Mike Medicine Horse Zillioux:
What I remember is, even before it started, I went to a man who’s passed now. His name was Carl Sosi. He made our frames. And then we stretched the canvas on them. And he made it. He said he wanted it to be imposing.
And to this day I look at it—it’s still imposing, that piece. The size of it—it’s not square. But when I started it, it’s kind of tongue-in-cheek, because a lot of people think it’s a drip. But if you look at it with your eyes kind of closed, it’s not the drip. There’s a series of what I want to call it, like, shadow people that are based in there that you wouldn’t see unless I told you.
There, everybody thinks it’s a drip, but I didn’t drip a lot. I put those in there. And then I didn’t fear putting a buckskin cross in there because what it talked about was that Jackson Pollack became a Christian, and I put the buckskin cross in there for Native Americans, and then I drew some paint on there and put it on there as well as additional processes, and I think there are dots up on the top.
But the color itself has real richness, a real organic feel. That’s what I wanted, was that richness.
But that piece is a real strong piece. They say it’s salt in there. I thought it was sand, but I don’t remember. But it has a very organic shape to it, and that’s how I wanted it done.
If you look at it, it’s not just over and over and over. It’s very stylized, and the richness stands out even to this day.
