Vanessa Paukeigope Jennings | |
|---|---|
 Jennings in her earth lodge, 1989 | |
| Born | Vanessa Paukeigope Santos October 5, 1952 |
| Known for | Beadwork, cradleboards, clothing, regalia, dolls |
| Style | Southern Plains |
| Spouse(s) | Carl Jennings (2nd husband, 1993–present) |
| Awards | National Heritage Fellowship (1989) |
Vanessa Paukeigope Santos Jennings (born October 5, 1952) [1] is a Kiowa/Kiowa Apache/Gila River Pima regalia maker, clothing designer, cradleboard maker, and beadwork artist from Oklahoma. [2]
Jennings was born in the Gila River Indian Community near Tempe, Arizona [3] but was raised in Oklahoma. [4] Her parents were Clifford Santos of the Gila River Pima tribe and LaQuinta Mopope, [3] a Kiowa who worked as a nurse with the Indian Health Service in Arizona. [5] Jennings is the oldest granddaughter of Kiowa Six artist Stephen Mopope [6] and Jeanette Berry Mopope, from whom Jennings "inherited the Kiowa songs, crafts, manners and language" [2] that is integral to her artwork. Jennings began doing beadwork at age 11, after observing and helping her grandmother with her artistry for several years prior. [5]
As a child growing up in Lawton, Oklahoma, she was often teased by others for wearing leggings and braids instead of trying to conceal her Native American heritage. [2]
She attended high school and college[ where? ] in Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and then moved to the allotment land granted to her grandmother in Red Stone, Oklahoma. She and her first husband built an earth lodge on this Kiowa spiritually-significant property, which she uses as a studio and also makes available to the tribe for various cultural activities. [1]
In addition to her grandmother, another major influence in Jennings' life has been her participation in the O-Ho-Mah Lodge Society, a Kiowa war dance society with which her family has been involved for several generations. Her grandfather Stephen, his father George Mopope, and Jennings' sons Gabriel and Seth have all performed songs at Society ceremonies. [5]
Jennings had made artwork in her spare time, but in the early 1980s she received a commission from the Museum of International Folk Art to make a ceremonial child's dress using traditional Kiowa beadwork on rawhide. [7] Jennings acknowledges that this commission marked the beginning of her professional career as a traditional Southern Plains artist. [5]
Jennings is known for making traditional Kiowa cradleboards, saddles, moccasins, beadwork, men's and women's clothing, and other craft formats, but she says cradleboards are her favorite. [4] Over the years, her work has been included in many special exhibitions and she has received commissions from Kiowa leaders to make ceremonial regalia for important rituals, but she has also had to work other jobs in Anadarko, Oklahoma in order to earn funds to support her artwork. [3]
Jennings has also taken seriously the responsibility of teaching her craft to future generations, by "instructing young people in the necessary techniques to make regalia and demonstrating her artistry for broader audiences at museums and cultural centers". [8]
Despite having won many awards for her creative endeavors, she says "I've never considered myself an artist. I have always told everyone that I'm a simple, traditional woman." [9] "I do my grandmother's work," Jennings said. "I do my great-grandmother's work. This is what they used to do. They are the ones who should be honored." [10] Besides finished pieces, she is one of the few artists who brain-tans her own hides. [2]
In 1992, Jennings (then-Morgan) reproduced a small version of the "Tepee With Battle Pictures" for an exhibit at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. The original painted tepee was created in 1845 to commemorate the continued peace agreement between the Kiowa and Cheyenne tribes, and was presented as a gift to Little Bluff, the principal chief of the Kiowa. The tepee represented an object of great cultural significance and prestige, and has been reproduced several times over the years. Jennings is a great-great-great-granddaughter of Little Bluff II. For her reproduced model, Jennings drew upon family history to depict military deeds, but because Kiowa tradition is that only men can reproduce such images, Jennings taught her son Seth to draw the battle pictures on the tepee. [11]
In 1995, Jennings helped organize an exhibit titled "Four Generations: Mopope, Palmer, Jennings, and Morgan" at the Red Earth Indian Center in Oklahoma City. The exhibit featured the work of eight Kiowa artisans from Jennings' family, starting with her grandfather Stephen Mopope, to represent an unbroken line of artistic tradition. [12]
One of Jennings' cradleboards was included in a national traveling exhibition titled "Gifts of Pride and Love" that featured 38 cradles from various Native American tribal traditions. The exhibit also emphasized female artists, who have long been overlooked by histories focusing on the male Indian warrior culture. [13] The exhibition began in December 1999 at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and included stops at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Los Angeles, California, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, Oklahoma, and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Ledyard, Connecticut. [6] Jennings wrote a chapter titled "Why I Make Cradles" in the catalog book that accompanied the exhibition. [14]
Jennings' work has also been featured at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, [4] as well as in England and Scotland. [9]
As of 2017, she is believed to be the last active Kiowa cradleboard maker on the Southern Plains. [15]
She is a founding member of Artists for the Traditional Arts, an initiative of the National Council for the Traditional Arts. [16]
At the inaugural Red Earth Festival in 1987, Jennings won prizes for her antelope headdress and a mountain lion bow case. [9]
Jennings is a recipient of a 1989 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. [17] That honor also includes recognition as a Living National Treasure by the US president and congress.
