In this episode, we talk to Gregory Hill, a Hopi carver and toymaker. The conversation revolves around Gregory’s efforts to bring back a forgotten toy, the Patukya. His toys work to bring adults back to feeling childlike wonder, and Gregory’s efforts have even encouraged other carvers to start creating tops!
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TRANSCRIPT:
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Gregory Hill: I turned to making these because I just want to have that feeling in the world, there's just so many crazy things happening, like now. And I want to combat all the negative things in the world by creating something that's going to bring joy to the world, you know?
Ranger Jonah: Hello. Welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks. My name is Ranger Jonah.
Ranger Melissa: And I'm Ranger Melissa.
Ranger Jonah: So, Melissa, you did this episode. Who did you do this episode with?
Ranger Melissa: Yeah, I interviewed Gregory Hill, who's a Hopi toy maker. I really enjoyed this episode because he dives into this concept of work leading to play and how we all should learn to be more playful in our adult lives and reach into that inner child, which he called kid magic. It was really cool giving this interview because even during this talk, he was actually making toys while we were talking to the audience. So, it's kind of cool and you might actually hear that in the recording today.
Ranger Jonah: Yeah. So, in fact, one of the things he talks about is how the toys that he makes are traditional, but recently they haven't really been made. They sort of stopped being made. It was sort of a forgotten toy. And Greg has a lot of passion for bringing this toy back, and that is just so cool.
Ranger Melissa: Yeah. He even said that by making these toys, other carvers in his community are also looking to bring these toys back, which is super exciting. So, I really hope everyone enjoys this episode. Without further ado, Gregory Hill.
Ranger Melissa: All right, everybody. Well, it's that time, so we're going to get started and I'm sure people will mosey on over. But my name is Melissa, I work here at Grand Canyon National Park. We have Gregory Hill right here. He is a self-proclaimed nerd I found out earlier today. He is also a twin which we just found out, which is really cool. He's from Hopi and he also makes tops. How do you say it in Hopi?
Gregory Hill: In Hopi, we call it patukya.
Ranger Melissa: A patukya.
Gregory Hill: Patukya. The actual spinning motion of it is called riyanpi. So, riyanpi is like that spinning motion that we make. Like if you stood up and start spinning- riyanpi. But this is the toy. It's called a patukya. So, the actual toy thing is called a patukya.
Ranger Melissa: Which is really exciting that we are exploring this because I also really enjoy Gregory's influence in terms of the power of play, really trying to bring play into art, which is really cool. We're going to explore this through a pilot program or a program we call Grand Canyon Speaks here where we invite people from the eleven traditionally associated tribes of Grand Canyon to share their voice and authentically be themselves with visitors like you all to Grand Canyon National Park. So, we will get started and I will start asking fun questions. And then at the end, I'll open the floor up for questions from y'all. And so, we'll kind of work through that together. My first question is, we keep saying Hopi, but could you explain where you're from and where that is located for people who might not know?
Gregory Hill: Gee, where are we at now? Okay, so Flagstaff, right? The San Francisco Peaks? Hopi would be due east right here, like, maybe 63 miles. You'd come upon a place called Tuba City. So, Tuba City is, like, on the Navajo reservation, but that's, like, the edge of the border for the Hopi and Navajo Reservation. So, highway 89 runs to Tuba City, but on this side of the road is the start of the Hopi Reservation. So, you'd come upon a village called Mùnqapi. So, if you keep going east on highway 264, you'll come, like, maybe 45 minutes further east, you'll come into another village called Hotevilla. And that's situated in an area that's called, there's three mesas that the Hopi live on. So, the Hotevilla and Oraibi and the village at Kykotsmovi, those are all on the Third Mesa, which kind of juts out. So, you got, like, Hotevilla and then Oraibi, then it's like a mesa goes down. And below it is Kykotsmovi. And then, so the road goes up further into, like, maybe another 10 miles up, you'll start going up into another mesa, that's Second Mesa. So, there's three villages situated up there in, like, rocks. From afar, it looks like a mountain. You get close, you start seeing houses and stuff in there, so it really looks like a big mesa. So those are the Second Mesas. And you go further down, you get to the first mesa, which resides the consolidated villages of Polacca. First Mesa consolidated villages. Hano, Walpi, Tewa, Sichomovi. The lower villages. This village is, like, totally on a big, giant, narrow strip of rock that goes up probably like 100 ft, at least. So, I'm from the village of Kykotsmovi, which lies in, like, a valley above the village Oraibi, which is one of the oldest continuously inhabited villages in the United States.
Ranger Melissa: Yeah, thanks.
