Standing Rock Cultural Arts in downtown Kent is hosting “Who Was Edwin George?” an exhibition featuring artwork by the late Cherokee artist Edwin George.
The opening reception was held June 1 and will run through June 29 at 300 N. Water St., Suite H.
George is best known for his colorful paintings. Some portray traditional Cherokee stories; others depict his own personal visions and dreams. And both are intermixed with animal spirits, Cherokee syllabary and a variety of symbolism specific to George’s experiences.
He was born in Cherokee, North Carolina, in 1934 and was a member of the sovereign nation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. After extensive genealogical research, George found out that his great-great-great grandfather was Big George and had been part of the resistance that escaped forced relocation during The Trail of Tears by hiding in the mountains of North Carolina.
In the late ’60s, George met Brimfield native Ellene McKay in Cherokee, North Carolina, where she was working at a Holiday Inn. The two fell in love, got married and ultimately made their way to Kent.
Eventually, George landed a job as a custodian at Kent State University, where he worked from 1983-1998. Shortly after retirement, he began his journey as an artist.
It wasn’t long before he was selling his artwork at local events.
“He would show up at Art In The Park every year and paint,” Standing Rock Cultural Arts Executive Director Jeff Ingram said. “People would come look at his paintings and they would buy them for astronomically low prices, because he didn’t really care. He was just that into doing the art, telling his dreams, telling his stories.”
In 2005, Ingram convinced George to showcase his paintings at Standing Rock Cultural Arts and, that same year, a select creation of George’s titled “Love” was reproduced as a large mural on the north-facing wall of Scribbles Coffee Co. on North Water Street. It’s still there today.
The Cherokee nation is one of the first Native American tribes to adopt a syllabary system, a construct designed by Cherokee polymath and neographer Sequoyah who completed the system in 1821.
The structure of Cherokee syllabary inspired the development of indigenous writing systems in North America and beyond, but it was the beauty of the system’s characters and words that led George to use it as a means to embellish his art.
“He thought of the language as being very visual and beautiful, which it is,” George’s step-granddaughter, Janis Mars Wunderlich, said. “He used that as a way to communicate in his art. He would place words and also used each individual letter in the Cherokee alphabet as a visual graphic in some way. His work was very colorful and abstract, so it was a perfect showcase for him to visualize how beautiful the Cherokee language is.”
Among the syllabary and symbolism of George’s paintings, a depiction of his mother in a skirt can sometimes be found. One example has a broom; in another, she’s grinding corn.
And some of the symbolic designs in his paintings were of his own making.
“He also had a lot of symbols he created on his own, visual symbols,” Wunderlich said. “One of them was, it looks like a mask. It’s this figure with eyeballs and teeth, and there’s kind of a criss-cross in its face. He always called it yona asgina [bear devil]. It was meant to represent his uncle who he called a jokester, or a trickster. He said his uncle was always making mischief. He put that in almost every one of his paintings.”
Ingram, along with help from George’s family, was able to match mythological Cherokee stories to some of his paintings; the stories can be read in a caption below the paintings at the exhibition.
Shortly before George died in 2022, he moved back to his birthplace of Cherokee, North Carolina, in the Smoky Mountains.
“He always told me he would come back as part of the earth,” Wunderlich said. “He always said that when he died, he wanted to walk into the mountains and be absorbed by the mountains.”
If you’d like to learn more about Edwin George and the “Who Was Edwin George Cherokee?” exhibition you can visit Standing Rock Cultural Arts website: https://www.standingrock.net/exhibitions/who-was-edwin-george-cherokee-artist
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated that George and his wife “made their way to Brimfield.” Rather they lived in Kent.
