In an interview before, Real Rider, 66, said being named the Red Earth Honored One has made him feel “real happy” because he attended the first festival in 1987.
“It was my very first art show and I won second place,” said Real Rider, who has lived in Pawnee most of his life. “That kind of turned me on to being an artist and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
As an adult, he studied painting and clay art at Oklahoma State University’s Technical Branch in Okmulgee and at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M.
“In Santa Fe, they showed me how to make pottery the right way, but through all my trial-and-error experiments, the style of my work was totally different from everyone else’s,” Real Rider said.