Gregory Hill: But yeah, you go that way. That's where I come from.
Ranger Melissa: I like it. When you think of home, are there any certain sounds, sense of smell? Anything that brings up memories of home for you?
Gregory Hill: Yeah, the rain smell after it rains, that wet earth smell. Mostly things that I encounter in nature remind me of home. Like, there's certain bugs that I encounter that only come out up there, know, that you don't see in the southern part of the state where I live in Scottsdale. So, there's things that I see down there that I miss from home because it's like a whole different mentality. In the city, it's like every man for themselves. But out in Hopi, it's like a community, and people help each other. Everybody come eat. It's not like, oh, you can't come eat because there's whatever. If there's not enough, we'll make enough., But yeah, there's a lot of things that remind me of home. When I was in my apprenticeship, as a butcher, I used to live in Albuquerque, so I'd get like homesick because that was like one of the first cities that I moved to as a grown up. So, I would miss home but the pueblos around there, they have ceremonies and dances and stuff and feasts. So, if I missed home a lot, I'd just go to one of the pueblos and eat and watch the dances and whatever and that really took me home. So, I didn't have a lot of angst and all of that from missing home and whatnot.
Ranger Melissa: It's like a sense of community.
Gregory Hill: Yeah, exactly.
Ranger Melissa: That's awesome. Yeah. When you talked about your apprenticeship with being a butcher, that was before you started doing your tops.
Gregory Hill: Yeah.
Ranger Melissa: So, what made you switch from your long stint as a butcher to becoming an artist?
Gregory Hill: I never imagined that I would be a toy maker. Artist, toy maker. It was more like a hobby to me doing this. Because butching is my passion. I can do the whole aspect of it. Nowadays there's meat cutters. So, a meat cutter is just basically cutting this muscle that's coming already separated in a big box full of other same kind of mussels. You're just cutting it up into steaks. I know how to do the whole thing from the slaughtering to the processing to doing that part of it, taking the steaks apart. So I never thought I'd be doing anything else in my whole life. I had plans for opening up like a butcher shop and like a mobile butcher shop for people that are like game hunters and whatnot. So I had big old plans for that. If I wasn't doing this, I would have been like a successful butcher shop owner right now. But this started off as a hobby. But for one thing, my OCD won't allow me to stop making them because they all have to spin exactly right. And even if I have this right now, it's like I'm not going to stop until it spins. So that's one of my problems that I have with this, making these. Because I can't stop. But I always told myself that, okay, you can be an artist for a little while, but then it's not going to be really lucrative. And it's like I'm finding that out. Yeah. It's like I have to work twice as hard as I ever would as a butcher. I work 8 hours as a butcher. I work 23 hours as a toy maker. But before it was just like something to do. But then, now as I'm learning and evolving as an artist, it turned into something different. It turned into something that I'm creating. Something that's going to bring like, mirth and joy, happiness. Like a childlike wonder is what it is. That little kid magic that we all possess, but sometimes we lose as we grow up because we stop playing. So I turned to making these because I just want to have that feeling in the world. There's just so many crazy things happening, like now, and I want to combat all the negative things in the world by creating something that's going to bring joy to the world.
Gregory Hill: I think that's like a good mission to have. My mission is to recreate a dying toy and encourage the childlike mirth and others. So, I think that's like a good mission to have. I use my art to promote different conservation efforts like at the Grand Canyon. I work with the International Crane Foundation. I use my art to promote knowledge about the Whooping and Sandhill cranes, which are on the endangered species list. I work with a group that works with turtles, like the endangered species turtles into hatchings and whatnot. So, it turned into a good business for me. I started winning awards for my work. I thought that once I'm going to win an award, then that's it. I always told myself that over the years as I'm doing this. And I finally won an award. And it was funny because my brain shut off to doing this because that was it. And I couldn't think of ideas to carve for maybe three months. I was just like blank. I had like, artist block. And to me, I was like, well, you're finished, so why keep doing it? But then I had to challenge myself again, like, okay, well, you'd win this award, try to win first place. So right now, I got 1st, 2nd and 3rd place awards in my category, which is traditional arts. And I got two honorable mentions in fine art and a sculpture division. So that's different for me because I never think of this stuff as fine art or sculpture. But some of the ones that I really carve out really could be like, fine art and sculpture. My new challenge to me as toy maker and artist is to try to win more awards, like bigger awards. So that's my personal challenge. I could stop and not do it anymore. But at the same time, yeah, I'm setting my pedestal higher for myself right now. For one show that I've been attending for the past six years, I got 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. So now I just want to win the best of show, which is like the top prize. So that's my new goal as an artist, is to try to win more awards.
