Totem poles are monumental carvings found in western Canada and the northwestern United States. They are a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. They are usually made from large trees, mostly western red cedar, by First Nations and Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia.
The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is an art museum in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The Eiteljorg houses an extensive collection of visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as Western American paintings and sculptures collected by businessman and philanthropist Harrison Eiteljorg (1903–1997). The museum houses one of the finest collections of Native contemporary art in the world.
Ginny Ruffner is a pioneering American glass artist based in Seattle, Washington. She is known for her use of the lampworking technique and for her use of borosilicate glass in her painted glass sculptures.
Alvin Eli Amason is a Sugpiaq Alaskan painter and sculptor. He was raised in Kodiak and is of Alutiiq ancestry. He received his Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University and taught for several years at Navajo Community College. For seventeen years, he taught at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and was the head of the Alaska Native Art studies program there. After retiring, he was asked to join the Department of Art at the University of Alaska, Anchorage and develop an Alaska Native Art curriculum.
Richard "Dick" Marquis is an American studio glass artist. One of the first Americans ever to work in a Venetian glass factory, he became a master of Venetian cane and murrine techniques. He is considered a pioneer of American contemporary glass art, and is noted for his quirky, playful work that incorporates flawless technique and underlying seriousness about form and color.
Marcus Amerman is a Native American beadwork artist, glass artist, painter, fashion designer, and performance artist, living in Idaho. He is known for his highly realistic beadwork portraits.
Robert James "Jim" Schoppert was an Tlingit Alaska Native artist and educator. His work includes woodcarving, painting, poetry, and essays. He has been described as an innovator, whose works pushed the boundaries of what was expected from Northwest Coast art.
Joe Feddersen is a Colville sculptor, painter, photographer and mixed-media artist. He is known for creating artworks strong in geometric patterns reflective of what is seen in the environment, landscape and his Native American heritage.
Jeffrey A. Gibson is an American Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee painter and sculptor. He has lived and worked in Brooklyn, New York; Hudson, New York; and Germantown, New York.
Randall Dunn is an American record producer, audio engineer, composer, and musician.
Tammy Garcia is a Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor and ceramic artist. Garcia translates Pueblo pottery forms and iconography into sculptures in bronze and other media.
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.
Beth Lipman is a contemporary artist working in glass. She is best known for her glass still-life compositions which reference the work of 16th- and 17th-century European painters.
Debora Moore is a contemporary glass artist. She is best known for her glass orchids.
Lisa Telford is a Git'ans Git'anee Haida weaver who creates contemporary garments, shoes and other objects using Northwest Coast style weaving techniques. Her work serves as a commentary on Native identity, stereotypes and fashion.
Alison O. Bremner Nax̲shag̲eit is an artist of the Tlingit people of Alaska, whose art combines themes of humor, contemporary art, and Tlingit traditions, using mixed media including painting, woodcarving, and collage. She has also made more traditional Tlingit art pieces, "to be used during potlatches and ceremonies" within the Tlingit community. Originally from Yakutat, Alaska, she grew up in Juneau, Alaska, and lives in Seattle, Washington. She describes her art as "inspired by ancient traditions and modern coffee".
Tanis Maria S'eiltin is a Tlingit installation artist, painter, printmaker, and sculptor.
Lloyd Eldred Herman (1936-2023) was an American arts administrator, curator, writer, museum planner and acknowledged expert on contemporary craft. He was known for being the founding Director of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., from 1971 to 1986.
Vicki Lee Soboleff is a Haida and Tlingit artist, dancer, and teacher who specializes in Haida basketry. She was awarded the Margaret Nick Cooke Award in 2016 from the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Alaska Humanities Forum for her work with Alaska Native dance.
