“It’s hard for anybody to make an actual living as an artist, but frankly, it’s particularly hard for an Indian. Not that the market for Native art is small. But because from the starting point, the hurdles are higher and the path is longer.” — Margaret Verble

Eddie Morrison: a Cherokee National Treasure
By Margaret Verble (Cherokee)
Contributing Writer
 

I’m proud to have in my den a little bear carved from cedar by my friend Eddie Morrison, who was designated a Cherokee National Treasure in 2014. That honor is the highest that can be earned in our Nation and is given to only a few special people who have distinguished themselves by preserving traditional Cherokee crafts, have helped restore and spread our language, or have excelled in graphic arts, contemporary art, or music. Eddie qualified for the honor by excelling on a national and international level in three of those categories: traditional craft, graphic arts, and contemporary art. 

It’s hard for anybody to make an actual living as an artist, but frankly, it’s particularly hard for an Indian. Not that the market for Native art is small. But because from the starting point, the hurdles are higher and the path is longer.

Eddie’s story is, in a way, a familiar Cherokee one and in a way not. Eddie didn’t know who his father was until later on in life, and his stepdad and mother got busted for selling whiskey in dry Tahlequah, Oklahoma, even though they’d paid off who they thought were the right folks. They left the state to start a new, legal life and wound up in South Carolina, where people didn’t know what Indians look like, but were glad to make life rough for anybody dark enrolled in a whites-only school. Eddie, the darkest child in his family, was so bullied that his mother sent him back to Tahlequah to be raised by his grandmother. Tahlequah is the capitol of the Cherokee Nation. People know what Indians look like in Tahlequah.

Eddie was raised on his grandmother’s old-age pension, which, as you can imagine, was just chicken feed. But in everything except money, his grandmother was a rich woman. She knew how to love, and she was filled with a peace that is hard to describe to non-Natives, but is frequently found in Cherokee elders, both women and men. I can feel that peace in Eddie, and he credits his grandmother for it; though I think she was his model, and he had to do a lot of his own hard spiritual work to achieve what he first recognized in her.

As a child, Eddie also saw his grandmother piece together quilts out of scraps, and he saw his great aunt, her sister, draw. So early on, he knew beautiful objects can, seemingly, come out of nothing. That eyes, hands, and fingers can work magic.

Eddie has built his reputation by sculpting stone and carving wood, but he got his first break when he submitted a few pen and ink drawings for an art show at the Philbrook Art Museum in Tulsa. The Philbrook houses some of the finest Native American art in the world, and at the time Eddie carried his drawings over there he was working as a med tech in St. John’s Hospital in the same city. He had no career as an artist. No experience. No guidance. But the Philbrook decided they wanted to show Eddie’s work. That’s the kind of break every artist needs to be successful and it led to others.

After the Philbrook exhibition, Eddie started getting invitations to art shows. Sometimes that meant packing up a car and sleeping in it. Sometimes it meant bringing home a little money. Other times it meant coming home glad to have the gas to get back. But those journeys led to Eddie’s next break, the opportunity to study at the Art Student League of Denver, under Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache), the father of Native American sculpting. Houser saw the same talent in Eddie the Philbrook’s jury had and he got him into the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Houser didn’t live long after that, but while he did, in the tradition of elders of all Native tribes, he mentored and helped Eddie along his path. And Eddie will tell you today that it wasn’t just Houser’s connections and faith that helped him, it was the way the great artist carried himself. The way he was as a man.

One of Eddie’s first major public pieces is Those Who Came Before, depicting both Native people and white pioneers. In the middle of the traditional rock glyph is a bust of Jesse Chisholm, the son of a white father and a Cherokee mother. The piece was privately commissioned, but when it was finished, the owner, who was influential, asked that it be installed on the legendary Chisholm Trail (now Kansas Highway 81), on the Oklahoma-Kansas border. It stands there still, honoring the brave people and the mix of cultures who settled the West.