Humor is the Best Medicine: Salve for Sore Nerves: a Creating Side-By-Side Program with Teri Greeves and Ken Williams.
Exhibition up through May 1, 2018.
The Coe Center is hosting Teri Greeves and Ken Williams in a Creating Side-By-Side artist residency, which culminated in a public opening April 14 for their jointly curated mini-exhibition, Humor is the Best Medicine: Salve for Sore Nerves
Need a smile in these heavy times? Ready to laugh so you don’t cry? Ken Williams and Teri Greeves have teamed up at the Coe Arts Center around the sacred theme of humor. Using pieces from the Coe’s collection along with pieces from each artist’s personal collections, they look for humor, both personal and shared, as envisioned across mediums, tribal nations, time periods, and through the eyes of specific artists.
Enrolled with the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, Teri Greeves began beading at eight years old. After growing up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming where her mother ran a trading post, she graduated from UC Santa Cruz. Greeves began her career as a beadwork artist rather than pursuing a law degree and after winning Best of Show at Santa Fe Indian Market in 1999. She has won awards and honors at Indian Market, the Heard Museum, and in 2003, she received the Dobkin Fellow at the School of American Research. She was named a USA Distinguished Fellow in Traditional Arts in 2016. In 2009, she was featured in the PBS television series, Craft in America. Her work has been exhibited in museums across the country and is included in major national and international collections. Greeves lives with her husband and two sons in Santa Fe, NM.
Kenneth Williams Jr. (Northern Arapaho/Seneca) is an award-winning beadwork artist and collector of Indian art and manages the Case Trading Post at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Williams has received best in show honor at the Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market and was a 2010 Santa Fe Indian Market fellow artist. His work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the National Museum of Scotland. In the spring of 2007, Ken graduated from Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Museum Studies. While there he studied traditional beadwork with Teri Greeves. He has since continued to expand his practice, creating innovative beaded designs, particularly in the form of elaborate fancy bags.
This project is supported in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.