Sculpting class

RAPID CITY—Most Native art focuses on the past because it is this romanticized tableau that people crave. Artists are refined in a system that rewards and encourages this perspective. Charles Rencountre, an enrolled member of Lower Brule, and raised in the North Rapid of the 1970’s, merges traditional imagery with the gritty world of the present, a world where Natives struggle to maintain their aboriginal dignity while still carving out a self-sustaining niche in modern society.

Rencountre works with concrete. Sometimes he creates works he can hold in his hand, and other times a flatbed is required to haul it around. His chosen medium forces him to get his hands dirty, like a construction worker, and the skill that results is a combination of laborer, artisan, and artist.

Nearing the end of his artistic cycle, Rencountre wants to pass on his skill and knowledge to the younger generations. He already teaches a course down in New Mexico, near his home in Santa Fe, but he comes north every summer, back to his old North Rapid neighborhood, and he gets right down at street level, he sleeps in the bed of his pickup, out in the elements, with the Rapid City homeless, his friends.

Although he can leave that harsh reality and drive back down to Santa Fe, weeks spent living with the homeless adds a final layer of authenticity to the art he creates, and there is as much pain and alienation in his work as there is concrete and creativity.

The South Dakota art community mistakes his art for crude attempts at quality, and prefers the polished, machine refined product of Wasicu artists like Dale Lamphere. He prospers but Native artists like Rencountre are still relegated to the fringes of mainstream acceptance and appreciation.

But Rencountre does not compromise his creations to reflect this, so he set up a little shop in his daughter’s North Rapid garage, and after she had learned the ropes, his first student, Mark Lonehill, dropped by to learn the fundamentals.

“For someone to get a real feel for it,” Rencountre said, “and have some knowledge about the mix, recipes, just kind of how concrete should look when you are sculpting it, pouring it in a mold, it is going to take a couple of months of just working side-by-side with me to really be able to solo and be creative in their own way.”

Sculpting differs from painting or drawing or even carving, in that the artist must become as skilled an artisan to produce quality work. “If you are a good drawer and you can put your inspirations down on paper, that’s really great, because then you can turn it into a three-dimensional piece of work. All you need is someone to instruct you, show you the process.”

Rencountre prefers concrete perhaps because the entire process is gritty and fundamental. Our modern concrete world is built over the top of the Native world Rencountre’s Sicangu ancestors called home” “I’ve worked in wood, I’ve worked in stone, I’ve worked in bronze, and clay, but working in concrete it gives me the most freedom. Because I can go large, I can go small, add on this, subtract that, I can do so many things with the concrete.”

And added bonus is that concrete creation supplies are easy to be had: “I can get all the supplies I need at the local lumber company. There are things that I have to get online, but for the most part I get the products I need at a local companies. I did it because it is easy, it is fast, you can get very creative, and I can teach anybody.”

“It was a lot easier than what I originally thought about doing,” Mark Lonehill said. “Instead of using copper and tin, you’d have to melt it, it’s a long, complicated forging process. (Concrete) makes it a lot easier to do.”

Lonehill explains that the process is what is easy, but not the creation: “Art is always hard.”

Once shown the process, Lonehill went solo, mixing concrete and pouring it into a mold: “I went back and checked it out the next day. It popped out pretty good, and it came out really nice. I was fascinated by how good it looked. I’m looking forward to going back there and doing more work with him before he goes back to New Mexico.”

Rencountre said: “I’ll continue to teach down in New Mexico at the community college and just stay in the whole teaching game. My plan is I will be able to have a school here in Rapid City and just draw on the local Native American community that has that kind of talent and wants to learn something. Teaching is really where I’m at now. I am 68 years old now, and it’s time for me to hand it forward. I’ll teach bronze, I’ll teach stone, I’ll teach wood. Whatever. I am into showing people how to do these things.”

Embedded into every work Rencountre produces is an ancient and elemental energy speaking to the present from the past. The faces he creates are like all of our faces, but something in their expression is hauntingly different, something lost long ago, but still vital and alive, trying to return to who we are now.

(James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of OST. Contact him at skindiesel@msn.com)

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