Second Half of Day 8, George Hill Art Lessons, Canoeing, and lastly the splendid view from the Ranger Station

Day 8 second half

Sunday --- Today after we updated our blog’s we returned to camp.

Shortly after we arrived to Camp, Mr. George Hill arrived and began talks with us about the basics of ART.

Mr. Hill’s passion is in Sculpture Artwork, although since he suffered a stroke, he could not maintain the strength to keep practicing this method of Art.

Mr. Hill also expressed his life story, how Art had changed his life. Going from a drinking, rodeo’ing, and spontaneous traveling individual. What had changed his lifestyle was that he wanted one of his friends to hang out with him, but his friend did not want to hang out with Mr. Hill anymore. Mr. Hill asked his friend why? The response he received from his friend changed his thought process, his friend said that he could not trust him, that Mr. Hill always wanted to fight and drink blindly to a point they would not know where they would end up….

At this point in life he began thinking about the choices he makes, then he went to the Art Institute and stopped drinking. His escape from Alcoholism was through his expression in artwork.

Mr. Hill then described the fundamentals to sketching, the first task was to not look at the paper, we had to use our hand to outline what we saw, without looking at our paper. We were also asked to draw the outline of our feet. At first my scribble scratch looked terrible, I wanted to erase everything… But Mr. Hill assured us not to worry about what we were looking at… After we refine the piece, the details will work out. Certainly, after about a half hour of refining this exercise, my piece began looking like Art.

As my masterpiece became clear, we were then asked to begin the next part of this learning process. We were given this little box cut out from a thick card board type material to help us focus on a certain visual, that visual can be anything that we wanted to sketch. Of course mid-way through this task, I was interrupted. Haha, the story of my life… So many projects began, only to be interrupted by another task… Although what I did accomplish has a criss cross, funky, flow, flinstone toes look to it… To me anyway.

This settings was my next art piece...

The reason why I was called back to the group is because Warren Seyler arrived and we changed into our swimming gear. Warren had a trailer full of boats.

When we were departing, he asked if anyone wanted to ride with him, I jumped to the opportunity. Warren and I had various conversations during the drive to the lake. Warren served on the Tribal council a number of years (I believe 15 years), he now serves as sort of what I call, a consultant? Basically the key to a number of programs, of recent years he has expanded to involve the education system. Throughout the years, he has hired interns, and assigns a couple of duties to these young college interns such as: Interns go to elders houses and clean up the yards, ridding the yard(s) of old appliances such as: Refrigerators, freezers, washer and dryers. They do this to help keep the houses from being cluttered and also the reservation has been going through an erratic change on the economic side. Causing families to sort of grown apart eventually no longer assisting the elders as much as they used to.

Another project: The students go to houses around the community to ask them their input about what is their opinion, or suggestions, and what they remember about growing up in this area or where ever they grew up. They then record this into their archives. I really admire this excellent idea, one big reason he does this is because he knows that there are people that always speak up at council meetings and there are others that never do. Those are the people he is trying to reach, because they have excellent insight to what is going on…

As we arrived, myself and a few other of the students (males), unloaded the canoes. What a workout, I am loving this exercise and would like to thank Jessica Black, Warren, and everyone that put this event together. I really enjoy being out here, participating in a variety of activities… Especially with others.

We spent the rest of this day on this 180 foot long river that reaches Canada. Of course we all learned how to operate an oar in the process! J

After dinner, Warren returned and took us to the top of the mountain to the RANGER STATION. What an amazing view. Took my breath away seeing the entire county up here. See for yourself!