Ranger Melissa: Right. When we were talking earlier, you said one way you have done that is, you've passed on some knowledge of how to make this with your daughter. Do you want to talk through how that came about? How did you get her interested in what you're doing? What's that like doing a father and daughter duo?
Gregory Hill: Yeah. That's cool. Because this all started as a project for my little girl when she was in kindergarten. So, she would have been six, around there. She came home one day with the note and a little piece of cottonwood root. The note said that she had a pen pal in Zuni, New Mexico, which is east of us as well. As a way to share culture, the parents were instructed to create a patukya, carve out a top. At that point, I think I was into my journeymanship as a butcher, so I never carved wood before, you know? I was just carving meat all the time. But my twin brother, Jonah, he was a Katsina doll carver as I was a butcher. So, I had to go to him and borrow his carving knife. And I already knew what a top looked like in my mind because I'm a nerd and I know different toys and whatnot, but I didn't know anything about carving wood. Son my first top was really rough. I just used the knife for the whole thing and carved out the tip with this and then made a handle for it. And it was a top, but it was really rough and everything. I didn't know about rasps and files or anything like that. So, it spun, but it spun like this. It was wobbly. Yeah. And me as a nerd, I know that when a top spins, it spins straight up and down on an axis, giving enough torque to make it spin like that. So I'd be standing there cutting meat in the daytime and whatever, and just sitting there and then standing there cutting meat. But in the back of my mind, it's like it bothered me that that thing was spinning like that. So OCD kicked in, I guess. And I went back to my brother and asked him, can I learn how to carve wood from you? Nobody really knows how to make these anymore because at that point they were kind of extinct. I remember them, but I remember them when I was like a real small child and I couldn't go and ask, like, hey, man, how do you make a patukya? Because there was nobody to ask. So, what I did was went to the village and asked all the elders about them, learned that way, then took all of that knowledge and my knowledge of science, angles, height to ground ratios and all of that and put it into this.
Gregory Hill: But my daughter, she was the one that really evolved from it because when she was little and I got to a point where I started being able to sell them, which I didn't really know how to do because I wasn't an artist at that point. So, we go to these different shops and my daughter, she was the demonstrator. So, she would demonstrate the method of play with using a stick and a string with the Hopi style tops. I think I can probably do it right here in the sand. Should be able to.
Ranger Melissa: Ouu, a challenge.
Gregory Hill: So, a Hopi style top is, like, a really simple shape. It has a tip. I learned that we had to go to a rock, like a sandstone, because that's all there is here. And grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind. I tried that one time when I was first starting out. It took me a day just to barely get, like, a little bit of a tip on there. That's why I only used hand tools, is to keep myself rooted to that aspect of it, where they had to work in order to play. But to me, it teaches craftsmanship, attention to detail, all of those good things. So, my daughter would be doing this. She'd be demonstrating. I don't think it'll work (in the sand).
Ranger Melissa: Maybe get some rocks out of the way.
Gregory Hill: Yeah, there you go. Yeah. She would demonstrate the method of play for the spinning top, and then nine times out of ten, that would be. . .
Ranger Melissa: Could you do it on the chair?
Gregory Hill: Yeah, I can do it on the chair. Yeah. So, my daughter grew up doing this, what I'm doing right now. I had to relearn how to play because we all stop playing as we grow up. So, it took me a couple of weeks to be able to learn how to play. So, you hit it and you hit it with the string, and it keeps it spinning. So, imagine like, a dozen kids all doing this at the same time. That's what I remember when I was a little kid. So, yeah, my daughter grew up, and now she's 23, she's going to be 23 in November. And I was having some health issues within the past couple of years. I think I had a detached retina, so I thought I was going blind. Everything was blur and I couldn't see anything. It was scary. I thought I was going to have to quit doing this because I can't see. So, I started teaching my daughter how to carve wood. And in the Hopi, it's taboo for the ladies to carve the Kachina dolls, so I had to go and ask and see if it was okay for her to learn how to carve wood.
Gregory Hill: They're like, well, as long as it's not a Kachina, she should be okay because there are women carvers. I didn't bring any of the real small ones, but the real small pieces that I have are her work. So, she does a lot of the real small stuff now, and I'm free to do the award-winning tops. If I wanted to, I'm comfortable to leave her at a show or whatever, whether it be a demonstration show or art show, like the Santa Fe Indian Market, something like that. I'm comfortable leaving her alone with the booth, and she'll do everything.
Ranger Melissa: That's cool.
