Collision of Heavenly Structures

Collision of Heavenly Structures explores the space between Osage concepts of cosmology and elements of Western religion. The abstract Neo-Expressionist painting combines symbolism and a metaphoric diagram of the Osage universe created by Ha pa shu tsi (Redcorn), and references Osage ethnographic records compiled by anthropologist James O. Dorsey.¹ The painting is situated within the nuanced dichotomy of the two-worlds concept, where Indigenous and colonial realities collide.

Buffalo at Sunset

The Sign in the Fall

The Sign in the Fall depicts a Kiowa (Cáuigù)¹ husband and wife seated atop a hill witnessing a seasonal event. The man, with one arm around his wife, points to the sign mentioned in the title: the sun, low on the horizon, with rings. He wears an eagle feather on his braided scalp lock, which falls down his back, and his hair is parted and braided, with two beaded adornments tied to the braids at the nape of his neck. A bandolier consisting of two strands of mescal beans falls from his left shoulder, and a yellow medicine tie fastens the strands together; both of these objects relate to spiritual practices. He wears a red wool breechcloth with a beaded knife sheath on his belt, and his beaded, loom-worked garters are tied below the kneecap. His moccasins are painted and beaded. A hand-carved flute lies on the ground behind the couple.

Creek Chiefs

Peyote Religious Ceremony

Preparation for the Ribbon Dance

The prolific painter Solomon McCombs (Muscogee) graduated from Bacone College (Muskogee, Oklahoma), where he studied Indigenous art under the direction of Acee Blue Eagle. McCombs’s casein on paper Preparation for the Ribbon Dance centers on a Muscogee woman who is attended by two matriarchs as they prepare for a Muscogee ceremony.

Medicine Woman

Medicine Woman by Ruthe Blalock Jones (Delaware, Shawnee, Peoria) calls attention to the modest yet profound roles played by women within the Native American Church (NAC). Blalock Jones was raised in the NAC, and this artwork acknowledges a connection between her personal experience and the shared experiences of medicine women. Blurring the lines between realism and the Flatstyle techniques that became synonymous with Indigenous art produced in Oklahoma in the early twentieth century, Medicine Woman provides an intimate, first-person commentary that illuminates the interplay between presence and absence, between hypervisibility and invisibility in the portrayal of femininity and ceremonial space.

The medicine woman is shown kneeling in active prayer in the tipi. Blalock Jones centers the woman and frames her colorfully while still obscuring her face, for modesty, with a finely beaded ceremonial feather fan with thinly twisted buckskin fringe. The background is a smooth canvas tipi wall supported by dark and weathered poles. The ground line is formed by a comfortable and abundant array of brightly colored trade prayer blankets.

The woman is dressed in an unpresuming midnight-blue ankle-length frock and Plains-style high-top moccasins. A red and yellow beaded barrette holds her long gray hair in place. In a nod to the trade economies that fueled nineteenth-century Indigenous fashion trends, Blalock Jones has dressed her in an intricately adorned blue shawl with red silk fringe, which appears to cascade over the contours of her clothing.

—Jordan Poorman Cocker, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Indigenous Painting Collection Research, 2021

Chief Little Raven on His War Pony

Woman in Window

Caddo and Kiowa (Cáuigù)¹ artist T. C. Cannon often drew upon the techniques of the Post-Impressionist and Fauvist movements in his vibrant works. For his woodblock print Woman in Window, which also references complex conceptions of the representation of Indigenous women, Cannon collaborated with two Japanese masters whose signatures are in the lower right, woodblock carver Kentaro Maeda and printer Matashiro Uchikawa. The woman’s red-dyed Northern Plains–style wool dress is adorned with stars on the sleeves, indicating her participation in the Ghost Dance. The front of the dress features yellow cowrie shells and the collar is decorated with gold bugle beads, with a cross from a rosary stitched near the collarbone; she wears five-tier earrings. The cream-colored stripes at the shoulders and cuffs are an homage to the U.S. Army wool remnants supplied to Indigenous communities through trade and government rationing. An ornate pattern of red paint appears to drip down her face from the part in her hair.

International Peace Effort