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SHAWNEE — Even 26 years later, Nelda Schrupp still recalls winning an honorable mention at her first Red Earth Festival.
'To me, that was like the sky gave me the sun, because I was just beginning my art career at that time. I was awestruck and in wonderment,' recalled the Nakota Sioux artist. 'I was being accepted for what I was striving to be as an artist.'
The nationally renowned North Dakota-based artist made another pilgrimage to Oklahoma this year for the Red Earth Festival, where she was named the 2020 Red Earth Honored One. She is displaying, among other artworks, a set of colorful handmade jingle dresses to signify healing for those affected by COVID-19.
'The jingle dress (dance) was to dance for the people to help heal the people, so I call them 'Spirit of Healing' dresses,' she said.
Schrupp is among more than 50 Native American artists from around the state and country gathering through Sunday at the 34th Annual Red Earth Festival. Although the event was delayed from June to Labor Day weekend due to the coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of artists, exhibitors and patrons turned out Saturday for Red Earth, which moved this year to the Grand Event Center at the Grand Casino Hotel & Resort in Shawnee.
'We had actually planned on the casino before (the pandemic), but it almost ended up being a godsend,' said Paula Cagigal, president of the Red Earth board of directors. 'We have a lot of wonderful artists ... in three different rooms over 35,000 square feet so that the artists and the patrons can walk around and feel comfortable in the situation.'
Coronavirus changes
An intertribal celebration of Native American art, dance and culture, the festival continues through Sunday at the Grand Casino. The event's previous home was the Cox Convention Center, which is expected to be phased out once the new downtown Oklahoma City convention center is completed.
'In the past few years, we've noticed that there's a lot of people at our events from rural Oklahoma ... and Shawnee is located in a place that's very easily accessible to just jump on the highway,' Cagigal said. 'Shawnee has embraced the event.'
Festivalgoers must follow the casino's COVID-19 protocols, including required masks and temperature checks.
The pandemic forced organizers to make several other changes, including swapping the Native dance competition and grand entries for dance exhibitions, and recruiting volunteers as personal shoppers for collectors who were unable to attend but still wanted to buy. Although some artists who usually participate skipped this year due to the pandemic, others were eager to show their work since so many art markets and festivals have been scrapped because of COVID-19.
'This is really the first show of the year because so many have been canceled,' said Broken Arrow painter Clancy Gray, who is Osage.
While Schrupp attended her first Red Earth in 1994, she has rotated between the Oklahoma festival and the Eiteljorg Indian Market and Festival in Indianapolis for the past several years. But the latter was canceled this year.
Despite some anxiety about traveling during the pandemic, the Lakota, North Dakota, resident said she was excited to return to Red Earth.
'They're kind of like family, the local artists that are from Oklahoma. It's kind of like a homecoming,' she said.
Eclectic artistry
Over the years, Schrupp has worked in a variety of art forms, from jewelry and dolls to ceramics and sculpture.
'Sewing was my very first art form. I was about 6, 7 years old on my mom's old treadle machine. I worked on that for years, and then I became an adult and I still sewed. I became a mother ... and I used to sew all her baby clothes and her little dresses,' said the artist, who grew up on the White Bear Indian Reservation in Saskatchewan, Canada. 'In the '60s and '70s, the bell-bottom pants and leisure suits, I used to make them for my husband, and they were fun.'
A 1990 University of North Dakota graduate, she majored in ceramics in college, but a friend encouraged her to take a metalworking class.
'Right from the get-go, I was just amazed at what metal could do,' she said. 'The nice thing about fabrics and metals is that they're such forgiving materials. Some people think that metal is so hard and so sturdy and static, but it isn't. It's flexible ... and so is fabric, it's so free form and flowing and moving all the time. ... You can take it and mold it and just create something that's uniquely you.'
Along with her 'spirit dresses,' she is showing at Red Earth several of her well-known contemporary versions of Native rattles, sacred items traditionally made only by men.
'I kind of jumped that boundary by making mine very contemporary out of metal, out of semi-precious stones, but still sticking with some of the design elements of our tribal history, of the horse hair and the deer antler. ... That's just all combined with geometric shapes and hollow forms, creating work with kind of a futuristic appeal,' she said.
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'(Some people) they always comment, 'Oh, this is not Indian art.' ... It's really hard to be different, but I just hung in there. And Red Earth gave me a place to exhibit my work and really appreciated my style and really helped me develop.'
Her work now is in such high-profile collections as the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.; the Heard Museum in Phoenix; and the Eiteljorg Museum. She said she was pleasantly surprised to be named this year's Red Earth Honored One, an award annually bestowed on a Native American master visual artist.
'I felt so honored and so undeserving and all those emotions. ... I was just amazed. I was in happy shock,' she said.
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GOING ON
Red Earth Festival
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Grand Event Center at the Grand Casino Hotel & Resort in Shawnee.
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Admission: $15 per person at the door. Children younger than 6 are free with a paid adult.
Information: www.redearth.org or 427-5228.
Related PhotosGrand Casino Shawnee Winners Bingo
2020 Red Earth Honored One Nelda Schrupp poses for a photo Saturday at the Red Earth Festival in Shawnee. [Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman]
Brandy McDonnell, also known by her initials BAM, writes stories and reviews on movies, music, the arts and other aspects of entertainment. She is NewsOK’s top blogger: Her 4-year-old entertainment news blog, BAM’s Blog, has notched more than 1... Read more ›