Delicate touch: Painter creates art on feathers

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October 6, 2006

By Karen Middleton The News Courier Fri Oct 06, 2006, 11:20 PM CDT

Upon hearing the name Mical Butterbredt Morgan, one doesn’t instantly think of an American Indian.

But the lineage of the artist who is displaying at the 40th Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddler’s Convention this weekend is written on her face. Her high cheekbones, dark eyes, and ruddy complexion speak of her Paiute heritage.

Morgan was proud to talk of her heritage Friday, and she says she tries to educate the public on Native Americans at every opportunity. She includes informational sheets with every craft she sells.

Morgan’s specialty is painting on feathers. The delicate work takes a fine brush and a steady hand to create the miniature seascapes, animals and American Indian scenes on feathers.

She says she has painted on feathers for 18 years.

“My husband had a Harley, and one day I found a feather in our yard and I painted a picture of the Harley on it,” Morgan recalls. “My neighbor came over and offered me $20 for it and I said, ‘Hey, I’ve found my niche.’”

She specializes in acrylics on macaw feathers.

“Duck feathers are also good, but they don’t give them up very easy and I’m not going to chase them through the park,” she says.

Morgan used to own a pet macaw, “Sebastian,” who kept her supplied with feathers. However, after Sebastian’s passing and her supplies ran out, she began getting feathers from a friend in Texas. She says the most desirable feathers come from the deep blue hyacinth macaw, a bird that can cost as much as $10,000 from a dealer.

She shows one painting on a hyacinth macaw feather of a wolf’s head in moonlight. She charges $45 each for the matted and framed feather paintings.

“I have a customer in town who has bought about 16 of my feathers,” she says.

Morgan and her husband, Richard, a truck driver, moved to Athens from Lacey’s Spring 11 months ago. Their two adult sons also moved to this community.

“I tried to escape them, but they found me,” she jokes.

Both of her sons are artistic, but prefer to spend their time on computers rather than creating the Indian crafts that are so important to her.

“I’ve been trying to teach my boys in the Indian ways,” she says. “I make war shields and I try to teach them, but they are into the computer age. I tell them they will not have the knowledge to pass on to their children.”

Morgan says she was raised by a bishop on a Piaute Indian reservation in California and has 27 half-brothers and sisters. “There are now more than 2,000 in my (extended) family, at last count,” she says.

Morgan also does beadwork and creates jewelry and hatbands from rattlesnake bones and rattles. With each sale she includes her Indian “roll number,” a number assigned much like a Social Security number by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She does this to prove the item is not imported from a foreign country. She also includes a paper telling the story of an Indian massacre involving her ancestors, who were Paiute on her mother’s side. Her father’s side is German.

Morgan’s items, which also include arrows and a knife with a handle made from a raccoon’s jawbone, are among 180 crafts displayed and sold at the convention, which lasts throughout today.

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