

Diacon: I started out helping him out. Me and Mom would both help him out when he was doing big billboard signs. He had so many of them, he had them lined out, and I remember he would start the lettering on it. He would do the outside part of the lettering, and then we'd go in and fill in the color on the insides. I was little enough I could do this, too. (Laughter) I was filling in with brushes, and it was real simple. As he got older and I became more interested in 2:00what he did, he would sit me down. This was the hard part as a child because he started, he said, when he was around seven. He hung out with an old sign painter in Okemah, and that's where he learned how to do it. He would tell me, "Boy, you can go out and make a lot of money doing this as a sign painter." He would have me sitting there, practicing these serifs with the mahl stick and the thing. While all the other kids were running around playing, here I was, sitting. I said, "I wish I was--." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Bless your heart. (Laughs)

Diacon: It wasn't any fun to me, but I helped him a lot. As he got older, he needed more help. He was a World War II veteran. He had some injuries he'd received in the war that progressively got worse as he got older, and he needed more help. Eventually, he was able to retire in the ʼ80s. He was, like I said, old-style sign painter. He did electrical work for neon signs and signs that 3:00moved, and he blew glass for the neon signs. He did gold leaf and silver leaf; he did that. He was a remarkable guy. I'd see him do all these drawings, and I'd help him out. He'd do lot of decals, especially during political season. People want signs. He would--and I'd help him. We'd do a lot of screen printing. He did that. I was picking up all this graphic arts knowledge from him. All these colors that he had, paints, he had paint everywhere, and all these cans and all these colors. I fell in love with the colors.

He'd come in from work, and his clothes would be all splattered with paint. I thought that was the greatest thing. Mom didn't think it was too great because she had to keep his clothes clean for him. (Laughter) I thought it was great. I would watch that. -- I had been doing drawing ever since I was little, 4:00constantly drawing, constantly drawing, and he'd give me the materials to produce these little things. I had poor eyesight, and it was getting worse. I didn't really realize, and I don't think my parents, at first, realized how bad it was getting. I kept asking about glasses because they both wore glasses and I had friends that wore glasses. Mom thought I was wanting glasses because I was one of the few that didn't have glasses. Then she got a letter at home from the school, saying, "You need to get this kid glasses." (Laughs) I got where I couldn't see anything, and it kept getting worse.

Little Thunder: How old were you at that point?

Diacon: I was in the fourth grade when I got my first set of glasses, and that really changed everything for me because all of a sudden I could see things. It was really strange because I was used to things looking a certain way, and 5:00navigating through this haze of colors and stuff. It turned out, I was actually legally blind without corrective lenses, so that really changed.

Little Thunder: Wow, a world of difference.

Diacon: It became different. I remember when we took me to the eye doctor, (this was in Arkansas) couldn't see what was on the walls. I just remember it was a dark room. He had dark wood paneling. It was dark in there. I got my eyes checked and everything, and then I had to wait. It was, like, a couple weeks before I got my glasses. They're the old, thick, Clark Kent kind, those IHS [Indian Health Service] glasses, a thick glass lens on it. Kept sliding down because they were so heavy because my lenses were so thick, but I got them. He was trying them on me, and then I realized--. I was looking around this office, and I saw these paintings. I didn't know at the time, but he was a collector of traditional flatstyle work. He had some of the old artists, and they were all 6:00over his office. When my eyes finally came into focus, I imprinted on these.

This is the first time I'd seen them. They stuck out in my mind, first of all, because we were in Springdale, Arkansas, which was a sundowner town, which they didn't allow people of color. I caught a lot of flak as a child in school and stuff. Naturally, when I saw these, I immediately imprinted on them because here was Indians. I thought, "This is me, and these are these paintings. What are they doing in here?" I could see them, and they stuck in my mind. When I got home, that's what I started drawing. I would see things like that, and I would draw it, try my hand at doing it, having no idea how they accomplished these paintings, or what they were done on, or how they were made. It stuck in my 7:00mind, so here I was, trying to replicate it from when I could best remember seeing it because I didn't see them again after that.

Little Thunder: Oh, it was just that one exposure.

Diacon: It was that one time, and there it was. It stuck with me. Of course, when I'd go back to the doctor, when it was time to get new prescriptions, I'd see them again, and I'd look at them. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Your adoptive father was Cherokee. Did you guys go to any Cherokee doings? What was your exposure to Cherokee culture through him?

Diacon: It was through him, yes. Actually, since I was away from Creek culture, it was through him that I learned because he grew up in Okemah. Of course, we took frequent trips back to see my real family because I never lost connection, even after I was adopted. We'd go back and see Grandma and Grandpa or Hasjochee there in Okemah. We'd make a lot of pilgrimages back into Oklahoma because all of his family and mine lived in Oklahoma. We were in that part of Arkansas for 8:00the job, and it was close to a VA hospital, too. Over there in Fayetteville, there's a VA hospital that he'd go to, but everything else, we'd come back to Oklahoma. It was this constant pilgrimage, back and forth to Oklahoma. Sometimes I don't even think about living in Arkansas, even though I grew up there and graduated from high school there. As soon as I graduated from high school, I was out for a few years and returned back to Oklahoma. I've been here ever since. Came back home, so to speak. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Right, then, of course, there's a Cherokee presence in Arkansas, for sure. You mentioned that Springdale, there weren't a lot of people of color.

Diacon: There weren't. There were no black people at all. I was the darkest kid in school. I often got--I was called the N-word a lot. I'd say, "I'm an Indian." 9:00"No, all the Indians are dead." I'd come home, and I'd tell my parents what they're saying to me, what they're calling me. Of course, Dad, he'd get all fired up. He said, "Don't you let those white kids talk to you like that." It became confrontational a lot of times, physical violence, other kids against me. I was raised as an only child. Even though I have brothers and sisters that are older than me, they weren't living with us.

Little Thunder: They were out of the home.

Diacon: They were out of the home, so I was pretty much on my own to fend for myself. I didn't realize how bad it was at that age. As I progressed through school, I've had teachers, even, that were.--

10:00

Little Thunder: Did you get exposed to--you mentioned that aha moment for you, when you saw those paintings and you thought, "Indian people," and, "I want to do this." Did you get any art exposure in school, in elementary school or middle school?

Diacon: In elementary school, it was the typical elementary school, crayons and construction paper things. They pretty much preset what you were going to do.

Little Thunder: Okay, (Laughs) cookie cutter.

Diacon: Yeah. When I got into junior high, I took art, and it was still more...real structured, what you do. They gave you assignments.

Little Thunder: No Native subject matter?

Diacon: No, because they never thought of it, I guess. They'd give us typical, I 11:00don't know, I hate to say white people things to do, (Laughs) but you're sitting there doing Santa Clauses, mainly related to holiday things at home. When I got into high school, I got a little more freedom with what I wanted to do. I was taking some watercolor classes with the teacher there, and I started out making this rice paddy. I had these people working in it and everything, and then I put two helicopters up in it, like it was in Vietnam. She loved the picture until I put the helicopters in it. Then she totally lost interest. She kept coming up, "That looks so wonderful. That's so beautiful." I was really happy with what I was doing, and I'd already decided, "I'm going to make this a Vietnam War piece." Everything was going good--

Little Thunder: Right, that was the background context.

Diacon: --until I added the helicopters up in the sky. (Laughter) "You ruined 12:00it. Why did you do that?"

Little Thunder: Your first time you encountered resistance to the sort of political. It was considered--.

Diacon: Yeah, and it was probably the first time I really got teed off. "This is what I want to do," (Laughs) kind of a rebellious feeling and, of course, being a teenage kid at the time, too.

Little Thunder: You did finish the picture.

