Anita Fields
My name is Anita Fields. I'm Osage and Muskogee. I was born in Harmony, Oklahoma, on the Osage Reservation. I am a textile artist and ceramist, and I'm currently in my fourth year with the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.
You know, when I was a child, the kind of cultural arts or community arts that I was exposed to, I believe, came in the form of attending social gatherings. Osage social gatherings, you know, ceremonies, things within our community that were just celebrations of types of things.
And so, this is where people would wear our traditional clothing, and, you know, being exposed to traditional patterns, colors, design at the Institute of American Indian Arts, we were really encouraged to look at our histories, you know, to look at our individual tribal histories, to look at where we came from.
It was really exciting to be able to be with the young people. We were from different communities and different tribes but moving along with each other in this journey of understanding where you come from and how to start putting that together in terms of expression, in terms of creativity, in terms of making paintings, pottery, sewing, printmaking, photography, any of those mediums that were available to us. And, experimentation was highly encouraged.
This idea of abstract, you know, really played a lot into my work at that time and still does. I mean, sometimes I'm very surprised that when I look at just the beginnings, you know, some of my work, how still I'm still playing with those ideas. You know, they still come up in terms of function and form.
So, I remember, also, I love to use ink in a lot of our drawings, you know, still lifes, and pastels, and the process of using different elements within that to create smear and let things run, and this kind of thing. And again, I still love ink. I use ink quite a bit in the works that I do today.
Well, it's in the exhibit now, but you know, during that time period, when I made those things, you know, I was experimenting a lot with abstraction in terms of what was coming out of New York, in terms of what was happening in Indigenous cultures and Native cultures.
My thought is this: Native cultures have always excelled in an area, you know, if you want to use the term “Abstract Expressionism,” of taking ideas from our real views, from nature, you know, from the ideas and the things that we are surrounded by that influence us, that give to us a way of thinking. Native cultures, Native artists, the makers in our communities, past, present, have excelled at that.
So, you know, in my thinking, Abstract Expressionism is not something that happened in a non-Indigenous culture that was created by artists of a specific community or movement. You know, that, and I know we also know of artists who actually looked to Indigenous cultures to be inspired and to feel their ideas in terms of Abstract Expressionism, kind of what was happening around me too, you know, at the school. People were experimenting a lot with Abstract Expressionism.
Today, when I look at that, I see something that's very based in nature, you know, that the idea has very natural qualities to it, shapes and forms and patterns that you would find directly out of nature.
I also think it's really interesting that the colors that I used in that woodblock are colors that I'm still pretty attached to today, especially, you know, in terms of the clay. Woodblock, we started, I think, we started out with linoleum woodblock, you know, again, a progressive progression of techniques
Yeah, and I remember trying to figure out, you know, how the layering of the different colors, now that each that would be a different block. I remember at the time taking inspiration, you know, from nature and from rock formations, and just, I remember that I was always examining formations in rocks, but also the structures of rocks and fissures and rocks, and you know, where rocks have, you know, pulled apart. And that, I remember, you know, being looking closely at those kinds of things.
I think in terms of what I was talking about, positive and negative, you know, that is the thought that runs through ribbon work.
So, in order for, say, you have four colors or, you know, ribbons that you're using to create a piece of ribbon work, you put, you sew two of the base colors down, you sew those together, you flatten them out, you put another color ribbon on top of one and baste it down, you put another color of ribbon on the other side, baste it down, you draw your design on there, you clip at these certain points, you know, these specific points, and then you turn that under and the under color is revealed.
That's how the design is created in ribbon work. It's, you know, it's like a reverse applique almost.
And so, I think that, you know, in the woodblock, because there were these three different colors, and so how one color, you know, reveals kind of the background of, you know, of what was put down before, I think that there are similarities in that.
