Mel Cornshucker | |
---|---|
Born | Jay, Oklahoma, United States | October 4, 1952
Nationality | United Keetoowah Band |
Education | Bacone College, Southwest Baptist University |
Known for | High-fire stoneware |
Mel Cornshucker (born October 4, 1952) is a contemporary Cherokee potter living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who works in stoneware, porcelain, and raku clay. Cornshucker is known for his high-fire stoneware, decorated with hand-painted, Native-inspired motifs and designs. [1]
Born and raised in Jay, Oklahoma, and a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, Cornshucker was inspired by other artists in his family [2] including his grandfather, Lincoln Trotting Wolf's, talent for weaving. His grandfather built his own rug loom on which he made rugs and blankets on the front porch. Cornshucker's cousins were basket weavers and his father was a silversmith, allowing him several creative outlets in his youth. Cornshucker spent many summers with his Cherokee family in Jay. [3] He had positive encouragement in public schools when he began making figurines out of wet plaster and metal sculptures.
After graduating high school in 1970, Cornshucker briefly attended Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma before transferring to Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri working to become a tribal lawyer. It was during this time, Cornshucker took college art class which sparked his interest in pottery. Cornshucker was hired in 1975 to work as an apprentice potter in the Missouri theme park, Silver Dollar City. This job opportunity allowed him a lot of room to grow because he was perfecting his art every day for three to four hours for tourists. He left Silver Dollar City in 1977 and moved to Colorado where he became a land surveyor. After six months, Cornshucker moved back home to set up his own studio in Kansas City, Missouri. [3]
When Cornshucker set up in his own studio, he began to compete in more booth shows as well as galleries. When Cornshucker began to do more Native shows, he experienced an increase in the amount of galleries taking on his work. In the early 1980s, Cornshucker would do approximately 15-16 gallery shows per year. [3] Cornshucker also began incorporating his trademark Native motifs on his pottery around this time. The dragonfly was a special symbol for him not only because of its symbolism for many tribal cultures, but also because of its association with his grandfather, Lincoln Trotting Wolf. [3] Cornshucker is also part owner of the Brady Artists Studio with Donna Prigmore.
In 2007, Cornshucker was selected to participate in a cultural exchange with African artists, put on by the Kellogg Foundation in tandem with the Institute of American Indian Arts of Santa Fe. Cornshucker worked in a Zulu village and put on a workshop for the Zulu potters. The goal of this program was for the American potters to offer tips and advice on how to better market the Zulu potters' work. Cornshucker helped influence the creation of clay masks and rattles to be sold in the markets. [3]
Cornshucker is considered a modern potter who values the functionality of his pieces while aesthetically including Native American motifs in his signature designs. He strives to create pieces that communicate past and present Native American spirit which reflects his heritage and honors the creativity of man over time. He has shown his work in a variety of nationally significant markets, including the Eiteljorg Indian Market and Festival, [4] the Santa Fe Indian Market, the Pueblo Grande Museum Indian Art Show in Phoenix, and the Contemporary Indian Art Show at Cahokia. [5]
2007 Selected for a cultural artist exchange with South Africa, sponsored by the Kellogg Foundation and Institute of American Indian Art. [6]
2014 winner of the modern pottery category for the Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival in Oklahoma. [7]
2014 Greater Tulsa Indian Art Festival. Best of Show 2014 Greater Tulsa Area Indian Affairs Commission. Moscelyne Larkin Cultural Achievement Award. [8]
Nathan Youngblood is a Native American potter from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, United States.
Julián Martínez, also known as Pocano (1879–1943), was a San Ildefonso Pueblo potter, painter, and the patriarch of a family of Native American ceramic artists in the United States.
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.
The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which includes Central America and Greenland. The Siberian Yupiit, who have great cultural overlap with Native Alaskan Yupiit, are also included.
Paladine Roye (1946–2001) was a Native American painter.
The Bacone school or Bacone style of painting, drawing, and printmaking is a Native American intertribal "Flatstyle" art movement, primarily from the mid-20th century in Eastern Oklahoma and named for Bacone College. This art movement bridges historical, tribally-specific pictorial painting and carving practices towards an intertribal Modernist style of easel painting. This style is also influenced by the art programs of Chilocco Indian School, north of Ponca City, Oklahoma, and Haskell Indian Industrial Training Institute, in Lawrence, Kansas and features a mix of Southeastern, Prairie, and Central Plains tribes.
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.
Anita Fields is an Osage/Muscogee Native American ceramic and textile artist based in Oklahoma. She is an enrolled citizen of the Osage Nation.
Dana Tiger is a Muscogee artist of Seminole and Cherokee descent from Oklahoma. Her artwork focuses on portrayals of strong women. She uses art as a medium for activism and raising awareness. Tiger was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame in 2001.
Jane Osti is a native Cherokee artist. She specializes in traditional Cherokee pottery with unique embellishments and designs. In 2005, Osti was one of the youngest Cherokee artists to be appointed as a Living Treasure by Cherokee Nation. Currently, Osti teaches and creates her own pottery in her studio in downtown Tahlequah.
Norma "Nana" Howard (1958–2024) was a Choctaw-Chickasaw Native American artist from Stigler, Oklahoma, who painted genre scenes of children playing, women working in fields, and other images inspired by family stories and Choctaw life. Howard won her first art award at the 1995 Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival in Oklahoma City. Her work is popular with collectors and critics.
Merlin Little Thunder is a Southern Cheyenne artist living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His paintings express the history, people, and the land in a narrative, representational style, especially from the perspective of the Southern Cheyenne people. He is known for his miniature paintings, bright colors, and for the incorporation of humor into his work.
Robert Taylor is an American self-taught artist from Oklahoma whose paintings explore Native American subject matter. He uses symbolism and manipulates figures' proportions, particularly hands and feet.
Sandy Fife Wilson is a Muscogee (Creek) art educator, fashion designer and artist. After graduating from the Institute of American Indian Arts and Northeastern Oklahoma State University, she became an art teacher, first working in the public schools of Dewey, Oklahoma. When Josephine Wapp retired as the textile instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Wilson was hired to teach the design courses. After three years, in 1979, she returned to Oklahoma and taught at Chilocco Indian School until it closed and then worked in the Morris Public School system until her retirement in 2009.
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.
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.