User:NanetteKelley

I am work in the arts, cultural interpretation, and natural history facilitation and outreach...

A lifelong traveler on the roads in-between, I reside half the year in the homeland of my Osage and Cherokee peoples and the other half on California’s Redwood Coast tending a very demanding flock of ducks. I like to tell people, “My family never stopped migrating.” ​ My media is primary research, traditional indigenous materials, and the natural environment. My method is sound historical interpretation. Personal mentors such as China-born artist Hung Liu (social realism), Switzerland-born fine artist Lucienne Bloch and Bulgarian-born Stephen Pope Dimitroff (Diego Rivera’s fresco paint mixer and wall plaster engineer/ famed fresco maker team), Tsnungwe citizen Robert Benson (water-colorist), and Vietnam-born multimedia/transdisciplinary artist, Anh-Thuy Nguyen (whose work highlights human relationships and cultural conflicts) although ethnically and politically diverse, gave me an appreciation for works of art as language and not mere aesthetics. I believe art and the environment are interpretative catalysts for underrepresented peoples to tell their own cultural histories. ​ I completed my first B.A. in Art with a Studio emphasis at Humboldt State University, California during the great old-growth redwood “timber wars” and the tribal “water wars” to save the salmon. Immersed in an environmental and tribal cultural-conflict zone, while working as the publicity chair for educational and environmental nonprofits, provided me with a good mindset in direct political, cultural, and environmental Public Relations. ​ Due to Claremore Oklahoma's location within my family's ancestral Osage band territory named after Osage Chief GRAH MOIE (Claremore), adjacent to where my Cherokee family settled after they walked the Trail of Tears, I purposely chose Roger's State University to complete my second B.A. in Corporate Communications. The emphasis of my projects pertained to Public Relations, community outreach, and the creation of regional themed educational learning stations paired with public school curriculum for both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. ​ I recently accepted the Offer of Admission from Oklahoma State University for the M.S. in Teaching, Learning, and Leadership (Option in Curriculum & Leadership Studies) with emphasis in Art, Native American Studies, and Natural History. Currently, I am working on the creation of the first piece in my series MAZA DAKA, in the WAH ZHA ZHE (Osage) language— “We are here in this place,” a collection of historical interpretative installations throughout the Osage Nation Reservation, and I am a California Arts Council Grant Application Peer Review Panelist.

My Media: Primary Research Material, Art, and the Natural Environment My Method: Sound Historical Interpretation