Diacon: I finished the picture, and I had it for quite a few years. I don't know what happened to it. I've lost it now, but, yeah, it was something. I was trying out watercolor for the first time, and she was a watercolor painter. That was her medium, so she was all excited about how well I was picking up with it. I was enjoying it, and then I ruined it for her unintentionally. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Now, at home, were you still pursuing Native subject matter, 13:00dancers, or were you--.

Diacon: Yeah, I had an old World Book Encyclopedia set, and this was from the early ʼ60s. It was a man, and I can't remember his name now. I think Franklin Fireshaker, maybe, was his name, did the illustrations for the Indian section. It was dog-eared in our encyclopedia because I'd always go back to that. It had those images, and it was like the ones in the doctor's office that I could see, that flatstyle painting. There I was, kept going back to that as a reference. I'd draw these things and do these things, not knowing what kind of paint they were using. I was just using pencil, drawing and drawing and drawing. I tried using Dad's enamel paint, and it didn't work the same. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Not on paper.

Diacon: Yeah, it didn't work on paper. It didn't dry quick enough. My mother 14:00painted, also, and he got her interested in paint. She would do art, and we had all of her oil paintings in the house. He'd got her into oil paintings. I'd borrow some of that paint, and it wasn't working out the way I wanted, either. I kept at it. I kept at it. Finally, after I graduated from high school and Dad had retired from the sign business, then he got where he wasn't physically able to climb up ladders and do anything anymore. I showed him some of my pictures I had. I had all kinds of little drawings I was doing through years and stuff, Indian subjects. He said, "These are good. You need to do something with these. You really need to do something with these." I thought, "What am I going to do with it?" (Laughs) At the time, I didn't realize that there were competitions, 15:00art shows, or anything for this, so the closest place at the time was over in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. A woman owned a gallery, Indian Paintbrush Gallery.

I found that place one day going back to Oklahoma. I happened to look at the side of the road, and there it was. I thought, "I'm going to check that out one of these days when I go through here," so sure enough, I did. I went in there, and I took in my drawings to her. I showed them to her, and she was pretty impressed. She was carrying Bill Rabbit and guys like that; they were established guys. I loved that place, and I'd always go over there. I know it was a gallery and she was selling, but it was like a museum to me. I'd always go over and look. (Laughs) I couldn't afford any of it. She knew that, but she would always give me encouragement. She's the one that gave me a sheet one day. She goes, "You know what? You need to enter these shows." She gave me some 16:00applications she had for the Cherokee Trail of Tears Show, the Five Civilized Tribes Show, and one for Red Cloud Indian School. She goes, "Send your stuff into here and see what happens."

Little Thunder: Now, there was--the owner was Nancy Van Poucke.

Diacon: Yes, Nancy.

Little Thunder: Was it Nancy who gave you encouragement, because she has had some nice salespeople, too?

Diacon: Yeah, that was her. I couldn't remember her last name. I knew her first name was Nancy. Yeah, that was her. That's who I--and this was probably--.

Little Thunder: What year?

Diacon: --1983, I'm thinking, because I'd been out of high school for a couple years. About '83, '84, because I graduated in '81. I started sending off my work. Of course, this was pre-internet, so you couldn't look up how some of 17:00these things, shows and everything, was going on. I'd always go to her, and she'd always have contact information or places. "Go here. Try here." She's the one that brought me back from my second show. I wasn't able to go to the opening that night at the Five Civilized Tribes, but she brought me back. That was my first time there, and I got a honorable mention for a watercolor painting that I did.

Little Thunder: Oh, that's great.

Diacon: Yes, she was so excited.

Little Thunder: You got a ride there, but she brought you back?

Diacon: Yeah, I was all excited. I got a--.

Little Thunder: Were your folks there, too?

Diacon: Yeah, and they were able to make all the shows, up until my mother passed in '95 of cancer, and Dad in 2001. He never got to see a lot of the things that had to happen, neither one of them afterwards, but I think he would have been proud.

Little Thunder: For sure. You started entering these shows; you finished high 18:00school. What happens next?

Diacon: I finished high school, and I'm hanging out, working. I'm working in the hospital. I started out working at the hospital. A friend of mine I went to high school with, "Come up to the hospital and get a job on weekends with me. I work housekeeping."

Little Thunder: Where was it?

Diacon: In Springdale. Was a guy I went to high school with. I went up and applied for the housekeeping job, but I didn't get that job. I did get a job working in the materials management, as they called it. It was in the supply of the hospitals. What I did was unloaded trucks and delivered the supplies in different places of the hospital. It was a little warehouse in the hospital. It was a part-time job. I did that. I'm still thinking about school, but my biggest fear of school was I was horrible at math. I knew to go to college, you had to 19:00have algebra. I never had any college prep classes in high school, none for algebra. I never took algebra in high school, any of that, so that kept me out for the longest time. One day, I was entering these art shows, and we're going over to Five Civilized Tribes. I saw Bacone College when we were going by there, and I'd heard of that. Dad had talked about Bacone; he had mentioned it to me. "If you're going to do this art thing, maybe you should go somewhere they teach art. Maybe you ought to try to look at Bacone because they've got a good art program there."

One day, I dropped by there. I got all the information, and I came home. I told them, "I'm going to school," and they're like, "No, really?" I said, "Yeah, I'm going to go to Bacone." Dad got all excited. I filled out the paperwork, got 20:00accepted, got all excited when I got the acceptance letter. That's where I started going to Bacone. This was '87, '88. Eighty-eight. It was '87 I enrolled. It was in the fall, but I got everything done too late to get into the fall semester. I went in in the spring semester, so I went there. I was looking for a job because I needed to work. I had a little girl, and I had a pick-up truck payment I needed to make. I needed to work. I was looking all around for a job there around the Muskogee area, going and filling out applications.

Nothing ever came of it, but a woman that worked there who was the--her name was Adelaide, I think it was. She was with enrollment or something or other. She said, "We've got a job here on campus. They're looking for someone to work in 21:00the dorms. It's a nighttime job, though, but you get free tuition if you work for the school." I thought, "I'm your guy." (Laughter) Of course, I was young at the time. I was twenty-five, and it was nine at night to five in the morning. I basically stayed in--McCoy Hall, at the time, was the men's dorm. I think it's the women's dorm now. What I would do, (it wasn't a full-time job) I filled in on every other weekend and on nights that this other guy, who was the actual full-time resident hall supervisor--. I would take his spot. That gave me enough time and enough money that I was able to make child support, and my truck payment, and still have a little extra money--

Little Thunder: You could still do your homework.

Diacon: --and still do my homework. I got a nine-to-five job. It's nine at night to five in the morning, but it's a nine-to-five job. (Laughter) There was nights I'd stay up until five in the morning, and it was quiet. It was mainly someone 22:00had to be awake in case something happened. There was not much happened. It gave me time to do homework. I could watch TV, and I could read, mainly just stay awake. That wasn't a problem. Seven o'clock was my first class, so I'd get, like, an hour of sleep. I'd get up in time to go eat breakfast, go to class, have classes all day long. Be up in the evening, and then go to bed about nine or ten o'clock on the nights I didn't work. Of course, I was young, so it was easy to do. It was easier, and now--. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What sort of skills did you acquire through your art training at Bacone?

