The way that I create the form, and its relationship with the earth, is all new. The equal arm cross in a circle is very, very ancient. In my classes in Tahlequah with the children we would look at some of those different forms as they were created through time, and what they represented, not only in pottery but in many different kinds of forms. This is the way we tell our stories to future generations. I think each generation has a responsibility to know about their traditions, to know what it is that informs life, and to create some expression about that so that there isn't a gap between previous generations and future generations about what was experienced today.
Form is about experience.
But there are new stories about how the materials are gathered and how the forms are created from them. I fill shells with water from different places and allow it to evaporate. Sometimes it's sea water from different places and it leaves beautiful salt crystals in the shells that say something about my traveling. But Oklahoma wasn't our home anyway. Before the removal in 1838, before the Trail of Tears, we were in the Southeast, in North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Northern Georgia, and Northern Alabama, and one thing that I would like to do in the future is to go back to a lot of those sites and just spend time there and feel what they're like and what I can understand about them.