Gregory Hill: Yeah. So, she grew up doing this. And she knows business sense and how to market, advertising, all of that cool stuff. So, I'm trying to make her go back to school to learn more about it, because one thing I hate to do is, like, paperwork, and I'm trying to get her to be my paperwork gal.
Ranger Melissa: Earlier when we were talking in the watchtower, you were saying at the beginning you'd split the profits 80 20, and then it was like 30-40.
Gregory Hill: Yeah, now we're 50-50. So, she grew up learning a sense of how to use money and how to earn money. Because we'd do a sale, and I would make like $100. She'd be right there. Where's my $20? And she'd be growing up every time that she started knowing when I promote her or whatever, that she'd do the math and everything. And as soon as we get done, where's my cut? She was on it. Now, for a while, she was kind of taking it for granted, automatically going to start making this much money and whatnot. But then now as an apprentice, I do it based on her production and everything and how much time she takes in doing what she's doing. If I set her a task, like that much, and then she'll say, oh, well, I want half. I'll go like, well, how much did you do? How much work did you do? I'm putuk-ing as a business, and she's like, my employee now, so I got to make sure she's doing the work. Otherwise, she's going to be lazy, and I have to carve out 60 tops, and she's going to want half of that when she only does maybe, like three. So, I'm going to teach her that. To be responsible in that way and set her goals and all of that.
Ranger Melissa: Right.
Gregory Hill: Yeah.
Gregory Hill: I think one day she's going to be doing what I'm doing right now.
Ranger Melissa: That'd be awesome.
Gregory Hill: Yeah. She'll carry it on, which is cool for me because that's one of my goals, is to revitalize and keep this thing alive.
Ranger Melissa: Yeah. And I'm excited she's going to start making more tops. And then you get a shift more into your creative brain and doing more intricate work. Could you explain where your ideas come from and your inspiration for what you're going to design on your top?
Gregory Hill: A lot of my tops and my top designs, they come from childhood memories, like things I experienced in nature as a child or things like conquests and even defeats and stuff like that as a kid. I'll carve it into these tops, and that way it lives on, not only in my memory, but as a way to keep my memory fresh. But a lot of my designs nowadays come from conservation efforts. I believe that much like a turbine can create an energy; a top will create an energy as it's spinning. So, now a lot of my designs are in hopes that these things I'm putting into and on my tops are going to materialize in this world somewhere. Like the bees are becoming extinct, so we need more pollinators. So, I'll put bee tops that are totally carved out with bees and hives, honeycombs, and flowers and whatnot. So, I'll do tops like that and that's where my ideas come from. Things that I want to materialize into this world by using this spinning energy. But yeah, for one of the rangers a couple of maybe five years ago, she liked butterflies. So, I created a top that was totally carved out, butterfly up here and the bottom part was like a lady, like a maiden. Like the butterfly was landing on top of her head. It was like really colorful and everything. And another ranger was part of the turtle group, and I made her a really cool, colorful turtle. Like the sun was shining through the water and hitting that turtle shell and all those mosses and stuff that grow on it. And it made it like a burst of color. So, when it spun, it was like really colorful and everything.
Ranger Melissa: Yeah. In terms of designing a top, there's two parts to it, right? You're not only thinking about what it is going to look like, but also what's it going to look like when it starts to spin. How do you decide or how do you even think like that? That is blowing my mind, because today you were even talking about like, oh, I'm going to use blue and red to design a top so that when it spins, it makes a purple color. How do those ideas come into your mind, too? Like the color play that you can do when it's in motion versus not?
Gregory Hill: I'm sure a lot of artists, especially painters, they have what's called a color wheel. So that shows you which colors are going to do which or whatever. So, I kind of like have a mental color wheel in my mind. And it's like I can't look at things now normally. Every time I see something in my mind, it's doing this.
Ranger Melissa: It's like spinning?
Gregory Hill: Yeah. So, I always wonder, like, well, what colors go with this color? But as I'm carving it like this right now, what I'm carving, I think I'm going to carve, like maybe a grasshopper or something. That's what I see is a grasshopper sitting right here. So, this is going to be like the back legs, the front legs, the head right here. This is all going to be cut away, and then it's going to be sitting maybe on a flower or something like that.
Ranger Melissa: On the flat part?
Gregory Hill: Yeah, it's just like a lot of times I don't want to make these things. It's what's inside the wood that I see. It's what the wood wants to be. So, yeah, a lot of times I just use my imagination and what the wood wants to be. I can't force it. And when I do try to force a design, they're never balanced. They won't spin at all. So, I know I'm going to change it then into something else, and then it works. It starts spinning again.