Diacon: Bacone, I was taking Indian Art. I had Indian Art I, and it was studying the flatstyle, that Bacone school style, with Ruthe Blalock Jones. I was excited 23:00when I got in there. I got my class list, what all I needed. I went over to the bookstore, and I was on a shopping spree, getting everything on that list. I couldn't wait for class. I kept showing up over there because--we had classes Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I was over there Monday. She didn't know me yet, who I was. She goes, "We don't have class until tomorrow. You don't have to be here." I said, "I know." (Laughter) She had all this artwork that was already up, older students' through the years artwork that I would look at. I was like, "This is the best place in the world." I'd go in the cafeteria, and they have those three big murals over the service line there that was done during [Woody] Crumbo's tenure there. I couldn't get enough of them. Sat there, eating, look at them. I took her class. I took all four of the Indian Art classes, all the way 24:00up to Indian Art IV. I had one more semester to go, so I took a special studies, which was kind of like an Indian Art V, I guess you'd call it. You did more in-depth work. I also took a mural painting class while I was there. One of my murals hangs up in the administration building there at Bacone now that I did. I've got one of those, same size as the ones in the dining hall, in Wacoche Hall that I was always so enamored with. Now I've got one, too.

Little Thunder: That must have been a great feeling.

Diacon: It was. It was, "Oh, my gosh." The president bought one, and it was hanging in one of the meeting rooms there. I think it was in Sally Journeycake [Memorial] Hall. It was in there. There at Bacone, the president, Alfred Ginkel at the time, him and his wife would go to Daughters of the American Revolution 25:00conventions and these other things. They'd always call over to Ruthe and say, "Have your students gather up some of their work, and we'll take them and sell them for them." She'd say, "Have your boys get their stuff together and bring it over here. They'll take it." We gathered up our work. It's little pieces, little tiny pieces of mat board cutouts. None of it was real great work, but it was what we were learning.

Little Thunder: He was promoting it and promoting the school.

Diacon: He was promoting it, and people were always wanting to buy the early work from somebody that might be famous. They got it low price, and then they're famous later. That was always good. Always sold everything. It was only selling for five, ten dollars. We didn't have a big price on them. That made us a little extra spending money, and that was nice. It got sold.

Little Thunder: Reinforced your confidence.

Diacon: Yeah. It's funny. Every now and then, I'll get on the internet, and I'll look up stuff. I'll find one of my pieces that was from that period that sold. 26:00"Oh, my gosh!" It's on an art auction site, and I'm watching it go for--. I maybe sold it for five bucks, and it's going for twenty-five, thirty, up to a hundred dollars. I'm like, "Really, for that?" It's like someone selling their homework, English homework, math homework, selling it, and then you see it on the auction. It's kind of, "Wow." (Laughs) Then you're also looking at it, saying, "It was so horrible. It was so horrible." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What prompted your move from Bacone to the next school, which I think was NSU?

Diacon: I went to Northeastern State because it was close. My supervisor at Bacone really liked me. She didn't want me to go. She goes, "You could still work here and go to NSU." I thought, "That's a lot of driving."

Little Thunder: You'd been there, at this point, two years?

27:00

Diacon: Two years. The best part was, this job that I had at Bacone, I had an apartment up in the--. It had a kitchen, and it had a living room and a bedroom, and I had a bathroom. It was a good deal. I got a really good foot in the door. I got that started, had a job, didn't have to share with a roommate or anything. I was taking the art. Oh, yeah, at Bacone I also took silversmithing and bronze casting while I was there, too.

Little Thunder: Wow, who were teaching those classes?

Diacon: The silversmithing was Francis Lowery, and bronze casting, I can't think of the lady's name. There were two of them. I was in there with Dan HorseChief. We had bronze casting together. Of course, he was in the next, Bronze Casting II, because he had started school there before I got there, so he was a little 28:00higher in it. I can't think of those two ladies' names now. They were older ladies, but they were really, really interesting. What you're doing, teaching that lost wax process. I'd never done this before, and I thought, "This is really interesting." I could have done more of it, but I had graduated. That was my last semester there.

Little Thunder: Your first exposure to three-dimensional, right there.

Diacon: Yeah, right there because I had never even thought about three-dimensional at the time. It was mostly 2D, flatstyle painting, drawing. When I took silversmithing, that was the introduction to some 3D stuff, and I really enjoyed that. I thought about doing it again, the silversmithing, but I don't have the tools or the setup to do it. I did enjoy it; it was really interesting. Yeah, after I graduated from Bacone, I went to Northeastern State. 29:00I went there for a semester. I had a girlfriend at the time. We were going to get married, so she was staying with my parents over in Arkansas. My mom, at the time, had been sick for a number of years. She had had cancer. She had bone cancer, and it progressively whittled away at her, showed up somewhere else. She got pretty ill, and Dad said--. I was talking to him about coming home, and I said, "I could transfer over to the University of Arkansas there at Fayetteville and get into their BFA program." I was already in the one at Northeastern. He said, "Yeah, if you could come home, you guys can stay here with us and go to school. You won't have to worry about paying rent, and you can finish up," so 30:00that's what I did. I went over there.

Little Thunder: They have a good program. They're known for their art program.

Diacon: Yeah, it was really nice. I never thought about--. While living there, I never thought about going to the U of A. Actually, in high school, I was thinking about animation. I thought I wanted to do the art, but then I thought--. I really was big into that cel [celluloid] animation at the time, watching a lot of Ralph Bakshi movies. I really zeroed in on that. It was flatstyle; the animation was, too. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: That's true.

Diacon: I always had these ideas in my head, and I think they come out in paintings. I always had these stories. I thought, "This is great. I can tell these stories. I can do it in animation, and I'm still doing art." Of course, it was a teenage kid, thinking about what all he was going to do in the world. It never happened; it never came to be. I sent off letters to different studios. I 31:00sent one to Walt Disney, asking. They said, "Thank you for your interest." They gave me a list of schools to attend in California that they choose their animators from. I thought, "That was really neat, but there's no way I'll ever get there. There's no way I'll get there." I was happy to get to Bacone. (Laughter) When I transferred to the U of A--I got there, and I thought, "You know what? I might do museum studies instead of majoring in art," because I liked that idea. I was taking all these anthropology classes. I had to take an art class, believe it or not, to get an art credit. I took a, it was a beginning art thing. It was one that everybody would take that needed an art credit. It was like a high school art class, really taught different things. "This week, 32:00we're going to do this. Next week, we're going to try that." It was in the art department, so I started seeing the art students there and the work they were doing. I got bit by the bug again, so it was back on the art trail again. I switched majors. I was only in museum studies as a major for probably a semester, and then I went back into art.

Little Thunder: Then you went back into art.

Diacon: Yeah, and I went to school there. I was three semesters short of graduating. Then what happened was the Hopi woman I was married to, she decided she wanted a divorce, that I was too old. She was about eight years younger than I was, and she wanted to go out and live her life and have fun and all this. I said, "Okay, we'll get a divorce."

Little Thunder: Had you met at Bacone?

Diacon: Yeah, we had met at Bacone. It was one of those boarding school romance 33:00things, a Creek and a Hopi. (Laughter) We're best of friends to this day. It's more like we're cousins now more than we were ever married. We have a daughter. She's twenty-six, and they still live in Arkansas. They still live in Springdale. When I left, I was going to get a full-time job and work and make her happy, and get her a house, and do all these things I thought I needed to do for her. It didn't work out anyway, so there I was. I was thinking, "I need to go back to school, but now I'm working." My life seemed to take a different turn now. I was working. I had bills to pay and all this, so I was working and working. After I was divorced, I started dating this girl that I met way back. Even before I went to Bacone, I had met her. It was a blind date kind of a 34:00thing. A friend of mine was a friend of hers. I went to high school with this one girl, and she knew her from working with her at K-Mart. Got us together.

She was only eighteen at the time, and I was twenty-five. She was kind of shy, being out of high school. Here I was, twenty-five, and I'd already been married and divorced now. She was a little leery of me. I thought, "Okay, she doesn't like me." We met; we talked; we got along; and we went our separate ways. I thought, "That didn't pan out." I went on to Bacone that fall and did the whole thing, got married and then divorced. Through the years, we had remained friends. After I got divorced, we were over at Mom and Dad's house with a group of people, and I was talking to her. I said, "Would you like to go out again?" I 35:00asked her again, for the second time. I thought, "I'm going to try it again." We went out, and we've been together ever since. It's been over twenty years now, so we've been friends for thirty, married for twenty.

