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>> BARTOW: It was through our relationship with the Japanese paper maker, Naoki Sakamoto
of Tokyo and now Seiichi Hiroshima of Tokyo that I began to work with Japanese paper.
It's a single sheet and it's hand made. I love paper, I have more paper than I can use
in a lifetime probably, some of it up to a century old.
The image itself, some sort of spooky transformation of the deer and the human, I often think in
the drawings that it's more of an ecological statement that we are no greater than they
are and they are no greater than we are and we depend on one another. It was just a sort
of homage to a very good friend who laughs with me when we're happy and prays for me
when I'm in trouble, so mutually beneficial back and forth.
I spent ten years before I became a professional artist working with handicapped children in
the public school system. I became aware of the fact that a lot of children arrive in
the world and then find themselves without parents, sometimes even without grandparents.
This work began as a work addressing the wonderful work that grandparents who raise a children
do.
So it began as life out of balance, the back of the Coyote becomes the grandmother with
the 111 marks tattooed on her chin, which would connote a woman and on the side there's
a grandpa waving. So I was thinking of life out of balance but also there's a clam, a
cockle between his front legs, that's where I live. Because one day I was out there and
I see coyote tracks and he was out there digging clams so even in our area, you know, coyote's
a living entity right there under our living room window.
Up from the coyote extends a basket made by my friend Zeke Head and then inside I think
of it as my daughter Lily peeking out into the new world. The eagle represents a spirituality,
the red road spirituality. And then up above, no matter even how beautiful the eagle flies,
these little birds come in.
We call them the humblers because they make him jog and he's not quite as hip, slick,
and cool as he'd like to be because these little things are creating problems. And then
I added the lamprey, the eel, to the salmon. There's a male and female salmon. And then
I realized, this had changed. It wasn't about grandparents raising children anymore.
It was just simply about things happening in the world. Then the eagle and its beautiful
flight is knocked slight akimbo by smaller, little, not life threatening things but they're
threatening things and they make us uncomfortable sometimes in the world. And I realized that
it was a statement not about life out of balance but just about life in itself, and how what
I was looking at as being out of balance was really a blessing in that at least there was
a grandparent to pick that child up.
After having had a stroke and heart trouble for five years now, you know, we were laughing,
Kay Walkingstick and I, about not being so scary anymore. We've become children's illustrators
you know; we've lost our teeth. And so now I call them cartoons in wood. I make these
things that are not as threatening, you know, and I think it's because through those debilitating
situations I've come to say, "Oh, God, I like being alive, you know, I like being able to
see even though my vision is somewhat compromised.
I like being able to see. I want to live." How do I do that? I make crazy things. And
go forward just as I always did but now I am very grateful.