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OKEE CHEE
Fort Sill Apache
Okee-Chee is an author and visual artist.
During the early fifties, young Sharon 'Okee Chee' and her sister faced
discrimination by other Indian tribes, as well as segregation which classified
all Indians with African-Americans as second class citizens. The stereotype of
the fierce Apache placed Sharon in the role of the fighter, causing many a
bloody nose and nearly breaking her spirit, but during her year at the Murrow
Indian Orphanage she also discovered her native gifts as an artist.
Inspired by Cheyenne artist Richard West, whose son Richard West, Jr. now heads
up the new National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D. C., and
borrowing from the traditions of Kiowa, Osage and Cherokee, Sharon developed as
a painter and dollmaker. She attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in
Santa Fe, moved to Chicago,where she founded and managed Okee-Chee's Wild Horse
Gallery in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood for ten years. married writer
Manny Skolnick, produced many outstanding works of
art and for many years headed the American Indian Center in Chicago. She came to
the American Indian Center as its Executive Director in 1997. She bought with
her a treasury of paintings, dolls, skins, and craft items - made by herself and
other Chicago-area Natives - to serve as the basis for a museum. These works
were collected over her ten years working with artists through her gallery. When
she stepped down as Executive Director to take care of her aging mother in
Oklahoma, one of the items she left behind in the museum she built was a
coloring book for children.
From an
interview by Spirit Magazine: Spirit: What does your
artist's name, Okee Chee, mean?
Okee Chee:
My sister and I, eleven and nine year olds respectively, if you can imagine, were adopted by a Delaware Indian mother and white father. I
talk about it, how crucial it was for me, in my book, “Where Courage Is Like a Wild Horse.” My mother had little pet names in her native Delaware
for my sister and me. Mine was Okee Chee which means Little Blue Bird. I've never been sure what it was about me
that reminded her of a blue bird, but I loved the idea of having a special name, an Indian name, from her. When, years later, I realized that I
would be a painter, an Indian painter, I decided to honor my mother by signing my work with the Delaware name she gave me. |
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