Little Thunder: That's neat. Did she end up moving with you, then, to Santa Fe?

Diacon: Santa Fe. I have to give her credit for a lot of things. She's the one that actually--. I mentioned it to her. She goes, "Have you ever thought about going back to school?" I said, "Yeah, I've always wanted to go to the Institute of American Indian Arts [IAIA] in Santa Fe. I wanted to do that when I was--." After I left Bacone that was one of my plans because I always wanted (this was my goal) to someday be art director at Bacone. (Laughs) The art department is gone now. Anyway, that was the goal originally, and then I kept getting 36:00sidetracked through life. Different things would happen in life, take me a different way. We were at a powwow over here in Tulsa. I think it was one of the--back when they used to have the Tulsa Indian Arts Festival over at the fairgrounds. We were in the expo building there, and there was a booth there. IAIA had a recruiting booth set there, and they had all the enrollment papers and everything you could fill out. I said, "Should I?" She goes, "Let's do it." I filled it out and sent it in and got accepted. We're all excited. We were looking at the Santa Fe newspaper. We'd get the Sunday ones over at the Hastings bookstore there in Fayetteville. We'd go through those every Sunday and look at jobs.

Little Thunder: Right, that was a big move.

Diacon: Yeah, and we wanted to make sure we had jobs set up before we got there 37:00and everything. She'd worked for a law firm there in Fayetteville as a legal secretary. She got an interview at a law firm out in Santa Fe. She said, "You've got a good work history. This is a good job, and it pays good. It'll give us a chance to get established, and then you could find a job. We won't have to worry about money." It was a perfect plan. We got out there. I didn't realize it at the time, but there was a--. The school and the students, (I guess it was the president of IAIA and the students) there was a turmoil over the leadership of the school. There was a lawsuit that came, brought about by the students against the school. Unfortunately, the law firm that my wife had two callbacks for and 38:00got accepted, they passed on her because they thought it would be a conflict of interest. We didn't know this at the time: they were representing the school, and since I was a student, they thought--.

Her job fell through. Now we're out there, and we've got no money. I can't find a job because there were all these jobs going out there, but we didn't realize it. During the summer, those jobs go away because they get filled up real quick. We got there; it was right after the rush. I was getting a job at one place, a part-time job. I was sorting screws and bolts in these little things in this hardware store, putting them in the right place. It was work, and I was getting paid. I did that for two days. The guy showed me, "Here's what you need to do. I'll come back and check on you." I didn't see him, and then after I'd been there about eight hours, I didn't take a lunch. No one said, "It's lunch time." 39:00No one said, "You can go home." After about eight hours, I went up to the office and asked for him. "He's gone home for the day." I said, "I'm going to go home, too," because we both started at the same time. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Right, bless your heart. You're still working.

Diacon: The next day, I was scheduled to go in there. I didn't see him, but I went back to fixing the bolts. I got paid for those two days, but no one ever said anything to me. The next job, it was a little more exciting for me. It wasn't much. It was at a gallery. They had a mass mailing, and that's all I did, was a little sponge and water, sticking stamps on these invitations. I was up top on this building, and it was outside. I wasn't used to the sun out there. It didn't feel hot because I was used to Oklahoma heat. The sun was baking my skin. (Laughs) I was all blistered up from being--and it's higher up in the altitude.

Little Thunder: Yes, less protection.

40:00

Diacon: Higher up there, the atmosphere is thinner. Those were my two job experiences. She finally got a job, administrative assistant for an insurance company there. We were just about to get home because we were almost out of money. We had enough money to rent a U-Haul trailer and come back. I went up to the school to get a refund, my student deposit back. I was going to use that to get the U-Haul. The enrollment officer there, he said, "Wait a minute. Hold on." I had this video that I had of my work. I had one of those old, big video cameras, and I took a lot of pictures of my work. He says, "Hold on. Let me do something here." He took that video, and he showed it to the president of the school. It was Della Warrior at the time, the new president after all the turmoil.

41:00

Little Thunder: Okay, that's when Della came in.

Diacon: Yeah, she was made president. He showed her that video, and they both said, "He looks like he's going to be a major artist. We can't let him go. We got to find some way to keep him here." They got me a job in the library, and I started working. They gave me an advance on my pay and got me a job in the library, and then my wife got a job working for the insurance agent as his administrative assistant. We got our jobs and were able to stay. My dreams of getting to Santa Fe all those years finally came true. I thought there for a second they were going to go away. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What kinds of skills did you acquire at the Institute that impacted your art?

Diacon: I think a lot of the impact came from being there. I think there was 42:00this thing about being at the Institute of American Indian Arts that gave me this strength. I was there knowing the people had been there before. I fed off that energy. It was like this residual energy.

Little Thunder: A lot of synergy there.

Diacon: Yeah, even though it wasn't--. When I went there, it wasn't on the Santa Fe Indian School campus. It was on the College of Santa Fe. We were staying in the old Kennedy Hall. Most of the classes were pre-fabs or in the old barracks that were there. I was laughing about my wife. I said, "Yeah, it's a Indian school because, look, the classrooms have license plates on them because they're those old pre-fabs." Being there and knowing the talent that had came through there, knowing the talent that was still there as teachers because Linda Lomahaftewa was one of my teachers. Karita Coffey, you get awestruck at first 43:00when you're in there. You're actually in the room with these people, like I was with Ruthe. Here I was, with Ruthe Blalock Jones, learning how to paint the way she learned from Dick West, [Acee] Blue Eagle, and Crumbo, and Chief Terry Saul.

All these guys that have been here, and the people that come out of that school, you're in the same building, breathing that same air, doing that same work. Now I was out here, that helped confidence, the interest. I enjoyed my time at the University of Arkansas. I enjoyed my time at Northeastern, the teachers, and the work I was doing there, but this was home. Ken Stout was my painting teacher at the U of A, and he liked my work. He always called me Chebon because we had another Johnnie in the class. He said, "Do you have any other name?" I go, "Just 44:00call me Chebon," so he always called me Chebon. (Laughter) He probably don't even remember me now. If he did, he probably wouldn't even remember my name was Johnnie. He'd probably remember me as Chebon. He asked me one day--I was doing some work in there, and it was Indian. We pretty much got free rein to do what we wanted in that class. It wasn't so structured.

A lot of times, we would have class assignments, but then there was class assignments where, "This is what I want you to do, but you get to pick the subject. This is how I want you to interpret--," and a lot of my stuff was Indian stuff. I'd come in with pictures from stomp dances or stick ball games, things like that. He asked me one time, he goes, "Do you ever get tired of doing Indian subjects?" I wanted to ask him, "Do you ever get tired of doing white 45:00subjects," because I've seen his work. I loved his work, but I never thought about it in that way when I said, "Do you ever get tired of doing this white people work?" That's how I felt when he said that to me, "Do you ever get tired of doing Indian stuff?" I don't know exactly where he was coming from on that. Only thing I could think of was--and I don't think he meant it derogatory. I don't think he knew. It was like he didn't understand the culture or where I was coming from with it.

He may not have understood the work. He appreciated the technique, maybe, but not the work I was doing, where out at the Institute, there wasn't any of that. It was perfect. It makes me think. Sometimes when I do a piece, painting from inside the culture and I take it somewhere, I know exactly what that work is. Other Creeks will see it, and they know what it is. If it's from another tribe--. I usually don't do too many pieces outside of my tribe. It doesn't seem 46:00right because that's not who I am. Sometimes when non-Indians see it, I don't think they know what it is. They get like, "What is this," or they'll make some comment about it. I've got this one with this feather dance there, and I had it up at work one day because it's real bright. I like to take my work up there to get a different look on it, a different lighting to see because I'm painting in this little, dark dungeon here. This woman at work walks by.

