When Nancy Strickland Fields looked at the flawless craftsmanship of an AD 700 pot discovered at Town Creek Indian Mound, she felt thunderstruck by inspiration for an exhibition she had been invited to guest-curate at the North Carolina Museum of Art. “I wanted it to focus on three-dimensional works that tell the story of who we are as Native peoples.” Over the next year and a half, Fields, a member of the Lumbee Tribe and the director of the Museum of the Southeast American Indian in Pembroke, gathered pieces from seventy-six Indigenous artists. The result—an exhibition titled To Take Shape and Meaning: Form and Design in Contemporary American Indian Art—runs through July 28 in Raleigh. Works include a beaded basket in the shape of an owl by the Passamaquoddy artist Jeremy Frey, Cherokee corn-husk dolls by Laura Walkingstick, and a piece by the Chickasaw Choctaw weaver Margaret Roach Wheeler. “For Native peoples, when we give something shape, we give it meaning and it takes on a life,” Fields says. “This exhibition represents many different vibrant tribal nations from across the United States. The range of art from basketry to ceramics to mix media shows the commanding breadth of art from Native America….it is not only Native American art, it’s American art.”
Southern Agenda