Tahlequah is a city in Cherokee County, Oklahoma located at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. It is part of the Green Country region of Oklahoma and was established as a capital of the 19th-century Cherokee Nation in 1839, as part of the new settlement in Indian Territory after the Cherokee Native Americans were forced west from the American Southeast on the Trail of Tears.
Marie Zieu Chino (1907–1982) was a Native American potter from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico. Marie and her friends Lucy M. Lewis and Jessie Garcia are recognized as the three most important Acoma potters during the 1950s. Along with Juana Leno, they have been called "The Four Matriarchs" who "revived the ancient style of Acoma pottery." The inspiration for many designs used on their pottery were found on old potsherds gathered to use for temper. Together they led the revival of ancient pottery forms including the Mimbres, Tularosa and other various cultures in the Anasazi region. This revival spread to other potters who also accepted the old styles, which led to new innovative designs and variations of style and form.
Joan Hill, also known as Che-se-quah, was a Muscogee Creek artist of Cherokee ancestry. She was one of the most awarded Native American women artists in the 20th century.
Kay WalkingStick is a Native American landscape artist and a member of the Cherokee Nation. Her later landscape paintings, executed in oil paint on wood panels often include patterns based on Southwest American Indian rugs, pottery, and other artworks.
Mavis Doering was a Cherokee Nation basketmaker from Oklahoma.
Martha Berry is a Cherokee beadwork artist, who has been highly influential in reviving traditional Cherokee and Southeastern beadwork, particularly techniques from the pre-Removal period. She has been recognized as a Cherokee National Treasure and is the recipient of the Seven Star Award and the Tradition Bearer Award. Her work is shown in museums around the United States.
Cecil Dick, or Degadoga (1915–1992) was a well-known Cherokee artist often referred to as "the Father of Cherokee Traditional Art".
The Southeastern Indian Artists Association (SEIAA) is an intertribal Native American nonprofit arts organization headquartered in northeastern Oklahoma.
Gina Gray : was an Osage artist born in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, to Andrew and Margaret Gray. She was the great-granddaughter of Henry Roan Horse. She is one of the most renowned Native American contemporary artists of the past three decades, having won awards from and held exhibits at many museums and art shows throughout Indian Country.
Shan Goshorn was an Eastern Band Cherokee artist, who lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her interdisciplinary artwork expresses human rights issues, especially those that affect Native American people today. Goshorn used different media to convey her message, including woven paper baskets, silversmithing, painting, and photography. She is best known for her baskets with Cherokee designs woven with archival paper reproductions of documents, maps, treaties, photographs and other materials that convey both the challenges and triumphs that Native Americans have experienced in the past and are still experiencing today.
Anita Fields is an Osage/Muscogee Native American ceramic and textile artist based in Oklahoma. She is an enrolled citizen of the Osage Nation.
David Emmett Williams was a Native American painter, who was Kiowa/Tonkawa/Kiowa-Apache from Oklahoma. He studied with Dick West at Bacone College and won numerous national awards for his paintings. He painted in the Flatstyle technique that was taught at Bacone from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Tom Fields is a Muscogee Creek/Cherokee photographer from Oklahoma. He has worked in both commercial and fine art photography during his career. Fields specializes in full-frame, black-and-white photos, shot as close as possible, of American Indian communities. For Fields, his work provides a "visual definition of what it is like to be Native American in Oklahoma."
Josephine Myers-Wapp was a Comanche weaver and educator. After completing her education at the Haskell Institute, she attended Santa Fe Indian School, studying weaving, dancing, and cultural arts. After her training, she taught arts and crafts at Chilocco Indian School before joining the faculty of the newly opened Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She taught weaving, design, and dance at the institute, and in 1968 was one of the coordinators for a dance exhibit at the Mexican Summer Olympic Games. In 1973, she retired from teaching to focus on her own work, exhibiting throughout the Americas and in Europe and the Middle East. She has work in the permanent collection of the IAIA and has been featured at the Smithsonian Institution. Between 2014 and 2016, she was featured in an exhibition of Native American women artists at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe.
Jimmie Carole Fife Stewart is a Muscogee (Creek) art educator, fashion designer, and artist. After graduating from the Chilocco Indian School and taking courses at the University of Arizona, she earned a degree from Oklahoma State University and began working as a teacher. After a six-year stint working for Fine Arts Diversified, she returned to teaching in 1979 in Washington, Oklahoma. Primarily known as a painter, using watercolor or acrylic media, Fife-Stewart has also been involved in fashion design. Her works have been shown mostly in the southwestern United States and have toured South America. Having won numerous awards for her artworks, she was designated as a Master Artist by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in 1997.
Valjean McCarty Hessing was a Choctaw painter, who worked in the Bacone flatstyle. Throughout her career, she won 9- awards for her work and was designated a Master Artist by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in 1976. Her artworks are in collections of the Heard Museum of Phoenix, Arizona; the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, Oklahoma; and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian of Santa Fe, New Mexico, among others.
Jeanne Rorex-Bridges is painter and illustrator based in Oklahoma. She is a member of the Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama, a state-recognized tribe.
Mary Adair is a Cherokee Nation educator and painter based in Oklahoma.
Anna Mitchell was a Cherokee Nation potter who revived the historic art of Southeastern Woodlands pottery for Cherokee people in Oklahoma. Her tribe designated her as a Cherokee National Treasure and has works in numerous museum collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, among others.
Bill Glass Jr. is a Cherokee Nation ceramic artist, sculptor, and public artist, who was named a Cherokee National Treasure in 2009.