Ranger Melissa: That's cool. And speaking of the nerd inside you and the way it spins. Being able to teach this to someone, what's involved in learning how to make a top? Because it feels like a lot of art, but also a lot of math.
Gregory Hill: Yeah, it's math, its science, it's attention to detail. When I first started doing this, like I say, I'm a nerd. So, I was taking a lot of time to figure out the angle of the tip, 45-degree angle or like a 30-degree angle for best height to ground ratio and all of that. So, it was hard teaching my daughter all of that because she's not a science buff. And new math nowadays is crazy. It turned out to be really technical. Like using a compass and everything and a lot of different tools. Somehow, it evolved in my mind and in my hands that instead of doing all of that, like getting a ruler and trying to see if I have the right angle, whatever, it's all feel. By feel. I'm feeling the wood, and I'm feeling like if there was a little see, it's not even right here, right? It goes up, it goes down. You can feel it. Do this with it. Yeah, turn it in your hand. All those bumps and raises and everything. You guys want to check it out? Yeah, everyone feel it. Rather than being yeah, just get it and turn it in your fingers and you'll feel all of those bumps and raises and everything.
Gregory Hill: And that's what I kind of take away. Right, but now, yeah, I don't even use hardly any math or whatever. It's just all what I feel. But then only time I use math is when I inlay natural stones, like turquoise or opal or any of the natural stones. Sometimes I'll inlay them into the top, and then I got to use math because I got to take the weight of that stone counterbalance with the weight of the other stone that I'm using. Sometimes I have to use like two or three stones on this side to counterbalance that weight and then make the top so it'll spin using those stones for more momentum, for forward momentum. So, when I start to spin it, the weight of that stone will push the other weight of the stone and it'll cause a longer spin. So, then I got to figure out how many kilograms or micro kilograms. I got to figure all of that out. The most stones I've ever put on a top was 26 pieces of turquoise onto a top. And that spun for a really long time, because all that weight and the way I made it was shaped like a heart. So, all of the stones that were on this part of their heart counterbalanced these stones on this heart and made more weight as it spun. So, it was like kind of pushing it.
Ranger Melissa: It pushed itself, yeah.
Gregory Hill: And if it wasn't for friction, that probably would have spun for like half an hour. But yeah, it's always the friction that the two surfaces are touching that slows down a top as it's spinning. So, if there wasn't friction, theoretically a top would spin in perpetual motion, but there's friction, and that causes heat, and heat slows it down.
Ranger Melissa: Kind of like the world. Cause we keep spinning.
Gregory Hill: Yeah, exactly. The world's doing this right now. It's supposed to be spinning like this, but it's spinning like this, kind of an axis. So, it's like a wobble. It's doing like a wobble. I think it's like a 26-degree wobble. So right now, the North Pole used to be like this, but now the North Pole is more towards the British Isles. So, in the Hopi, we have a story about that, about what the Earth is doing. It has to do with twins. The twins control the poles of the Earth, and then when it gets to a point in time when the Earth is going to end, the twins go opposite and then they make the Earth shake and it gets wobbly, and then the Earth will crumble. So, I think that's what's happening now is because the Earth is doing that wobble. It's been wobbling since 2011, I think. So, my next really big, my best of show top that I want to do, is going to be like an eight-inch diameter top that's going to explain that story, and the twins are going to be on there. So then when it spins, it's going to like all tops that spin, they wobble when they slow down. But what's cool is that when a top does like a wobble, when it's slowing down, it's going even faster than when it first started. So it's all that energy that's going to build up, and then as it wobbles, it goes boom. It's like a burst of energy. So when it wobbles, it's going even faster.
Ranger Melissa: That's going to be really cool to see.
Gregory Hill: Yeah. So then that top, when it's going to stop, it's going to be like, the twins are making that wobble happen and the Earth is going to crash.
Ranger Melissa: That's cool.
Gregory Hill: Yeah.
Ranger Melissa: Will you have that done by Thursday? I'm just kidding.
Gregory Hill: In my mind, I'm carving it right now. Yeah, I'll have it done probably for the Heard show. That's the one I want to win. It's the Heard.
Ranger Melissa: At the Heard Museum down in Phoenix?
Gregory Hill: Yeah, that's the one I want to win.
Ranger Melissa: That's awesome. You know, we're kind of winding down on my questions, but I had one. We were talking earlier about tops and how you didn't really know how to appraise yourself, like, how much should these actually cost? And it was like bringing an idea into my head where we've had many cultural demonstrators come out and there's all this love and positive energy that goes into all this different art. But then when people buy that art, it kind of just sits on a wall or sits on a shelf. And I really appreciate your artwork because you play with it, you actually utilize it. You're not just admiring it from a distance, you're bringing out that positive, that kid energy, like you were saying, but it's also this very beautiful thing that you have just thought up in the wood. How do you envision yourself in that scope? Of trying to figure out the worth of what you're creating when you have so many more dynamic interactions with your clientele?
