Gourd #8 By René White Feather
A Native American Handicraft of Northern Virginia
 
     This unusual gourd is most beautiful in its nature and unadulterated state. When I first saw it, I could hear music with my eyes.
     What a joy to enhance it with broken green shards, iridescent hummingbird feathers and imitation sinew strings.
     Sinew is tough fibrous tissue that unites a muscle to bone. It is basically a tendon or ligament. Your Achilles tendon is sinew.
     Native Americans use sinew and feathers from four legged and winged animals and birds, as cords & bows, stringing beads, tying garments, and enhancing cultural crafts.
     While all sinew is a durable fiber, this instrument lacks stringing function. Honestly, I lacked the technical ability to tighten the strings using turning pins. This is my first gourd that wanted to be a musical instrument. It is primitive, one-of-a-kind, and I have much to learn. This is my eighth gourd in a series I would like to enhance.
     The first mark made on this gourd is at the base of the neck or column. Using my first burning tool, gifted to me by my oldest sister Bea, I spent countless hours burning this piece. It is not the hours I count, but the memories.
     Perhaps it is memories of family and home that led to this design. Or perhaps it is because my sister is a retired school teacher who cannot stop influencing.
     The basic design began as pine-tree bark. I grew up in the pines. All my people are surrounded by the pines and our Lumber River.
     In the 60’s and 70’s I grew up listening to one of our significant tribal musicians, Willie Lowery (1944-2012), who wrote a Lumbee arrangement of the famous Appalachian tune, “In the Pines.” His rendition of this song would become a kind of anthem for my people and me.
     Willie also wrote a song for us young children called, “Proud to be a Lumbee.” For the first time, our generation of children sang, “I can be anything I want to be… I am proud to be a Lumbee Indian.”

     They say I was the first female commissioned in the military from our tribal university. Many years later, and now a grandmother, now I can finally say I am an artist.
     Many people pass through our lives and influence us. Our designs. Our path.
     At the top of the neck, two lone feathers mark the transition to the solid pine-tree green which slowly blends to chartreuse. Chartreuse is one of those unexpected and underappreciated colors – like many people.
     As I held the instrument against me, I imagined what the person owning it would see. It was then that I imagined feathers flowing around the base.
     As the base of feathers began to take shape, the bark transformed into a combination of pine-tree bark and feathers. The whole design was not imaged from the beginning. None of my work is.
     Life if like that. We cannot plan it all out. We just have to go with the flow. Sometimes life hands us chartreuse, and you go with it.
     My friend Alan Stanz, who plays the Native American flute wonderfully told me, “Playing an instrument is finding your soul.”
     If this instrument could play for you, what sound would it make? Rock? Blues? Hip hop? Classical? Gospel? Grocery store music? Reggae? Tribal?
     Only the owner knows. Music for this piece is left to the eyes of the beholder.
     Thank you for appreciating it, not just its enhancements, but its nature beauty and what it creates in you and others.

By René White (Feather)
Lumbee, Native American Indian

Bluemont, VA – These natural gourds belonged to Mammy, my mother-in-law Jewell. Mammy and Poppa grew up during the Great Depression in Frederick County, Va. where they raise, Black Angus cows, farm fresh eggs & chickens and barn yard Pilgrim geese.

This is one of Mammy’s goose eggs. She cleaned it and wrote something in pencil on it.

Inspiration for this gourd design came from Mammy’s love of Depression glass and my love of her.

Depression glass is clear or colored translucent glassware, plain or textured, that was distributed free, or at low cost, in the United States during the Great Depression. I mixed and blended the less common colors of Depression Glass: jadeite (opaque pale green), delphite (opaque pale blue) and cobalt blue. These colors remind me, that even during hard times something good can be created.

As a blue glass bowl shape began to take form around the gourds, it reminded me of a dream I had in 2013.

I dreamed of a little girl. She was carving something underwater. It was the most exquisite art I have ever seen. I told her, “It is very beautiful.”

She didn’t speak English very well. Pointing back at the piece she managed to say, “It has memory.”