She saw it, and she goes, "That's nice. What are those children doing?" I was like, "Children?" I was trying to figure out why would she think that these grown men, doing a men's ceremony, why would she look at them as children? I thought, "She doesn't know that that pole that they're dancing around, how tall that pole is." Here's these men, carrying feathered wands with the--. She's 47:00probably thinking, "This looks like something children would do." The size of the painting, they're smaller because it's a smaller painting. I think she's thinking these are children, and not seeing them as adults. To me, I look at them, and they don't look like children to me. They're fully-proportioned, adult men. I think she glanced real quick, didn't know what it was. Through the years, I've noticed that. People make comments about things. They don't know what it is, but they're not coming from inside the culture. I told my wife, I said, "I want to paint true to my people. I want to paint my people, and I want it to be accurate."

It's a record of who we are, of things we do. I felt like I'm failing on that if I'm painting these things and people aren't recognizing what it is. She said, "They don't know what it is. When the people are looking at your stuff, maybe if 48:00they say that, you need to explain to them because they're not--." I've always had this trouble of wanting the art to do the talking for me because, like I said, Mom says I mumble. I ramble on sometimes when I'm telling a story, (Laughter) so this is easier to do one little canvas. Then there's all this story there. Sometimes I get a doubt. I doubt my work sometimes. It's weird when you go certain places and people look at it. They like it, except maybe it's a color they didn't like. It doesn't match something in their house. When I'm doing these things, I don't think about if the guy's shirt is going to match somebody's drapes, or if they don't understand what it is. I know what it is.

Little Thunder: Yeah, I think artists wrestle with that, anyway. Then Native 49:00artists have twice the--.

Diacon: Yeah, you get double-dipped on it, or "tired of painting Indian subjects." I think sometimes they see us as such one-dimensional characters that they don't see the culture or the real beauty behind it. They don't understand the meaning or the fact we're still here to do this. That kind of breaks me up to think about it.

Little Thunder: Right, I'm so glad you got to be out there where that synergy is and that reinforcement. I'm wondering, once you finished up your work there, how 50:00has it played out for you since then?

Diacon: It's done real good because I've got a lot of confidence in my work. Like the story I was telling you just then, I still get a little worried about it, but I think that's part of being an artist. Sometimes I'll do something that I'm not real happy with it, but everybody else sees it and will go, "This is fantastic." I'm like, "Really?" Sometimes if I'm away from it for a little bit and I'll see it again, I'm like, "Well, you know, that is pretty good." (Laughs)

Little Thunder: It's hard to get that objective distance, isn't it--

Diacon: It is. It's hard to get--

Little Thunder: --to put things down, sometimes.

Diacon: --because I get really passionate about it, really enjoying it. Then I'm like, "This isn't what I wanted." I don't know. Sometimes I think that drives me to do the next one. "Okay, the next one will be even better." It's the technique thing. I think I've got the background behind it now, and it's the technique. 51:00That may be why I range from so many different styles.

Little Thunder: I was going to say, yeah, and then you're developing these stylistic lines in tandem.

Diacon: It's like Ruthe once told me. One time she said, "Your style is so schizophrenic. One day, you're doing this. The next, you're doing this." (Laughter) To me, it's so exciting and so much fun. It's like a game show.

Little Thunder: Do you think, does the subject matter come--. When you get an idea, do you think, "I know how I'm going to do it. I know the approach. It's going to be a flatstyle approach this time," or they're born together?

Diacon: Yeah, I'll get an idea in my head, and it's already formed to what style I want to do it in. I did one the other day. It was a little one. It was Fishing Medicine, which is another one that the story--. The Creeks used to use devil's 52:00shoestring that was a medicine that they would put into the water. It would bring the fish up. It [wouldn't] kill the fish. It wasn't toxic to humans; they could still eat the fish. They could harvest a lot of fish that way. I did a flatstyle painting. I was at one of the Philbrook shows years ago. It was a two-level: one above ground with the men, and then below in the water, where they would wade out into the water. They'd actually wade out in the water, mix that stuff into the water so the fish would get it. It was like, you know how water, the refractory thing of water, their legs were over here and their top parts were over here, of course.

Anything that came into the water, it would do that, like water does. Did it in flatstyle, with the fish underneath and everything. It's one of those things where people didn't know what it was. They laughed, "That's so funny. I love 53:00that painting. It's so funny." I look at my wife; she's looking at me. "I don't see what was so funny about it." I played it off because I don't want to embarrass someone when they don't know. I wanted to say something to them, but at the same time, they're really enjoying it. They're appreciating it, and I hate to embarrass them and say, "No, that's fishing medicine. There's nothing really funny. They're fishing," explain it to them. My wife says, "You need to do that because I'm sure people would really love to know what's going on in these paintings."

Little Thunder: Those are those educational opportunities that you--yeah.

Diacon: Yeah, because I don't know how to approach it.

Little Thunder: I think it takes time, being out there at the shows, to figure out how you want to do that. (Laughs)

Diacon: Yes, because--.

Little Thunder: Sounds like a great painting, though.

Diacon: It was nice. I don't know whatever happened to it. It sold, and I don't 54:00know whatever happened to it. Lydia Wyckoff, when she was a curator there at Philbrook, they were trying to restart that Indian Annuals. I had a painting in there. It's the one that's in the Philbrook's collection right now. She called me one evening. She said, for the opening the show, for the reception, she goes, "I wanted to let you know, we're interested in purchasing your painting for the museum collection, so don't sell it to anybody that night, except to someone from the museum." Said, "Okay, all right." We go over there that night. There's the reception. You're mingling with everybody, and all the buyers are there. Then this man comes up to me, and he introduces himself. He says he's with Friends of Philbrook, and he would like to buy the painting. I thought, "This must be the guy I'm supposed to sell the painting to," so I agreed to it. I sold 55:00it to him, and then Lydia came up to me. She goes, "I should have explained it a little better. Me and him were in a bidding war for your piece. He wanted it for his personal collection. I wanted it for the museum. He kind of misrepresented himself." She goes, "I'm not going to say anything because he donates obscene amounts of money to the museum, but I know his wife. I'll talk to her." Next thing I know, it's in the museum collection. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Oh, that had the best possible ending, and Philbrook got some more money for it. (Laughs) You had a show at Southern Plains [Indian] Museum, also.

Diacon: Yeah, with Rosemary Ellison just before she passed, I think.

Little Thunder: What was that like? Did you have a number of older and newer works?

Diacon: I had some older and newer works there. Most of them, I had done after 56:00I'd left the Institute. I had some silk screens there that I did at the Institute. I didn't have any traditional style; they were more contemporary style. I had one that was a hubcap. My real mother died in a car wreck. It was a '56 Chevy, and it was hit by a Coca-Cola truck on her side of the car. She was killed instantly. Pretty much crushed her, is what it did. I thought about this, what I wanted to do, an honoring for her. I thought, "I'm going to make a war shield." I got a '56 Chevy hubcap, and I fixed it up with the trade cloth over it, and the feather pendants coming down. I did all the beadwork on the feathers. I called it My Mother's War Shield. It was a '56 Chevy hubcap. It 57:00looked just like a war shield, a regular Plains shield, but it was the hubcap instead of a rawhide--. I got these little Coca-Cola bottles. They were like Christmas tree ornaments. I found them. I got them, and I tied them on there like little fetishes on there, on it.