Gregory Hill: That was my biggest problem as an emerging artist and all of that. I didn't know the value of my own work, which is, I think, a lot of problems for a lot of artists and people that make crafts and whatnot. What am I going to price this at? What's somebody going to pay? When I first started out, these things were like $5, $10 like this.
Ranger Melissa: What?
Gregory Hill: Yeah. I didn't know that. I didn't know what it was worth or whatever. I was happy to be able to sell that for that much. But I'm a nerd and I'm a smart man. I have an associates in business, so I started using that towards what I'm doing now. I'm running a business; I'm not going to be giving things away. I put x amount of time into doing this, whether it's going to hunt for the wood, bringing it back, curing it, cutting it, making it into something that's going to work perfectly. In my mind it has to, or else I'm not going to sell it. So, I started learning about commerce and I looked how much a man-made, machine-made top was. Mine aren't machine-made. I put more effort into it. I put that into account, so started bringing my prices up and everything and I'm running a business now. But, the other side of that is I'm not greedy for money or whatever, you know? You saw yourself, I've given away tops here today, at least three or four today, because to me, it's not about the money. Sure, I can make money doing this, and I do make money doing this. But the feeling that somebody gets when they see this. Like an old person that hasn't seen a toy in 80 years is going to see this thing. And mine is going to go back to that time when he was a child. He or she was a child. And their faces change, their demeanor changes, they light up and they get this energy every time. It's like an energy; they stand up straighter. One time I had an 80-year-old gentleman come, and he said he used to play with the stick and a string top, and it took him, like, 14 times to get down enough to actually spin the top. But he did it. And as soon as he did it, his whole body just loosened up, and he was whipping it and playing with it. And it was cool to me to see that. So that kind of thing is like, the reward that I look for, and that's my reward for doing this. It's not about the money sometimes. A lot of times, yeah.
Ranger Melissa: And I think that brings a huge point. The pure joy that your art brings is kind of almost invaluable. Like even today, I know I was playing with your tops, and I forgot I was working.
Gregory Hill: Yeah, right.
Ranger Melissa: It was so much fun.
Gregory Hill: You were talking about something that sits on the mantle or whatever on the shelf. A lot of my award-winning tops do that, which is sad to me, because I make them, no matter what the shape, size, whatever, they're all made to spin. And a lot of my big-time collectors that buy my big ones, they'll just sit there on their shelf or whatever, and I ask them five, six years later, do you guys play with your top? Oh, no. It just sits on the shelf. I was like, can you please spin it like one time?
Ranger Melissa: Release that power!
Gregory Hill: Get some energy going.
Audience Member: Get the dust off.
Ranger Melissa: For the dust to fly off.
Gregory Hill: Yeah. One of my biggest collectors, she has a big bowl, has, like, maybe 15, 16 tops in there. She keeps it out for people to come and play with them and whatnot.
Ranger Melissa: Awesome.
Gregory Hill: Yeah.
Ranger Melissa: My last question before we throw it to the audience is, if you had one takeaway for all of us here in this community tonight, what would that be?
Gregory Hill: Never stop playing. The art of play is something that's dying out in the world thanks to these things (phones). You're hunched over. I'm playing. Don't bother me. Go do the dishes. I can't, I'm playing. That's crazy. To me, that's crazy. Because I grew up playing outside, running around, climbing rocks and doing all this stuff, getting into trouble and danger. So, when we stop playing, there's synapses in our brains that go dormant, and those synapses in our brains that are associated with play are also associated with memory. So, if you stop playing, those synapses are going to stop moving and stop firing off. So, you're going to start forgetting things. You're going to start having memory lapses. And it's a proven fact that the art of play, as well as music, is the most beneficial thing for your brain to do. No matter if you're 9 or 90, we all have a little kid inside. Never stop playing. You're never too old to play, no matter how old you are. So that's one thing I want everybody to take away is just to remember that little kid inside of you.
Ranger Melissa: I love that. Never stop playing. And I thank you so much for coming to our demonstration program, which will be in the watchtower tomorrow from nine to four, as well as on Thursday. So, if you want to see Gregory making more tops or ask more questions, you can visit there. But it's really great that you're here, and I'm happy to have met you because I also really appreciate the idea that you're bringing this back, like, bringing something that was close to being kind of forgotten back to life. And that's just really cool. How you're doing that through art.
