Art Shows at Historic Mills & Buildings
    While shows like this take place across the nation, few take advantage of them. This year, for the first time members of the Native American Church of Virginia participated in the non-profit Burwell-Morgan Mill "Art at the Mill" exhibit held May-June, and encourages others to next year.
     Chris (Comeswithclouds) White church CEO and  René White (Feather) church president both participated in the show targeting historical preservation and art education. Chris submitted a traditional Native American drum and natural stone relief. René submitted several dried gourd designs including this fish set.
     A portion of the sales goes to preserve the historical mill and to an annual scholarship given to a Clarke County student majoring in the arts.
    "428 pieces of art in this show sold," said Laura Christiansen, CCHA Director.
     Each year, the Burwell-Morgan Mill in the quaint village of Millwood, Virginia, becomes an extraordinary art gallery. Art at the Mill has become one of the premier art shows in the mid-Atlantic region, attracting artists and buyers from more than a dozen states.
      In a letter, speaking to René, Chris and the other artists who participated, Laura said, "Congratulations and thank you very much for your participation, excellent work, and support of the Art at the Mill. We owe our success to you!"
     Those interested in participating next year, entries for the 2015 are mailed in January and downloadable from the Art at the Mill web site.

Art Internships & Grants Available Now
     René said she benefited from an art internship in college and recommends high school and college under-grad and graduate students check out these resources for internships and grants:

• National Gallery of Art
  
• Internship Match
• Federal Government
• National Endowment for the Humanities
• Archaeology, Classics, and History of Art

     For an entire summer 30 years ago, René earned an art internship through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She stippled fish and other marine life for aquarium exhibits at the Maritime Museum in Beaufort, N.C.
     Stippling is dotting and creates a pattern using varying degrees of solid or shaped dots. Stippling is also a natural pattern found on Virginia’s fresh water rainbow trout, along with it natural scales, array of colors and rosy band.

About these Fish Gourds.
     These are naturally dried gourds, burned, carved then enhanced using water-based inks: pine-tree green, chartreuse, apple, turquoise, pink and blazing blue; heat set and sprayed using gallery conservation varnish; and accented with fishing line and buzzard feathers.
     These are most likely siphon or bottle neck gourds. However, to René they can only be fish gourds.
     "From the moment I laid eyes on this particular gourd shape, now all I can see is fish," she said."I am not a fisherman, but I just love watching them and their colors, shapes and textures."
     The other two gourd fish on this string represent food, she said. Trout feed on aquatic and terrestrial life. One gourd contains a lady bug, bee, moth and butterfly, but the other gourd contains words.
     "We, like the trout, feed on aquatic and terrestrial life as human food. Yet, 'The Word' sustains our souls," she added.
      Closeup photos show the words carved and burned into the gourd.

Like the Fish, We are all Related.
    Chris, her husband gave René the title, “Fish of a kind school with one mind” for this set of fish gourds. It is similar to “Birds of a feather flock together.”
     When you see a school of fish, they will turn immediately with ever threat," Chris said. "Flocks of birds do it too. What is it? Instinct? Inner knowing? Trusting your gut?"
     "As fish and birds are similar, we are similar," Chris said. "Some think, 'we are all different.' Some think, 'no one thinks like I do,' that, 'someone has to be right, and you must be wrong.' But, we are all related."
     We have much to learn from each other and the animal kingdom; as nature intended.
     As you walk, fly or swim, may you always be in balance with self and others. As you flow in life, may you flow with a sense of purpose that cannot be thwarted by external negative forces. And as you are, my you always be reminded to listen to the words of the still voice within you.

Tax Deductible.
Proceeds for purchasing Chris and René's art are tax deductible and helps fund Art in Nature ® classes René  teaches at her non-profit, faith-based church and helps preserve and protect a sacred Paleo-Indian grounds they found on their property.

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.

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.