Ride Hamilton

Ride lives in New Orleans, also splitting time between New York and Santa Fe. His mother is famous award-winning potter and ceramist Dora Tse-Pé, a Tewa Native American born on the Zia Pueblo in 1939, who has developed her art on the San Ildefonso Pueblo, where most of his family lives, also well-known clay artists. He is of French and Native American descent, often called Métis. Before he could drive a car, he drove motorcycles. During Hurricane Katrina, Ride voluntarily stayed behind in his New Orleans home, and just hours after the storm, immediately started collecting food, water, and first aid medical supplies while many others were looting electronics and expensive merchandise. That night, with no electricity and by candlelight, he became a first aid medic and continued to volunteer for months in the aftermath of the hurricane that destroyed his hometown. Ride "opened" his own aid clinic out of the rear of his hatchback car, assisting with free food and survival supplies, and administering basic care like bandaging wounds for people and their pets. After a man was robbed by thugs and beaten severely with a 2x4, the hurt man limped to Ride's makeshift clinic. Seeing the man's injuries, Ride sat the man on a beer keg, put a wooden kitchen spoon in the stranger's mouth for the pain, and proceeded to sew the man's split ear back on with a leather-working needle and fishing line. Ride monitored the man and many others, for weeks, to make sure all his first aid work healed without infections. Ride is best known as a photographer, writer, and clothing designer. 500 days after the storm, 80 of Ride's photographs from Hurricane Katrina were on display at a Texas University. He is the official photographer for two Tennessee Williams festivals. He is currently (2015) writing several plays and musicals.