Carolyn Bernard Young touches up one of her pieces during April’s Meet the Artist event at the Choctaw Welcome Center. Her Earth to Art studio is located in Weatherford , Texas.
Meet the Artist - Carolyn Bernard Young
By Ronni Pierce
Choctaw Nation
Weatherford, Texas - What lies underneath reveals itself through art and life.
She works the clay into a small circular mass then slowly and suddenly, the shape of a bowl takes form. Strong, steady hands work to reveal something that wasn’t there before. And, like the bowl, a woman’s talent reveals itself over time.
Carolyn Bernard Young was not a born a potter. She did not appear on earth throwing clay and carving animal figures and totems. Her life and her art were formed by her experiences.
In 1993, Young was traveling in the Middle East while working for an aerospace company. She was spending most of her time on the road and had just lost her parents and an older brother. She began searching for a creative outlet to relieve her stress and took a pottery class at the recommendation of a friend. “When my hands touched the clay I was lost. I took as many classes as I could,” she said.
She first learned by using a potter’s wheel. Then she took a workshop carving pots while studying petroglyphs and that’s how she began her unique process of carving into the clay revealing what was underneath.
In the meantime, she reconnected with the person who would become her conduit into the most creative part of her life, her husband Sam. They had worked together at General Dynamics in 1978, became friends, and then, as friends sometimes do, drifted apart. In 2011 they found each other again and married that same year. With his support and encouragement, Young became a full-time potter and artist. He poured the concrete for her aptly named studio “Earth to Art” at their home in Weatherford, Texas, in January 2012 and she moved in. “That studio is my haven. I’m there by 8 a.m. I listen to my Native American flute music and tell myself how grateful I am to have my husband and my studio.”
Early on, Young was inspired by their honeymoon travels in the Southwest where some of the pottery they purchased inspired her to create one of her early pieces, Shadow Mountains. First, she carved a cloud pattern and then out of the pattern, appeared Monument Valley, a scenic desert region populated with sandstone buttes located in the Navajo Nation. She says it wasn’t an intentional creation, it just appeared to her like a dream. “I think the process lends itself to working toward inspiration because first I have to throw the pot on the wheel and it’s just a piece of white clay that becomes a pot. Then it has to dry, then it gets trimmed, then I put black under-glaze on it.” After the piece dries, she starts trimming and decorating. “So during that process I have lots of time to think about what this little pot is going to be.”
“I’m working on some sculpture ideas and wall pieces.” But for now, she works on the simple things—mugs, tea bowls, bowls—because those are what people love. “One of the things I really like to do is make a jar with a lid and put a sculpture on top of the lid,” she continued. “In fact, at the Choctaw Labor Day Art Show last year I entered a piece that had a beautiful little sculpture on top that depicted early Choctaw life by the river. It was a potter gathering clay at the river.” That piece is now part of the Choctaw museum’s permanent collection.
Young said her knowledge of the familial connection to the Choctaw Nation developed over time. The “Bernard” in her name is what ties her to her native heritage. Her mother traced her roots to the Nation through her mother’s side of the family. Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, Young said her mother never talked about being a Native American. When her mother died and she found documentation of her Choctaw heritage, she started to embrace her history. “I have a lot of Choctaw books and Native American books, both picture books and storybooks,” she explained. “I feel like I’m behind in my heritage and I’m a sponge trying to learn everything I can.”
“I want my work to speak well for the tribe and evoke those ancient emotions. I want my work to be different, yet honor those who came before.” She feels honored and humbled to be connected to the tribe now. “Whenever I get a call from the Choctaw Nation to do something or be somewhere I always say yes. Because if there is anything that I can do to make our tribe better or to get the word out about our tribe, I want to be that person. I want to help.”
Her work is now available at the Choctaw store in Colbert and online at the Choctaw store. She attended the Labor Day Festival last year for the first time and entered the art show. The piece she entered took home second place honors. She considered that a bit of a validation of her work and hopes it makes the tribe proud. “That was really good for me because it has only been three years since I really started doing this body of work and I want to keep doing this so it was important for me to know that my work is accepted by the tribe.”
Her recent lessons with the Choctaw Nation to create pottery in the traditional way have been a real eye opener. Her pottery is considered contemporary, not traditional. She uses commercial clay, a potter’s electric wheel, and fires in an electric kiln. When creating pottery the Choctaw traditional way, one must find the clay from river banks, dig it out, process it, temper it, and then form it completely by hand and fire it in a pit. “It’s really incredible to think about how our ancestors came to do that, first out of necessity, then with their natural creativity, adorning the pots in a way that made them decorative as well as functional. Carving, after all, was what drew me into clay.”
After showing her work at the Gathering of Nations and the Red Earth Festival, her next big project will be a series of carvings with Choctaw ponies and will be featured at the Southern Plains Museum in Anadarko from Aug. 22 through Oct. 17, 2015. The focus will be on wall hangings with representations of the pony’s preservation. Sam has been working closely with her during the project acting as a research assistant and sometimes reading to her about the ponies as she works. “I’m really excited about this work. It’s rewarding to see it evolve,” says Young.
“My first step was to learn how to draw a horse. So I’ve been drawing horses, horses, horses.” She says they’re getting better and hopes to incorporate the design in a mural or a relief that has some movement to it. “Maybe the horses will be raised, or the mountains. I’m hoping to have that ready for the museum show in August. And then I also have an idea for some vertical wall pieces that will be like box tiles. They won’t be flat, they’ll have sides, and hang on the wall as independent pieces and be completely different and yet connected in some way and not necessarily with carving. There may be carving on some pieces and not on others. But it will be more of a tribal look without being as graphic as my pots are now. I haven’t figured out how to get them there yet, but I’m working on them.”
The one thing she does know is how lucky she is to have found her calling, “I am very blessed to be able to devote my life every single day to my art. And to my tribe.” She is more than willing to give back to her tribe in any way she can because she feels that willingness is what causes things to happen for her. “It’s really been pretty cool, the last couple of years, pretty cool.”
Years of throwing clay have taken their toll on Carolyn’s hands, but when she sits down to create she said she becomes lost to the clay. She’ll keep showing up at the studio and sitting down at the wheel as long as it continues to “sing to her and feed her soul.”