Kiawentiio Tarbell

Lawn sales can contain hidden treasures. At one particular lawn sale on Kawehnoke a small treasure with a big future was found.

Kiawentiio Tarbell is a seventh grader at the Akwesasne Freedom School and she has many talents. At the family lawn sale in July she was selling several pieces of original art she had made.

Tarbell has been painting for a few years and she said her first project was very basic. Instead of an art supply store her first paint set could have come from Home Depot.

"When I first started we only had wall paint, so I had to use wall paint. My first good painting is hanging on the wall in my room," said Tarbell.

That first painting was a pair of owls and most of her creations are about animals; she admitted she is an animal lover and that comes through in most of her works.

Her house is somewhat secluded on Kawehnoke and surrounded by nature. Some artists will see a deer, for example, commit it to memory and then put it to canvas. Kiawentiio says she doesn't work that way – yet.

"If I'm going walking and I see something then I probably have to take a picture of it, she said.

For now she likes to paint wildlife and most of her work is birds. But she also sketches people and for that she pictures them.

"I do like drawing faces and bodies. I try to picture someone doing an activity like diving or sitting down," she said.

Her paintings are not hanging up at any art gallery or exhibit...yet. But she does look forward to that when it happens.

She had a birthday party recently and practiced.

"For my birthday I had a little art exhibit in the guest room for the family to look at and I never took the sign down," said Kiawentiio.

The Akwesasne Freedom School student is looking forward to taking art classes. The school does not have formal art classes, but Kiawentiio likes what art they do in their regular curriculum.

"They don't have art as a class but sometimes we paint stuff in a story. We listen to stories and we draw it on paper and the teacher lets us paint it," she said.

Her only taste of working in an art environment was last year's Art Wars at the St. Regis Mohawk School.

She enjoyed the work but her creativity was limited by time.

"They gave you a theme and you had thirty minutes to do something. I was nervous at first, my heart was racing, it was really pressuring. All the people were standing behind me and watching what I was doing. I didn't realize how short that thirty minutes was," said Tarbell.

Kiawentiio says she is self-taught and wants to go to classes to nourish her art. Her family is encouraging her to do so and she says she wants, to but does not have the time.

One of the reasons she doesn't have the time is because she also has another passion: music. She is a guitar player and songwriter.

For the past several months she has been taking guitar lessons and she had a performance at the Freedom School in front of a live audience. The occasion was a send off party for some visiting students and she performed a song she wrote herself.

"It was called Moonlight. I remember the moment that I thought about it, (while driving with parents). I was in the back seat and I saw the sunset and I just started singing and that is where it started. I just ran with it. I start the songs from nowhere. I can write the songs in five minutes off the top of my head," she said.

Her approach to finding the right lyrics to go with the melody comes from just fooling around.

"Sometimes I think of silly words that I would never use but I like the tune of it. Then I put real lyrics and switch them up and have serious words put in," said Kiawentiio.

A video was made of her goofing around on her brother's guitar for the first time and she was making up lyrics on the spot. The words did not make sense but she was belting them and they were forming a melody. At times the guitar she was playfully strumming was also in sync with her tune.

The inspiration to find that right word sometimes just pops into her head at unexpected times. She gave an example of doing her math homework. A thought for a great line would come to her but she can't write it down.

"Then I lose it forever," she said.

Her long-term goal is to make an album and she already has two in the can. She already has the CD cover artwork done and is working on eight more songs for this album.

Kiawentiio is very ambitious and wants to go all the way. Putting together an album is undoubtedly hard work and time consuming. But that isn't even her main goal in life.

"I'd say my biggest goal in life is to go to art school and if that doesn't work out, singing is my back-up."