First American Art Magazine No. 7, Summer 2015 | Page 10
Contributing Writers
HEATHER AHTONE (Chickasaw-Choctaw) is the James T.
Bialac Assistant Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art for
the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma. She
earned her master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2006.
She independently curated numerous traveling exhibits and worked with
SWAIA and Ralph Appelbaum Associates. She has published in several
scholarly journals including Wícazo Ša Review and taught at OU for four
years.
MICHELE COOK is a novelist, screenwriter, and former newspaper
reporter living in Santa Fe. She and her husband, author John Sandford, are
writing a young-adult trilogy called The Singular Menace. Random House
will publish the second book, Outrage, in July.
ROSEMARY DIAZ (Santa Clara Pueblo Tewa) is a freelance
feature writer based in Santa Fe. She writes an original online series “Native
Foodways: New Seasons” for Indian Country Today Media Network and
is writing her study/memoir on historic trauma, entitled The Diaries of
Sunshine YellowStar: Entries from Zarzamine. RoseMary studied literature
and its respective arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa
University, and University of California, Santa Cruz.
MICHOLE ELDRED (Catawba Nation-Eastern Band Cherokee)
is a writer, curator, and educator. She received her bachelor’s degree in art
and museum studies at University of South Florida and her master’s in
education from Berry College. Much of her work is focused on curating
Indigenous art and historical exhibitions. She believes that the process of
art making and enjoyment of the arts should be accessible to all peoples.
Her work in writing art curriculum and teaching the arts to people
with disabilities is reflected in the interpretive planning she creates when
presenting exhibitions.
MISTY ELLINGBURG (Shoalwater Bay Tribe-Willapa) is an MFA
candidate in fiction writing at the University of Idaho. She is a founding
editor for Four Winds, an American Indian literary journal; teaches English
composition and rhetoric; and has published in Yellow Medicine Review, Split
Lip Magazine, Specter, and 100 Word Story.
SUZANNE NEWMAN FRICKE, PhD (Ashkenazic-
American), wrote her dissertation in art history on 20th-century Native
American pottery at the University of New Mexico. She teaches art
history at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. In 2012, she along
with Beverly Morris (Aleut) and Charlie James curated the e xhibit Octopus
Dreams: Works on Paper by Contemporary Native American Artists, which
traveled to six sites in Russia and to 516 Arts in Albuquerque. In 2014,
two museums in Russia displayed another show, As We See It: Photography
by Contemporary Native American Artists, curated by Dr. Fricke and India
Young, who are preparing an accompanying catalogue. She is currently
organizing a third show, which will also travel to Russia.
STACI GOLAR (Cornish-Welsh-American) holds a bachelor’s
degree in art from Eastern Oregon University and a master’s degree in
arts administration from the University of Oregon. She completed an
arts management internship at Crow’s Shadow Institute of Art on the
Umatilla Reservation, and went on to work at SWAIA/Santa Fe Indian
Market and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Currently she is the
associate director of the International Folk Art Market | Santa Fe. Her
writing has been featured in the Santa Fean, Santa Fe New Mexican, Native
Peoples, Bead and Button, and other publications. A lifelong advocate of the
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arts, and an artist herself, she believes in the transformative power of art
and in those who create it.
TERI GREEVES (Kiowa-Comanche) is a beadwork artist who
grew up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Greeves graduated
from the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a degree in American
studies. Her work‚ which is in the National Museum of the American
Indian, the British Museum, the Museum of Art and Design, and other
major collections, combines Kiowa oral history with her personal and
family experiences.
SCOTT W. HALE is an adviser and accredited art appraiser for
Native American Art Appraisals, Inc., with offices in Los Angeles, Santa Fe,
Tulsa, and New York City. He pursued his master’s and doctoral studies
at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught in the Native American
Studies program and lectured in the School of Art and Art History. Hale is
a former curator of private, corporate, and nonprofit art collections and has
written and lectured for several publications and museums.
BOB HAOZOUS (Warm Springs Chiricahua Apache) works
in a range of media and is best known for his monumental, site-specific
sculptures. He has co-curated exhibits such as the 2006 Relations:
Indigenous Dialogue with Joseph Sanchez (Tewa descent), Roxanne
Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo), and other Native artist-activists. Haozous
earned his BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts and has shown
his work internationally.
ZELMA LONG (Danish-American) is a PhD candidate in
performance studies at University of California, Davis, with a designated
emphasis in Native American studies. She plans to attend the University of
Oklahoma School of Art and Art History in fall of 2015 and then proceed
with her dissertation. Long grew up in Oregon on the Columbia River,
and returned to school to further her knowledge and understanding of
Native American cultures and art.
MATTHEW J. MARTINEZ, PhD (Ohkay Owingeh), is the
assistant professor of Pueblo Indian studies at Northern New Mexico
College. He worked for the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and
Native Americans in the Sciences (SACNAS) and the New Mexico Higher
Education Department. Martinez earned his doctoral degree in American
studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He was associate
producer of Canes of Power, a 2012 documentary about the canes presented
by President Abraham Lincoln to leaders of the 19 New Mexican pueblos.
THOLLEM McDONAS is a peripatetic pianist, keyboardist,
vocalist, a collaborator, an activist, an educator, and an author. He has
released over 40 albums of his own work and in collaboration with others
on 18 different vanguard labels. As an author, he has contributed articles to
Anthology of Essays on Deep Listening, Entasis, and Full Moon Magazine.
JEAN MERZ-EDWARDS has studied art history since 2000
when she attended her first art history classes at Hunter College in
New York. She recently earned her master’s degree in art history from
the University of Oklahoma, where she was awarded a certificate in
women’s and gender studies and the Alice Mary Robertson Award for her
scholarship on the life and art of Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi-Choctaw).
Merz-Edwards teaches art history and English at Kansas Wesleyan
University in Salina, Kansas.
DENISE NEIL-BINION (Delaware-Cherokee) earned her master
of arts degree in Native American art history from the University of New
Mexico. Her research interests center on Native American female artists in
Oklahoma. She is a PhD candidate in Native American art history at the
University of Oklahoma and currently resides in Norman, Oklahoma.