It had the hawk bells and everything. I did that piece as an honor to her. I did another piece for that show. It was an old fiberglass table, round table. I took it, and I painted it red like those little Coke symbols, the round Coke. I cut out--I had a newspaper copy. I made a photocopy of the newspaper article that told about the wreck. I cut the words Coca-Cola out of that and attached it to that red disk. Then I painted a, it was a black paint, her image on the front of 58:00that. I did that piece for the show. I had two pieces in honor of my mother in that show. There were some others. I did one of a Creek Bigfoot. I did a ribbon dancer. There were some other works. They're all gone now, (I sold all of them) but that was a really nice show. It was nice to meet Rosemary. She is another one of those like meeting a movie star things. There's people you've heard about, and then here you are now, in their presence. You're like, "Wow."

Little Thunder: She was such an important figure.

Diacon: It was funny. We were discussing that one piece earlier, the Andrew 59:00Jackson's Toilet in Hell.

Little Thunder: Yes, and I want to interject quickly because, yeah, your three-dimensional pieces are wonderful, too, and Karita Coffey's ongoing influence. (Laughs) As you get ready for a couple of shows coming up here, getting back in the show circuit, and you mentioned SEASAM [Southeastern Art Show and Market], you have this wonderful three-dimensional piece.

Diacon: Yeah, I did it as a student work in Karita Coffey's 3D design class. It was a chair class; it was a chair design class. She showed us examples of what she was looking for. One of the examples she'd had from a previous student was an old wooden chair, and it had all these arrows stuck all over it. It looked like a porcupine with arrows in it. It was called Custer's Chair. The Creeks, our Custer was Andrew Jackson, so I thought, "I want to do something for Jackson 60:00then. I want to do something like that for Jackson." I went to a Salvation Army store there in Santa Fe, trying to look for an old piece of furniture, something that I could find. I passed this one room, and it was off in the back, laying on its side. I didn't even know if it was for sale at first because it was just laying there. It was an old toilet. It had the tank and the commode part and the seat, but it didn't have the lid on it. There was no lid to the tank. I wasn't sure if it was for sale. I asked them if it was for sale. "Yeah, twenty-five dollars."

At the time, I was living in Santa Fe. My wife had moved back to Tulsa. Actually, she was back in Arkansas. She hadn't moved back to Tulsa yet. She was in Arkansas. I called her. I said, "Hey, is it okay--," because we shared a bank account, Bank of America. I could put in my funds there, and we shared it. I 61:00said, "Is it okay if I draw money out of the bank and get a toilet?" "What do you need a toilet for?" I said, "I got an idea for a class project." She goes, "I guess. If you really need that toilet, go ahead and get it." (Laughter) I said, "I got to have it. I got to have it." I get it out; I take it back. I'm sitting there. I got it in my dorm room, and I'm looking at it. "What am I going to do to this thing?" I can't remember. I came home for some reason or another. I can't remember what it was. I wasn't home very long, but I went back out. We had, like, a two-week time period to do this thing. I came home; was in Tulsa. We were in downtown Tulsa, walking the alleys, and I was trying to find old pallets and stuff with big nails, rusty, old, jagged nails.

What I did was the toilet seat was an old wooden seat, and I jammed them things, drilled and stuck them in there where it's all these very painful, if you were to ever sit on it, on that toilet seat. On the inside of the seat, I carved out 62:00with this old wood carving tool that I had. I carved out the presidential seal, and then I painted it on there and made gouges in there, painted it red. The toilet itself, I took a photocopy of Jackson, a picture of him, ran it through the copy machine there in the library where I worked, on cellulite sheets. Cut it out. Of course, this was a student project, so it was real low-budget. (Laughs) I stuck everything on there. I stuck the Indian Removal Act, excerpts from it, and all this stuff about Jackson from the Hermitage that I found. Put it all on there with contact paper. It was real low-budget. The tank was missing. What was I going to do for the tank? I thought, "I'm going to make this big Jackson head." I had a printing class, so I did all these--. They'd just 63:00came out with the new twenty dollar bills, where Jackson's picture went from that little, small size to big.

I thought, "I'm going to make some of those. I'm going to screen print some of those, and they're going to be like they're going down the toilet." I did all this work on it, and I took it in there. Karita loved it. She loved it. Kenneth Johnson, the silversmither, he saw it. I think this is when he was just getting a fellowship with the Smithsonian, so they took all kinds of pictures of it. He talked about it when he was doing his talks, when he was going around the country. He goes, "Your toilet's getting rave reviews!" All this is going on, and then it faded away. I graduated. I towed it around with me the last twenty years. I graduated from there twenty years ago and toting this thing around with 64:00me. Going back to Rosemary, when she asked me if I was interested in doing a show out there at Plains Museum, I said, "Yeah." She goes, "I love your work. I'd love to have it out here. I want everything, recent examples of your work, except I don't want any Andrew Jackson toilet." I never even mentioned to her, but she knew about it.

Little Thunder: She already knew about it. (Laughs)

Diacon: She already knew about it. That thing got a lot of word of mouth and moccasin telegraph. It was all over.

Little Thunder: That's too funny.

Diacon: I told my wife. I talked to Justin Giles. I showed him some slides that Karita took of it. I told him, "It's sitting in my garage in disarray. I don't even have the top anymore." It was made out of cardboard. He says, "I think Andrew Jackson's Toilet needs to live again." I showed it to Christina Burke, the slides, there at Philbrook. She goes, "Oh, this is wonderful! I wish you could have had it--maybe they could have used it in that Return from Exile 65:00exhibit. That would have been perfect for that." It sat out there in the garage, collecting dust. (Laughs) When Trump got elected and this whole thing with Jackson and him, I thought, "Yeah, it's time for that to come back." Southeastern Indian Artists Association has an exhibit that they're--it's a juried exhibit coming up. It's called Indian Offense, and it's going to be here in Tulsa. It's the same time that they're having that Native American--. Was it Art Studies Association Conference?

Little Thunder: Art Studies Association, yes.

Diacon: I told my wife, I said, "I'm going to redo it. I'm going to redo it. I'm going to go through...." What I did, I went through, and I hand-built out of wood the top part, redid it. I painted it. It's all painted now. It wasn't painted before. I've got a wooden pedestal it's sitting on now. Before, it sat 66:00on the floor, and now it's on a round, wooden pedestal. I've redone everything, re-worked it. Now it's gone from a student study piece or assignment piece, to an actual finished piece. I'm really happy with it. I'm anxious for it to finally get seen. People have heard about it, but no one has never really seen it. Now it's new and improved. It's the real deal now, and it's ready to hit the show. I mentioned it in a post on Facebook, and Kenneth saw it. He goes, "I think I know which statement piece you're talking about." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I'm glad I'm going to get to see it again at the conference, and we're going to have a picture. In terms of your painting, you're mainly working 67:00on board or canvas, mainly working with acrylics or watercolor?

Diacon: Acrylics and oils, and I still do the flatstyle.

Little Thunder: You still do some watercolor or not?

Diacon: Still do that, yeah. I still do some watercolor. A lot of work I do has been acrylic. I'm really thinking about the environment. Some of this, the oil paints and stuff, and even the acrylics, it's all water-based paint. Where does that go? What happens? I've been really seriously thinking about that here lately. I'm thinking I don't want to leave such a footprint that way. I want my art to be seen and to last forever, but I don't want what I've used to create it to be--which is really rough because most artist materials are--it's hazardous to--. (Laughs)

68:00

Little Thunder: To some degree, yeah, that's right.

