Cloud 9

In my latest installment of the “Crafstmen” posts-This weekend I took my kids down to my uncle Kirks place down in Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania. City-kids meet country-cousins style. My Uncle has been a huge influence on my art as far back as I can remember. Killer Illustrator, painter, sculptor and builder. Everything he touches epitomizes hand-crafted quality. He used to rock that Art Nouveau-Hippy-Rock Art-William Blake Style. My grandparents had a reproduction he painted of the Ancient of Days in their extra bedroom for years when I was a kid. But in recent years his art has gone more toward the display and reproduction of his locally found Native American artifacts, specifially Leni Lenape, or Delaware Nation.

Since he was a kid in the 1950’s my uncle Kirk has been “hunting” arrowheads and other Native American artifacts buried in the fields mostly within 10 miles of his home. The basic rechnique is to walk the fields after a rainfall, even better during the time of year when they would freshly plow, and upturn soil. These days they barely plow anymore, they just spray a Round-Up type weedkiller. That and the disappearing farmland make it tougher. So his time has been spent more on curating than collecting new finds. He started to recreate working tools and pottery based on broken remnants he’s been finding for years. Beautiful stuff. He gives tours and visits of his private collection to schools and scout troops.

Here is Kirk, showing my son how you let the creek water help clean a cows skull, before he paints them. This is more in a western plains design style than the local lenape arts. I thnk he said he had this one sitting in the creek for a year, its wrapped in wire to keep the buzzards and neighbors dogs from it.

And here is one after he cleans, paints, and decorates it with beads and feathers.

Here are some selections of the hundreds of arrowheads, spear points and knife blades he’s found near his home.

These stones are war club, or hammer heads. You can find the indentions about 1/3 of the length of the stone where it would have been wrapped around a wooden handle. Often the Stones would be whole, drilling a whole in a strioking weapon or tool would weaken its integrity. See the picture of the Aize below.

For years he was finding the stone pieces of tools, but when he would show laymen, it was hard for them to envision how this stone was once a knife. So he started reproducing the tools themselves by researching what he could find. For the most part he tries to use authentic materials from the original era.

This is a reproduction of a “pump drill” Pretty ingenious and simple design. It would be used as a drill to bore holes through wood or other stone. Or it doubles as a fire starter. Wind it up and pump the horizontal handle. It bounces at the bottom. Amazing how fast this thing works.

Beats starting a fire by rubbing two sticks with your hands. Doesnt take long until you bear the brunt of that exercise.

Never a writer, but Kirks got the ill hand styles.

Handmade the box, the decorations and the Illustration.

For decades he was finding broken bits of pottery and it was only in the last few years he found some resources on Lenape pottery designs. The round bottoms, allowed the stews to be heated more uniformly, but this necessitated hanging them ove rthe fire. They don’t sit upright very well.   

And no trip to Uncle Kirks is complete without archery practice. My son had a blast.

He even hit the target a couple of times.