A tiny exhibition of tiny baskets, curated by America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)
September 30–December 15, 2025
Charles M. Russell Center
409 W. Boyd Street, Norman, OK | map
Artists Featured
- Sissy Alex (Mississippi Choctaw)
- Joe Allen (Fallon Paiute)
- Ramona Lossie Baith (Eastern Band Cherokee, 1964–2025)
- Kelly Church (Gun Lake Potawatomi/Odawa/Ojibwe)
- Vivian Cottrell (Cherokee Nation)
- Scarlet Darden (Chitimacha)
- George Edward Goins Jr. (Eastern Band Cherokee)
- Mary Felix (Yup’ik)
- Sue Fish (Chickasaw)
- Kendall Florez (Warm Springs)
- Faye Greiner (Catawba, 1967–2025)
- Yonavea Hawkins (Caddo/Delaware/Kickapoo)
- Denise Jock (Akwesasne Mohawk, Turtle clan)
- Glenda McKay (Deg Xitʼan)
- Oderay Opua (Wounaan)
- Jeanette Sahneyah (Hopi)
- Eva Salazar (Kumiai, San José de la Zorra)
Holding Space
Basketry is a beloved Native art form, here in Oklahoma and in other regions where Native basketry thrives. The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed the “basket craze,” when Euro-American collectors couldn’t get enough of Native baskets from their journeys through Indian Country. Baskets meant economic survival for many tribal communities.Baskets are utilitarian artworks—a positive trait in the Arts and Crafts movement but a negative in mainstream Western modernist art. However, most of these baskets are miniature, rendering them non-utilitarian.
The term basket maker honors an artist who does the hard work of harvesting, pounding, scraping, and dyeing basketry materials. The weaving is typically the easiest and quickest work in the entire process.
They are captured essences of the landscapes from which they emerge: swampy tule rushes, towering cedar trees, fragrant sweetgrass, tough desert yucca, or even hair from horses’ tails and manes. Basketry is portable land art; a microcosm of its environments.
—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)
Visual Exhibition
See the entire mini-exhibition online through Matterport, thanks to Sharon Burchett!
Opening Reception
Tuesday, September 30, 2025. Comments by basket weavers Kathy Haney (Seminole/Muscogee/Shawnee/Delaware) and Yonavea Hawkins (Caddo/Delaware/Kickapoo)
Links
- Charles M. Russell Center, 409 W. Boyd Street, Norman, OK | link | Facebook | Instagram
- Oklahoma Native American Basketweavers, nonprofit based in central Oklahoma | Facebook
- Yonavea Hawkins (Caddo/Delaware/Kickapoo), beadwork artist, painter, basket weaver | link | Facebook | Instagram
- Oklahoma Cherokee Baskets (Arcadia Publishing, 2016), by Karen Coody Cooper (Cherokee Nation) | link