A look at local sculptor Lew Aytes and the Calling Back the Spirits Project
November 29, 2023
Photos and Story by Adriana Keeton, [email protected]
Local artist, Lew Aytes, recently held a gallery of his sculptures at the SKITS (Shell Knob in the Spotlight) fall play.
I had the pleasure of meeting local sculptor Lew Aytes earlier this month at a recent sculpture gallery he had displayed at the Shell Knob in the Spotlight (SKITS) fall play.
Aytes, who has been a professional artist for over 30 years, is a May 2023 Missouri Art Council featured artist, lives with his wife outside of Shell Knob, and is one of several individuals working on the Calling Back the Spirits Project.
In April of 1875, a dark chapter unfolded in American history as seventy-two key chiefs and warriors from the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Caddo Nations in Oklahoma were forcibly rounded up as American Indian Prisoners of War (POW) for exile to Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, during the Nation’s westward expansion through the southern plains in an attempt to suppress resistance and maintain control of the Native American people.
The arduous journey was marked by hardship as the warriors were stripped of their freedom, separated from their families and culture, faced an unfamiliar future, and paraded throughout many states to raise funds for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
The prisoners were displayed to the public along the route for a fee as they traveled an indirect path to Florida, where they were held until 1878.
In the wake of the forced exile and adjusting to the drastically different environment from the plains they once called home, sculptor Clark Mills was commissioned by The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., to create life masks of the 72 warriors in captivity. Life masks involve creating detailed plaster or clay molds of a person’s face, providing a tangible and life-like representation of their identities. Three sets of the Ft. Marion POW life masks are known today. One is at the Smithsonian, one at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, and the third is in a collection in Paris, France.
Almost 150 years later, the Calling Back the Spirits Project hopes to create opportunities to acknowledge the history of the Fort Marion POWs through exhibits at museums in the states and internationally, as well as traveling exhibits. They will make a book regarding the history of the Fort Marion POWs with writings and a photo collection contributed by project lead Dr. BigFoot and her late husband, John Sipes, Jr., both descendants of captives. They will also create an exhibit book focusing on life-sized busts, which Aytes will produce from the life masks of fifteen Fort Marion POWs and five living descendants. Aytes will also create memorial sculptures, which will be placed along the POW route. The project has a completion date of fall 2025.
For more information regarding the project, visit Aytes’s website at www.lewaytes.com.
Aytes, who has been a professional artist for over 30 years, is a May 2023 Missouri Art Council featured artist, lives with his wife outside of Shell Knob, and is one of several individuals working on the Calling Back the Spirits Project.
In April of 1875, a dark chapter unfolded in American history as seventy-two key chiefs and warriors from the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Caddo Nations in Oklahoma were forcibly rounded up as American Indian Prisoners of War (POW) for exile to Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, during the Nation’s westward expansion through the southern plains in an attempt to suppress resistance and maintain control of the Native American people.
The arduous journey was marked by hardship as the warriors were stripped of their freedom, separated from their families and culture, faced an unfamiliar future, and paraded throughout many states to raise funds for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
The prisoners were displayed to the public along the route for a fee as they traveled an indirect path to Florida, where they were held until 1878.
In the wake of the forced exile and adjusting to the drastically different environment from the plains they once called home, sculptor Clark Mills was commissioned by The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., to create life masks of the 72 warriors in captivity. Life masks involve creating detailed plaster or clay molds of a person’s face, providing a tangible and life-like representation of their identities. Three sets of the Ft. Marion POW life masks are known today. One is at the Smithsonian, one at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, and the third is in a collection in Paris, France.
Almost 150 years later, the Calling Back the Spirits Project hopes to create opportunities to acknowledge the history of the Fort Marion POWs through exhibits at museums in the states and internationally, as well as traveling exhibits. They will make a book regarding the history of the Fort Marion POWs with writings and a photo collection contributed by project lead Dr. BigFoot and her late husband, John Sipes, Jr., both descendants of captives. They will also create an exhibit book focusing on life-sized busts, which Aytes will produce from the life masks of fifteen Fort Marion POWs and five living descendants. Aytes will also create memorial sculptures, which will be placed along the POW route. The project has a completion date of fall 2025.
For more information regarding the project, visit Aytes’s website at www.lewaytes.com.
