This past holiday season, SunUte Community Center shared a holiday greeting video with all the Southern Ute tribal entities via email. The video project featured SunUte staff promoting their services and wishing viewers a joyous holiday season. The video was completed using a variety of high-quality equipment and even included a drone shot. The project was made possible through collaboration with local artist and tribal member Conrad Thompson. On a recent job hunt, Thompson was able to secure a position creating media content for SunUte Community Center with the assistance of the Tribe’s Apprenticeship Committee.
Conrad Thompson is a Southern Ute tribal member who has been perfecting his art since a young age. In a recent interview with the Southern Ute Drum, he shared that he credits other local artists who encouraged and influenced him to learn art along with cultural teachings. Those artists include Orion Box, Russell Box, Austin Box and Kathy and Johnson Taylor to name a few. Thompson, a Metro Tech alumnus, completed school in commercial art and graphic design – he further studied at the Art Institute of Seattle for Multimedia and Web Design, his time in Seattle marks the beginning of delving into the videography and photography fields.
For roughly a year, Thompson has been searching for a job position applicable to his art skills and knowledge. After approaching the Apprenticeship Committee, he was able to begin a media project with the SunUte Community Center. “One of the reasons why I started working with SunUte was because I have been trying to find work for about a year now, when I ran into that situation, I was told that the Apprenticeship Committee might be able to help me out,” Thompson said. “When I went to meet with them, I discussed my education as well as my desire for work and that’s when Robin [Duffy-Wirth] ended up introducing the idea of filming a video for [SunUte Community Center].”
“I use a Nikon as well as a Canon, with this video I used the iPhone 15 Pro Max and what’s good about that one is that I really didn’t have to adjust any–they call it colorizing, all I did was just the editing as far as putting the clips all together on the timeline,” Thompson said. “With the photography aspect of the project– I used the DJI Mavic 2 Pro (drone).”
SunUte Community Center Director, Robin Duffy-Wirth looks forward to working with Thompson for future public relations projects. “[Conrad Thompson] has very special talents, so I talked to Morgann [Graham] and said ‘hey, we could do a video’,” Duffy-Wirth said. “We do them all the time, but we wanted to see what a professional video could look like.”
“He applied to the Apprenticeship Committee and as he was talking, I was like ‘wow! [SunUte] could really use him,’ because I would love to do more PR,” Duffy-Wirth continued. “We have three or four video projects that we can use him for – he does things that our normal videos don’t have, like the drone shots, he has amazing equipment that he works with, and he works really diligently and hard.”
Thompson looks forward to completing other projects in the future and is grateful for the opportunity provided by SunUte Community Center as well as the Apprenticeship Program. “I’m very fortunate to be given this opportunity to work and have people that are wanting to help me out in the sense that they’re willing to give me these types of jobs as far as work goes.”