Oklahoma Contemporary | Studio School
non-credit course
Mondays, 6:00–8:00 pm Central Time
Instructor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) | email
Class 1: May 17, 2021
Precontact, Pre-Removal, and Pre-Statehood Oklahoma
Lecture: Precontact painting and ceramics, Mississippian artworks and trade networks, 19th-century textile arts, beadwork, and basketry.
Readings:
- heather ahtone, “Designed to Last: Striving toward an Indigenous American Aesthetic,” The International Journal of the Arts in Society 4, no. 2 (2009): 373–86.
- America Meredith, “The Artistic Legacy of Spiro Mounds,” First American Art Magazine no. 15 (Summer 2017): 18–27.
Timeline:
- Pre-Removal Oklahoma Timeline, commentary welcome
Class 2: May 24, 2021
Discuss “Designed to Last” essay
Painting: Flatstyle and Other Movements
19th- and 20th-century painting from hides (including parfleches), ledger, to easel art, Southern Plains school, Studio style, Bacone school, Philbrook Indian Annual, revival of ledger art. Alternative painting movements from the 19th to 21st centuries.
Readings:
- Cedar Marie, “Evolving States: Michael Elizondo Jr. and the Reemergence of the Bacone College School of Indian Art,” First American Art Magazine no. 30 (Spring 2021).
- America Meredith, “Early Native American Women Painters of Oklahoma,” in Hearts of our People: Native Women Artists, ed. Jill Ahlberg Yohe and Teri Greeves (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2019): 130–34.
- America Meredith, “Parfleches: How Native Women Pushed the Envelope of Abstraction,” First American Art Magazine no. 26 (Spring 2020): 34–39.
May 31: No class, Memorial Day weekend
Class 3: June 7, 2021
Recording
Photography, Film, Video Art, Digital Art, Animation, and Sound Art
Ceramics
Contemporary ceramics and revivals of ceramic.
- America Meredith, “Stitches in Time: The Rebirth of Southeastern Woodlands Beadwork,” First American Art Magazine no. 1 (Fall 2013), 46–51 |
- Michelle Stokey, “Picturing the People: Kiowa, Comanche, and Plains Apache Postcards,” Plains Anthropologist 60, no. 234 (May 2015), 99–123.
Class 4: June 14, 2021
Guest speaker: Tahnee Ahtone (Kiowa/Seminole/Mvskoki), curator of the Kiowa Tribal Museum
Textile Arts: Regalia and Fashion Design
Lecture: Reservation era, Powwow regalia, Southern Plains, Prairie, ribbonwork, finger weaving, Lloyd Kiva New, Fife Sisters, Ardina Moore, Margaret Roach Wheeler, 20th- and 21st-century beadwork
Metals: Jewelry and Sculpture
Lecture: German Silver, Allan Houser, Modern and Contemporary works in bronze, leading up to Harvey Pratt’s National Native American Veteran’s Memorial
- Roy Boney Jr., “Lloyd Kiva New: His Cherokee Roots and Legacy in Oklahoma,” First American Art Magazine no. 12 (Fall 2016): 40–45.
- Denise Neil-Binion, “German Silver Jewelry of the Southern Plains Indians,” First American Art Magazine no. 14 (Spring 2017): 32–37.
Learning Outcomes
- Students will have a general understanding of Indigenous peoples of Oklahoma and tribes relocated here and appreciate the vast diversity of cultures represented in this state.
- Students will develop a basic foundation of Oklahoma American Indian history and understand how sociopolitical factors influence artistic styles.
- Students will learn and use a methodology for understanding and critiquing Indigenous artworks.
- Students will recognize names and basic biographical information of the state’s most prominent Native American artists living and deceased.
Resources
- The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Oklahoma Historical Society
- Oklahoma History Center Research Center | Search OHS Photograph Archives
- Oklahoma Native Art Project, Oklahoma State University. Caveat: several people included in this project are not enrolled members of federally recognized tribes.
- Gilcrease Museum, Native American artists collection
- Museum of the Red River, North American collection
- Philbrook Museum of Art, Native American collection
- Sam Noble Museum, Ethnology collection
- List of Oklahoma Native women artists (comments and additions welcome)