Gregory Hill: It's cool to me because I noticed, like, a lot of Kachina doll carvers are starting to make patukya now.
Ranger Melissa: Oh, cool.
Gregory Hill: But I think I got it to a point where there's a patukya and then there's Hilltops. So, I kind of made myself higher in skill level and all of that. But it's fun to me to see that the carvers are making these, because, like I say before, when I first started this, nobody was making them, but now it's coming back, so I'm revitalizing it, which is my goal.
Ranger Melissa: That's so cool.
Gregory Hill: Yeah.
Ranger Melissa: I'm going to throw it to the audience if anyone has any questions, too. Thanks so much.
Gregory Hill: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you.
Audience Member: What type of wood do you like to collect and use?
Gregory Hill: Okay, so the wood that I use is the root from the cottonwood tree. So, the cottonwood trees, they normally grow, like, near a body of water or a river. So, the root system, it grows into the water. The water, when it's flowing, it'll break it off. Sometimes, I get 20, 30-foot lengths, and the water helps to straighten them out. So, I'll go and hunt, like, near rivers and whatnot locally and around. And I'll go hunt on the riverbeds and find these pieces of wood. I'll drag them out of the water, haul it back and take it home, dry it out, and cure it. And the better stuff, I can always tell because I'll put my thumb into it, and if I can really put it in there, then I know that's, like, soft, good, soft wood. But that's my favorite piece of wood only because it allows me to really carve into it and stuff. But I've used teak, ebony, ironwood, a lot of the hardwoods, because the more the top weighs, the more it'll spin, the longer it'll spin. The heavier the weight, the longer the spin. So those tops that I've made from ebony antique, those ones spun for, like, maybe five minutes.
Gregory Hill: The ones that I'm trying to make from ironwood, that's metal. So that one's taking me a while, but that one's going to probably spin for a very long time, too. There's a tribe down in Mexico called the Seri. They have lady carvers, and they carve nothing but ironwood. And, geez, they carve, like, flamingos and pelicans from one piece of wood, and they make it look like it's like butter. So, I don't know what kind of magic they're using, but.
Ranger Melissa: Women power.
Gregory Hill: Yeah, exactly. Wonder Woman power. But it's fun watching them. I was at a wood carving convention in San Diego, like, in 2015, and all these little noises that I make with the wood, it was, like, amplified by a thousand because there was, like, five hundred wood carvers all in the same room working. Yeah. So that was a big kick for me.
Ranger Melissa: That's cool. Any other questions?
Audience Member: Curious to know, how did you pronounce it?
Gregory Hill: The patukya.
Ranger Melissa: The patukya.
Audience Member: What's been the longest amount of time that you've worked on one particular one?
Gregory Hill: Oh, the longest time I've worked on one. Three and a half months.
Ranger Melissa: Oh, wow.
Gregory Hill: I won first place at a show. I carved a hummingbird. So, the hummingbird was kind of like this shape, but then the wings came out like that, and then the head was dipping into a flower, which I carved. This whole part was a flower, so the hummingbird head was dipping into it, and its wings were, like, fluttering like that. And that one was inlaid with spiny oyster shell, red coral. I think it was bisbee turquoise.
Ranger Melissa: Wow.
Gregory Hill: It was all kinds of flowers carved around the side of it, too. And on the bottom was, like, pottery designs that were hummingbirds. So that took me, like, three and a half months because every little feather was carved out, every little overlapping feather. From the wings to the body to the tail and all of that. So, yeah, that took me three and a half months for that one.
Audience Member: How much time do you envision dedicating to the eight-inch top that you're going to be working on?
Ranger Melissa: Oh, yeah. The one that you're going to make with the twins, how long do you think that'll take?
Gregory Hill: I've been carving that in my head for three years now, so I'm looking for the piece of wood that's perfect for it. I have some good diameters. I'm looking for eight inches or more because I'm going to carve it down because it's going to be a lot.
Audience Member: Has it happened to you where, for instance, you're dedicating 15 hours to a top and then it splits in half?
Ranger Melissa: Oh, does it ever split or break?
Gregory Hill: Yeah, handles break a lot of times because the handles are carved out of one piece of wood. And I find that when I'm disturbed or preoccupied, my tops don't get balanced. So that's how I know I'm bothered about something. Yeah, I've carved tops where I've carved wings and everything out of a butterfly. And then I'm getting to that last point where I'm burning and I do it wrong or something, it pops off. But I've learned that every mistake is an opportunity. So, when I break something, I can turn it into something else. And I'm the only one that knows about the mistake. So, I used to be really hard on myself about mistakes until I realized that, one, I'm the only one that knows about those mistakes, and two, nobody else knows that it's a mistake.
