Earl Eder:
My name is Earl Eder. I'm a Lakota from Montana. I was raised in a little farm community in Poplar, Montana. My mother went to the agency, and she saw a flyer on a new school. So, she got some of my sketches and put them in an envelope and sent them down here and they accepted me.
So, the artists were really special and they had their own cubicles to paint. There was about eight to a room, and at nighttime, we would go over there and paint and experiment and see what these paints had to offer, you know.
Or, you can go to the arts building on the north end and you could do ceramics at night and that was the best part of it. You had options to pursue whatever you wanted to pursue, you know, even in the building of fine arts. You could do beadwork and they left it open to you, and it was really a magical time.
Well, at that time, I think back in the 60s, Pop art was popping out with Andy Warhol and all that New York scene. So, some of us were influenced by it and it was real different, you know?
There was Rauschenberg and Pollock and some other very contemporary expressionists. So, some of us kind of copied it and others just, you know, did realism. So, there's really a variety of all kinds of new avenues, you might say.
I think painting was my best because I put all the effort into it and I asked Mr. McGrath one time, I was kind of stumped, and he said, “Well, just pick out a piece of beadwork and a section of it and then blow it up and then you'll see you'll find something there.” As you look at it more, you know?
So, because I was kind of stumped at the time – and he said, “Go ahead, just blow it up,” and it came out really well – then after that, I started reading about the Winter Count and hide paintings and really got into it, you know? It was almost an obsession, you know?
So, I know the kids today say, “There’s nothing to paint, or nothing like that,” but as an Indian, you have a lot of cultural background. You have beadwork, you have hide paintings, you have all kinds of stuff.
Well, those teachers were so good at the time, you, as a student, you didn't realize it. They were to become famous after the school moved on, you know? They went on with their careers – they were really good – and we were all so inspired by them. We were just in awe, I guess, about them, you know?
That piece was a very free piece. It was positive and negative when you're putting it together. I was kind of all over the canvas with it. It was a one of the few times I used a palette knife, and I was just trying it out, and it seemed to work real well. So, it just kept on, and pretty soon, it turned into something else. It just kind of grew, you know, and had a life of its own.
Most of us came to the Institute and we were painting small, small stuff, you know? Eight by ten, you know, and our instructor said, “Well, just paint larger and it might even set you free and see what you can do.” So, we were doing larger canvases and just trial and error, you know. All these people were thrown into a cauldron, and they all had talent at that time.
And maybe it was just kind of a hit-and-miss thing, but boy, at the time, everybody was chipping in, and it was such a great time. Probably, it'll never happen again, you know? It's just so unique at that time. Well, I’m still…kind of mesmerized, I guess, and all the good fortune that I had there.
All the good teachers who helped us out, you know? They gave us advice and pushed us on to higher learning and moving on and creating beautiful stuff, you know? That's the way I see it, anyway.
I know Montana has a lot of space where I came from. It's a lot of area, so maybe, in my paintings, I have kind of a lot of area too, now that I think larger seems to impact it, somehow.
Maybe I picked it up somehow and realized, you know, when you look at a painting or something sometimes, it's so intense. Then you have to kind of rest on the side where it's a negative space, so you have that luxury of looking at it and enjoying it.