I stood on the river bank and watched her under water carving turn in every piece of art she had created. The art remembered what it had been each time before.

The plants, animals and insects on these gourds could appear under water. They include endangered Virginia fresh river-water Pigtoe and Birdwing Pearly Mussels, Virginia beach Tiger Beetle and the Shenandoah Salamander.

The egg represents a place where life grows, then breaks out of its shell, and hatches. Ideas are like that.

Sometimes it takes a long time to create space for ideas and for passion to hatch. I waited nearly 50 years before I could say, “I am an artist.”

Thank you for admiring the work I am creating now of my memories and yours.

About the Mill.

All of these pieces are part of the exhibit at the Burwell-Morgan Mill in the quaint village of Millwood, Virginia. Around 300 artists display over 1,000 pieces of art of all descriptions and media. Oil paintings are predominant, but other types of painting, mixed-media, sculpture, fine woodworking, and pottery round out the stunning diversity of the show. There is truly something for every taste, budget, and decor.

Art at the Mill is Clarke County’s Historical Association’s primary fundraiser, providing the operating funds for both the Mill and the Museum and Archives. CCHA retains 28% of each sale; the artist 70%; and the remaining 2% goes to the Sarah P. Trumbower Memorial Scholarship fund, which was established to help a deserving local student pursue a university education in the fine arts. It is a $5,000 scholarship awarded annually.

Orientation video about the Artist, Art in Nature,™ at the Sanctuary on the Trail™ in Northern Virginia.

René White (Feather) is a Native American, military veteran, wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister and friend.

Like the Feather she travels through life in non-resistance moving and flowing; but not blowing around aimlessly. Her life’s path has not always been easy, but like the Feather she is resilient. She has have flown around the world a couple of times. Touched others and their lives have touched hers.

Like the details between a single Feather, each small space in her life also has a story. She prays to continue to be humble as a Feather, because she believes, Creator God knows, it takes more than one Feather to make a wing and soar into the wind.

René has a Bachelor’s of Arts in Fine Arts & of Science in Mathematics, and Masters in Liberal Arts. She is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. Her vision is protecting a space to create new possibilities. She teaches Art in Nature™ at the Sanctuary on the Trail™, a Native American Church of Virginia.

René proudly serves as the Vice President of the Virginia Lovers’ Gourd Society, 1st place winner of the 2013 Gail Smith Gourd Award for the Clarke County Fair, member of the National Gourd Society and member of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post 9760. René is also the President of the Native American Church of Virginia.

Proceeds for purchasing her art are tax deductible and helps fund art classes René teaches at her Native American Church of Virginia, non-profit faith-based church.

René’s work is Authentic Native American Art. Her work meets the “Authentic Indian Arts and Crafts” and “Indian Product” criteria and is labeled appropriately as authentic in accordance 36 CFR 51, Authentic Native Handicrafts.

René is indigenous to the Eastern Lumbee Tribe. Art in Nature™ at the Sanctuary on the Trail™ is a Native American Church of Virginia faith-based initiative she and her husband lead.

Classes
     Classes are inspired by nature and Great Spirit, God, Heavenly Father, Creator of All. Classes are uniquely designed naturally for all four seasons and for all ages 0 – 120.
     Amateur. Professional. Novice. No experience is required. Art supplies are supplied free most of the time.
      Private classes are available by reservation only. She offers some private lessons and mentoring in: painting, printing, sculpting, carving, burning and photography.
     For private classes/tutoring, a larger donation may be needed, depending on the number of hours, materials and type of class taught.

Reservations
      Classes can be reserved by contacting René at [email protected]. 

Schedule
     Upcoming Classes are posted here and on the Art in Nature™ Facebook page.

A God-Sized Dream    
     Art in Nature™ is a Fine Art Ministry and Outdoor Door Classroom at the Sanctuary on the Trail.™ René White (Feather) is the art instructor.
     Her God-sized dream is to help people of all ages explore spirituality and Native American culture, in the world of art in an outdoor classroom setting. She teaches classes literally outside in nature, along the Appalachian Trail in Bluemont, Virginia.
     She is an unpaid volunteer.