Ranger Melissa: I love that. Yeah, I'm going to take that home.
Gregory Hill: Even in different things that I'm not carving, when I make mistakes in life, I know it's opportunity because I can learn from it and not do the same thing again. Yeah, you got to be more extra careful being a butcher and all of that.
Audience Member: That's ribeye steak!
Gregory Hill: Yeah, right. And I learned the old school way where it's all hand cut. We really used to saw and everything. So, everything was all the different types of knives that we used to debone, to slice, to cut, to make roasts and everything.
Ranger Melissa: Yeah, all ten fingers.
Gregory Hill: I got a good scar, though. I got a really good scar from a cut, but that's my initiation. I took it like that, like initiation. So, I never cut myself after that. Same thing with woodcutting. I cut my finger really good when I first did it because I didn't know what I was doing, and that was like, my lesson learned. So, I cut myself every once in a while, but it's not a big thing to me. Put some superglue on it and get back to work.
Ranger Melissa: Keep going. I love that. Any other questions?
Audience Member: Where do you get your carving tools from?
Gregory Hill: These are actually my grandmother's tools. She was a wood carver, so a lot of my files and rasps are hers. This is my carving knife. It's a brand called Opinel. It's a French made knife. Before, I used to use the old Henry knives. You know, the old folding knives. Those were like the number one wood carving knives back in the day because it was high carbon steel. They stayed sharp for a long time. But nowadays, if you see wood carving knives like the Kachina doll carvers and whatnot, they'll have probably an Opinel knife. You get these, like, on Amazon or whatever. In France, I heard they're like, only $2 or whatever. Here they're like 16 to 25, I think. But they got different sizes. Like, the blade sizes go up and down. So, this is a number eight. I have a number six as well. I use a number six for finer detail work, like really small, carved out stuff I haven't had to buy. Yeah, he uses the same kind. This is the kind I cut myself with the first time, but not this one. Yeah, but all of my rasps and files, they're all my grandma's tools and whatnot. She probably got them from wherever hardware store was around back in the 70s, probably. Yeah. So, it's fun to use her tools, especially a little mallet that I have, because I can feel her energy in it, she's used it for so long. And when I know I'm not holding it right, I'll look at it and, oh yeah, this is how she was holding it. And it works a lot better. So I can feel my grandmother's energy in the tools that I use. And I like that because her carvings are nothing but ironwood and it's like really cool intricate carvings and I'm glad to be able to use her tools for what I do.
Ranger Melissa: Well, thank you so much for coming out. Did you have one more question?
Audience Member: You talked a lot about the tops today, but what about the other pieces you have?
Ranger Melissa: Oh, the pieces out front?
Gregory Hill: Okay. Yeah. Well, being a butcher, I never had time for art at all, but I used to like to draw a lot, like a really good draw. I used to be a tattoo artist in my 20s.
Ranger Melissa: Oh, cool. Should have talked about that. (Laughter)
Gregory Hill: Yeah, right. I'm currently going through hemodialysis because my kidneys are jacked up. So, when I'm at dialysis, this arm just like sits there. And before I was carving there, but then this arm just sits there. So, this arm is free, and I get bored. So, I bought a sketch pad. All of the designs I put on my tops; I never draw them beforehand. It's always just what I see in the woods. So, I don't have any sketches of stuff. But now I started drawing in that sketch pad. So, I've been getting those doodles pretty much. I get it and then I take it home and kind of build up on it. So, I started making relief style carvings with this. So, all of my ideas from dialysis are turned into wall hanging art. Cool. Yeah. So, I call them my dialysis doodles. But yeah, it's like fun for me for doing something different when I want to do something different besides tops. So, yeah, I've been winning awards for my flat pieces, too, so yeah, those ones are pretty neat.
Ranger Melissa: Well, thank you all for coming. The sunset will be nice.
Gregory Hill: It should be a good one.
Ranger Melissa: Get a good spot.
Gregory Hill: Thank you, guys, for coming!
Ranger Melissa: I appreciate it.
Gregory Hill: Yeah, come check it out. Yeah.
Ranger Melissa: If you need the parking lot, it's behind you.
Gregory Hill: If you come tomorrow, I have like 40 more, I think. And these are all going to be carved into tops by the end of Thursday.
Ranger Jonah: Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and do not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the national park. To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices, visit www.NPS.gov/GRCA. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the eleven associated tribes of the Grand Canyon, these being the Havasupai tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.
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