MULTIDISCIPLINARY

ANITA FIELDS

Tulsa Artist Fellowship Alum-in-Residence

Anita Fields is a contemporary artist and citizen of the Osage Nation whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses clay, textiles, Osage ribbon work, sculpture, and installation. Born in Oklahoma, Fields creates work grounded in Osage knowledge systems, exploring relationships between culture, land, memory, and the natural world.

Across her practice, Fields considers balance and transformation through early Osage concepts of duality—including earth and sky, male and female—and the interconnectedness of living things. Clothing, coverings, landscapes, and figurative forms recur throughout her work as vessels for cultural knowledge and ways of understanding our place within the world. Heavily textured surfaces, layered materials, and distorted writing reference the complexities of Indigenous histories and the ways those histories have been recorded, interpreted, and misrepresented.

Fields is recognized for bringing clay and textile traditions into dynamic conversation. Her ceramic sculptures often translate the forms and visual language of clothing, moccasins, purses, and Osage ribbon work into clay, while her textile practice carries forward knowledge learned through family and community. Moving between inherited forms and contemporary experimentation, Fields approaches making as both a continuation of cultural knowledge and a space for transformation.

Her work has been presented nationally and internationally in exhibitions including Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists; Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Form and Relation: Contemporary Native Ceramics at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; Legacy of Generations: Pottery by American Indian Women at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; and Who Stole the Teepee? at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. In 2026, her work is featured alongside Norman Akers and Ryan RedCorn in Home/Land: Wahzhazhe Artists Speak at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University, an exhibition considering how land, language, history, and culture shape ideas of home and belonging.

Fields’ work is held in public collections including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Museum of Arts and Design, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and Heard Museum.

In 2021, Fields was named a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts, recognizing her extraordinary work in Osage ribbon work. Her honors also include an Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, an Anonymous Was A Woman Award, and a Francis J. Greenburger Award. In 2025, Fields was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

A former Tulsa Artist Fellow and current Alum-in-Residence, Fields remains an active part of Tulsa Artist Fellowship’s studio and artistic community. Her continuing relationship with the Fellowship supports an evolving practice rooted in Osage culture, material experimentation, and the relationships among land, community, memory, and contemporary life.