Diacon: To some degree, so there's a conundrum there for me. I do a piece protesting DAPL [Dakota Access Pipeline], and then I'm using stuff that's not good for the environment to make this piece. I'm like, "What do I do?" I'm looking at maybe trying to find some renewable things, maybe going back to more earth-based. I was telling my wife the other day when we were at Philbrook, (we were looking at some of the older paintings they have in there) I said, "In the old days, these guys--." This is pre-invasion period stuff. They were, like, 1400s, some of these old paintings. These old guys over in Europe are doing this stuff that they didn't go to the art store and buy the stuff. They had to make it themselves. They had to make their own paints and everything. I said, "I'm going to look into making--what pigments can I use, and what can I use as a 69:00medium to hold these things together that aren't so rough on the environment." You think about all this stuff getting mined out of the ground. That's what they make these artistic art materials and supplies with. It makes you feel kind of guilty, and you feel like a hypocrite. You're sitting there, pouring your dirty water from doing a watercolor down the sink, and you're like, "Where does it go?"

Little Thunder: Yeah, I'll be interested to follow how--.

Diacon: Yeah, I think it's the next--

Little Thunder: That might be the next.

Diacon: --phase of what I might be looking at, what I can do to create new art and still create but not destroy, I guess.

Little Thunder: Can you talk a little bit about the piece that you contributed to the Code Talkers novel?

70:00

Diacon: Yeah, years ago--this is another where the connections that you make there [IAIA]--. It was the first time I'd ever been on the computer was when I went out there. They were showing me the internet, and I got on the internet for the first time. "This is really cool." I was looking up stuff; I was Googling things. It was Yahoo at the time. The guy said, "Yahoo search is real good." I was typing in these things about--I would type in "Creek Indians," and all this stuff would come up. I would be like, "Wow, this is really neat." Arigon Starr's name came up. She's Creek and Kickapoo. She's a singer-songwriter and all this. I thought, "This is interesting," so I started looking at her site. Then she had a contact thing on it. I thought, "I'm going to contact her." I got a new email address through the school, so I sent her an email. "Hey, I'm Creek, too." She immediately wrote back, "Wow, that's really cool."

71:00

We were talking back and forth, and we made this friendship online. Then I said, "If you're ever around, I'd like to see one of your shows." She had one here at Tulsa. I came back, and I met her. It was great. We were friends, and then through the years, you run into each other here and there, and stayed in contact. She'd always send me Christmas cards every year. She was doing the Super Indian comic books here, and I thought, "That's pretty cool." When I was little, my mom, that's how I learned how to read was with comic books. You didn't have to go to kindergarten back then, so she kept me home. I learned how to read and write before I went to school that way, and it was with comic books because she was a big comic book fan. That was always another thing. I liked 72:00comic books and animation. It was all tied into that. She was over at the Council House, what used to be the Council House Museum, over there in Okmulgee, doing a presentation there.

She asked me, she goes, "Hey, we're doing that Code Talker book. Would you be interested in doing the Creek story for us?" I said, "Would I? You bet," because a couple years before that, they had a Native comic book workshop. Lee Francis, her, Michael Sheyahshe, and Roy Bony, they were over here. I dropped by with some of my little comic book drawings that I did for my own amusement. I found a comic book sketch pad that was all blocked off for making the pages at the art 73:00store, so I bought one. I was tinkering around with it, and I thought, "I'll show them that." Lee Francis really liked it. -- "I want to eventually--I want you to do some work with us." This came up with Arigon, so she goes, "Can you give me eight pages and have it done by January?"

This was in October, and I said, "Yeah, with story and everything." I went through, and I did all the little thumbnail sketches and the script and the whole thing and everything. Shot it to her, and since she was the editor of the book, she, "How about this? How about this," fix it all up. I sent her the drawings. They were pen and ink, India ink and pens and stuff on that paper. She did all the lettering and the coloring; I did the artwork and the story. It went into that book, and I was like, "Wow, that's really nice." I've got another one 74:00I was working on. It's called Relocation. That's one that, right now, I've got six pages of it done. That's out in Albuquerque getting scanned right now. I got more work I got to do on it.

Little Thunder: When's that one due out?

Diacon: I'm not sure the exact date. I'm supposed to talk with Lee again. He's the one--I got to get some more pages done for it. It was mainly, "I'll go this far and see what he thinks." He likes it. He goes, "You got to keep this up," so I got that going.

Little Thunder: That's wonderful.

Diacon: That's how I got started in that. It was another one of those dream-come-true things. Never thought I'd be doing comic book art. It was one of the things, I thought, "I'll probably never do animation, but--." (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I'm sure we'll see more of that, too. What's your creative process from the time you get an idea?

Diacon: They come to me usually at night. I'm sleeping, or before I go to sleep 75:00is the best time. It relaxes me where I'm getting to sleep. I'm rolling over in my head what I want to do because something is already--. I've seen something, or something has came to me. I start thinking about it, dreaming about it, and then I wake up early in the morning. It's usually about four thirty in the morning. I come in here, and I start working on it. I start it, and I'm hating it. I hate it. "This is it. This is it. No." I keep going. I can't stop. -- I keep working on it. Before long, I got the finished product, and it comes real smooth. When I get right down to it, then it's torture sometimes because it's just not what I wanted. Then I can't stop. I keep going, and I keep going. I 76:00think, deep down inside, I know it's going to work out. I think that whole "this isn't working" is what keeps me going at it. Then I get it done, and then I'm like, "That looks good." I show it to my wife. I'm like a little kid. I come, "What do you think of this? What do you think of it," come trucking it out. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: When you look back on your career so far, what would you say was a fork in the road for you?

Diacon: Wow, there's been so many, so many forks and curves and everything. Sometimes I think it was a misstep when it wasn't. I often think that sometimes I'm being directed into this direction. When I come to a fork and I'm not sure which way to go, I don't know if you would say you rely on faith or if it's 77:00predestined, but I go a certain way. Sometimes I'm trying to take that straight path, and you get knocked off of it a little, but you come right back on it. I guess one of the forks in the road that I took was in the death of my daughter. I came back from the Eiteljorg. That was the first time I was at that market there in Indianapolis. My wife was six months pregnant. I've always wanted to go, and she was, another one of those things, "Let's do it!" She's a great motivator for me. "Let's do it. We can do this." That's how we ended up getting a house. We was supposed to be looking at houses all through spring break, and the next thing you know, I'm signing the papers on one.

Little Thunder: Good for her.

Diacon: She said, "Let's go to Eiteljorg," because I always wanted to go there. "Let's do it, then. Let's do it." We went there. She got cleared by her doctor to travel because she was six months pregnant. He said, "You should be fine." We go there and had a great weekend. I won first place and best in division; sold 78:00the painting; sold a lot of work; had a really good time. All weekend long, though, she kept having some pain, and she called her doctor up. One time she called him up. He said, "Don't worry about it. You're further enough along, you're going to start having these pains because you're going to be having a baby here in about three months. You're going to be having some pains. It's your body getting ready." Over the weekend, it got worse and worse. We came back Monday morning. I drove from Indianapolis back to Tulsa in about ten hours straight to get her back home. It was painful. She called her doctor, and he said, "I'm sure you're all right. Come in tomorrow morning, and I'll look at you. We'll make sure." I was in the next room. All of a sudden, I heard her holler, and I'm running back there.

79:00

She thought she had felt the baby's head, but actually it was the water. Took her to the hospital. Wasn't sure what was going on or anything. Took her to the ER and left her there. Parked my truck to get it out of the ER there. Went back in there. Soon as I went back in, I was looking for her and couldn't find her. They said, "They took her up to labor and delivery. She's fixing to have a baby." I said, "No, she's not fixing to have a baby. She's only--. What?" I went up there. What she had done, she'd had an incompetent cervix, so the baby had moved down in the birth canal. It sent all the signals that she was giving birth. The doctor said it had gone too far down. They called a specialist in, and he said there was nothing they could do, a cerclage or anything, to prevent it, that we were going to have a baby that night. Of course, he prepared us. It 80:00was a little girl. He said, "Chances of her surviving are really slim, and if she does, she's going to have a lot of health issues." Of course, we had to go through the full labor, knowing that the baby wasn't going to make it. That was horrible.

