Sandra Victors was a teenager when she had a front-row view to artist Blackbear Bosin’s creation of the Keeper of the Plains sculpture in the early 1970s. Bosin was close with Victors’ mother, Ruby Davila, and one day came to see her at the family’s home on the north end of Fairview off 21st Street, where Victors was sitting outside. He had scrolls of drawings under his arms. “He came flying up the steps with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and he said, ‘Your mama home?’ Victors took a seat on the living room couch as her mother and Bosin talked. “Ruby, I’m having so much trouble with this statue’s arms,” Victors remembers Bosin saying. “I can’t figure out what to do with them.” Victors said her mother took an eraser, erased the arms Bosin had drawn and then drew her own version. “I was shocked.” Her mother’s advice was to “make them praying hands and have them go up.” Victors explained that “we pray with our hands up when we’re praying to the Creator. Lift them up to the Creator, I should say.”
Source: Local News | Wichita Eagle