In 1992, she received the Red Earth Festival President's Award. [2]
In 1996, Jennings and her artwork were honored in a Plains Indian Seminar sponsored by the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, titled "Powerful Expressions: Art of Plains Indian Women". The seminar's keynote address noted that "the way Vanessa lives epitomizes the best kinds of values and virtues of Plains Indian women". [5]
In 2004, she was named the Honored One by the Red Earth Festival, which is the highest honor bestowed upon an artist by the festival. [2]
She has earned multiple awards in various categories at the Santa Fe Indian Market, including in 1997, [18] 2003, [19] 2010, [10] and 2016. [20]
She has also won awards[ when? ] at the Great Plains Indian Rendezvous. [2]
Jennings lives in Red Stone, east of Fort Cobb, Oklahoma. [6] She had three children from her first marriage. Because her parents died in the 1950s, she was unable to follow the Kiowa tradition of having the grandparents directly raise their grandchildren, so Jennings raised her three children by herself. [2] She married Carl Jennings in 1993. [4] As of 2004, she had four grandchildren, and she also raised her sister's eight children following her death. [4]
Two of Jennings' children are also traditional artists. Gabriel Morgan is a ledger artist, pipe maker and flute player. Seth Morgan is also a ledger artist and pipe maker, in addition to working with beads, making bows and arrows, and writing poetry. [12]
The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic Santa Fe Federal Building, a landmark Pueblo Revival building listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Federal Building. The museum houses the National Collection of Contemporary Indian Art, with more than 7,000 items.
Tommy Wayne Cannon was an important Native American artist of the 20th century. He was popularly known as T. C. Cannon. He was an enrolled member of the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma and had Caddo and French ancestry.
The Kiowa Six, previously known as the Kiowa Five, is a group of six Kiowa artists from Oklahoma in the early 20th century, working in the "Kiowa style". The artists were Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Monroe Tsatoke and Lois Smoky.
Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty is a Native American, Assiniboine Sioux bead worker and porcupine quill worker. She creates traditional Northern Plains regalia.
Teri Greeves is a Native American beadwork artist, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is enrolled in the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma.
Silver Horn or Haungooah was a Kiowa ledger artist.
Jack Hokeah was a Kiowa painter, one of the Kiowa Six, from Oklahoma.
Stephen Mopope (1898–1974) was a Kiowa painter, dancer, and Native American flute player from Oklahoma. He was the most prolific member of the group of artists known as the Kiowa Six.
Lois Smoky Kaulaity (1907–1981) was a Kiowa beadwork artist and a painter, one of the Kiowa Six, from Oklahoma.
Richard Aitson was a Kiowa-Kiowa Apache bead artist, curator, and poet from Oklahoma.
Marcelle Sharron Ahtone Harjo is a Kiowa painter from Oklahoma. Her Kiowa name, Sain-Tah-Oodie, translates to "Killed With a Blunted Arrow." In the 1960s and 1970s, she and sister Virginia Stroud were instrumental in the revival of ledger art, a Plains Indian narrative pictorial style on paper or muslin.
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.
Jeri Ah-be-hill was a Kiowa fashion expert and art dealer. She owned and operated a trading post on the Wind River Indian Reservation for more than twenty years before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico where she became the curator of the annual Native American Clothing Contest held at the Santa Fe Indian Market. She also worked as a docent at both the Institute of American Indian Arts and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. Considered an expert on Native American fashion, she traveled nationally presenting educational information about tribal clothing.
Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty, is a Native American artist. She is of the Assiniboine Sioux, Dakota people, and is known for her beadwork and quillwork. She creates traditional Northern Plains regalia. The Smithsonian named her as "one of the West's most highly regarded beadworkers".
TahneeAhtoneharjo-Growingthunder, is a Kiowa beadwork artist, regalia maker, curator, and museum professional of Muscogee and Seminole descent, from Mountain View, Oklahoma.
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.
Alice Littleman was a Kiowa beadwork artist and regalia maker, who during her lifetime was recognized as one of the leading Kiowa beaders and buckskin dressmakers. Her works are included in the permanent collections of the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Southern Plains Indian Museum, and the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Katrina Mitten is a Native American artist. She is enrolled in the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.
Rhonda Holy Bear is a Native American beadworker and dollmaker. She is best known for her dolls depicting Native American people in traditional beaded regalia.
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