I held her in my hands. I blamed myself. I said, "If I hadn't have been so selfish and went to Indianapolis, this wouldn't have happened. It's my fault." I quit painting. That was in 2000, and that's when I stopped. That's when I quit. 81:00A few years later, (it was 2008) I was feeling a little bit better. I'd done some praying and getting everything in balance and right again, and I felt strong. I was going to paint again. I start painting. I probably started painting that morning. That evening, found out that my other daughter (she was eighteen at the time, eighteen, nineteen) got in a fight with her boyfriend and committed suicide. She hung herself. I thought, I said, "I can't do this. I'm not supposed to be painting. It's a sign I've done something wrong somewhere along the line in my life." I stopped again until 2014. I was praying. Went to 82:00the Eagle Day event here in Tulsa. Shan Goshorn was there, and we were talking. I saw those eagles there. Iowa Tribe brings in the eagles from their rehabilitation program. They had two eagles there. -- I got this message from those eagles.

The Creator said, "You're still who I made you. I give you this gift, like these 83:00eagles. These eagles have been hurt, but they're still eagles, and they still do what eagles do. With the help and guidance and love, they're able to continue doing what it is that they do." Then I knew I was going to be all right. My little babies were all right, that it wasn't my fault, that I didn't cause it, and so I continued back in with my art. I went back onto the path that He obviously had set up for me to do these things. This is what I'm supposed to be 84:00doing, so I went back into it. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling real good. The pain's still there, but I'm able to do what I need to do. I'm very thankful. I feel blessed and fortunate that I have this gift. The Creator, He gives you these gifts, and He'll take them away if you don't use them. I'm using them, and I'm really appreciative of the fact that I've got to do what I've done with my work, and that it's been to some of the places that it's been. It's getting the recognition, and it's a good feeling. Some of my work has been places I've never been. Send it off to places like New York and stuff. I've never been there, but it's been there.

Little Thunder: (Laughs) We're really thankful that you're painting again, and 85:00we're going to take a look at a few of your pieces that you can share with us. -- Johnnie, would you like to tell us about this piece? Maybe also tell us a little bit about how you do your titles, if they're hard or easy.

Diacon: Sometimes the title, I'll come up with it while I'm doing the work. It's usually based on what it really is. Sometimes I'll use a Creek title; it'll be in Creek.

Little Thunder: That's great.

Diacon: I always put the English out beside it. Usually when I enter shows, when they announce it or talk about it, they usually use the English version. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Right, but you're using the language.

Diacon: I'm using the language as part of painting within that culture. If you go to another country and they've got a painting, the title, it's going to be in that language. That's, to me, part of being true to the heritage and the 86:00culture. This one, I didn't give it a Creek title. I call it Three Creek Hunters. I usually refer to us as Muscogee, but a lot of people don't know who Muscogee are. They know the name Creek. This is an old story. It's actually older than what the characters are represented here because when this story originally originated, they didn't have shotguns, like the one Indian is carrying here. (Laughter) It's the Thunder Helper story, the three hunters. The one boy, I used my son as a model for it, for him. My son, he said, "That's me, isn't it, Dad?" I said, "Yeah." (Laughter) It's the story of the Thunder Helper. The boy goes on a hunting trip with his three uncles, and he hears this rumbling sound. It's Thunder, and it's caught. It's in a fight with a tie-snake. The 87:00tie-snake has him down.

The boy releases him, shoots an arrow in there. He hits that tie-snake in the neck, and he releases Thunder. Thunder becomes his friend, and they go back to his uncles. He's telling them he needs to go on to this--take a medicine course. His uncle said, "You're too young," the oldest uncle. He goes to the middle uncle, and the middle uncle says the same. He goes to the third uncle, the youngest one. He goes, "I think you're old enough to go on a quest," a vision quest kind of a thing. When he does, he gets these powers. He transforms into a rainbow. There's this other town that they're having a conflict with. With the help of Thunder, the boy goes through, and he's able to destroy the enemy. That's Thunder paying him back for helping him with a tie-snake. That's the 88:00basis of that story. That's why I decided I'm going to give them three weapons that the Creeks would normally use: a blowgun, the bow and arrow, and a gun. That's the idea. I wanted the old story, so I figured, "I'm going to use the old, traditional flatstyle painting to represent it."

Little Thunder: That's a beautiful piece. Thank you for sharing that.

Diacon: You're welcome.

Little Thunder: All right, how about this piece, Johnnie?

Diacon: This one, this is titled The Dawes Commission Interpreters. What I wanted to represent were speakers that are fluent Creek speakers, and go to the people to try and explain to them what was going on. Some of these people look upon them like, "What are you trying to do here? These white people come here talking this. Now you're coming here talking this." I wanted to give them--. You 89:00wonder about them. You can't see their eyes.

Little Thunder: Yeah, that's very effective, yeah.

Diacon: The shadow blocks their eyes. You can't see, so you don't know what their intentions are. You look at them, you're like, "Okay, what are you three fellows wanting?" It's one that I used oil. This is oil painting on the stretched canvas. It's another type of art that I do, instead of the flat traditional with gouache and tempera like that, but the last one, this one is an oil.

Little Thunder: Got a nice textured look to it.

Diacon: Yeah, I'm rough on brushes, the way I paint, so I buy cheap brushes because I'll eat them up. (Laughter) I wanted to do this. The thing about hats, I love hats on Indians, any kind of Indian, old pictures with hats. Creeks, a 90:00lot of times people don't see this as Indian art because they don't have what they recognize from the movies, the plains or the tipi here, the feathered bonnets, or anything like that, or the beadwork. These are Creeks. This is how they were dressed during that period. They wore hats, and they wore the coats and everything like that. I love the way that looked from that time period. I wanted to do a piece like that. I was looking back a lot on some of the old Impressionist work from the 1890s, the Van Goghs.

Little Thunder: Yeah, you can feel that.

Diacon: I thought, "I want to do a painting in that style like that because that's the same, close time period." If one of those were to be painting this, if they were like, say, Cézanne was Creek, if he was painting Creek subjects, 91:00maybe this is something he would do.

Little Thunder: Right, no, that really has a nice--. Yeah, that feeling comes through really strongly.

Diacon: It's fun to paint like that, to try something new.

Little Thunder: The physicality of it.

Diacon: Yeah, because I'm in here, like I said, I'm rough on brushes, getting it thick and moving it around. Actually in some places, I actually mix the paint on the canvas itself instead of on my palette. I get it on there and mix it and play with it. I really enjoy doing that. --

Little Thunder: Okay, now we're looking at this Andrew Jackson piece. You mentioned some of the improvements that you made to it, but it's a wonderful piece. You were able, probably, to go in when you were painting it this time and really take your time with the Andrew Jackson portrait, etcetera.

Diacon: Yeah, on the original one, that top part of his head and everything was made out of cardboard. I put it together with a hot glue gun in my dorm room to get it ready for my project. (Laughter) This one is actually--I cut it out of wood. I jigsaw cut that out, the head, and I built the little box to be the lid for the tank on the toilet. I added--off of old trophies. I found some old trophies. I added the eagles--

Little Thunder: Okay, that's what that detail is.

Diacon: --the four eagles on the side. The bolts, on the part that would bolt the toilet to the floor, it has got gold eagles on it, too. I was able to add that and the wooden base that it's on. I painted it. I added the plunger part on it. It's an old souvenir ice box magnet that says "Oklahoma." It looks like a tomahawk. (Laughs) I used it for the plunger part on there.

Little Thunder: Wow, yeah. That is great, a really neat piece. Thank you so much for your time today, Johnnie.

Diacon: You're welcome.

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