Pickens Museum Acquires "War Club" by Yatika Starr Fields

“"War Club" by Native American Artist Yatika Starr Fields was recently acquired from Garth Greenam Gallery to Pickens Museum. Personal and social struggle have long been integral to the artist’s practice. After joining the Water Protectors at the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016, Fields increasingly centered the Indigenous history of hope and struggle in his work, particularly in his studio practice. In his 2017 series, Tent Metaphor Standing Rock, Field recovered tents after the infamous February 22, 2017 police raid on the protesters. The artist recombined the vivid tenting material—the mainstay of middle-class camping holidays that has become an icon of homelessness and protest movements—into traditional Indigenous patterns, anti-pipeline slogans, and into dynamic, compelling abstract compositions. As in his graffiti works, Fields blurs the line between abstraction and representation, creating stylistic compositions out of recognizable elements, and setting them against dynamic, swirling fields of color and twisting forms. The works blur the boundaries between political polemic and abstraction, between distress, resistance and hope.

Pickens Museeum announced the qcquisition of "War Club", a major piece by Native Artist Yatika Staff Fields from Garth Greenan Gallery in NYC which has a one man show for Yatika Starr Fields: Fear Not, an exhibition of sculptures and paintings by Yatika Fields. Opening on Thursday, January 27, 2022, the exhibition is the artist's first at Garth Greenan Gallery.

Mingling oil and spray paint, Fields surveys urban and political landscapes, exploring their potent symbolism and metaphorical content. In one painting, an abstracted oil pump’s jack and drill bits churn through a murky green and black landscape. Working through personal and societal struggle, Fields created many of the works in Fear Not during the pandemic—with each mark on the canvas forming an attempt to commune and persevere with the collective through unprecedented times.

In each work, movement and color channel story and ceremony. In the Osage Shield series, for example, the artist reframes the Oklahoma flag’s symbolic grouping of the buffalo hide shield, peace pipe, and European olive branch as, at best, a self-protective fiction and, at worst, a deliberate attempt to obscure a darker reality. In one work of the series, the shield is converted from the flag’s flat abstraction into a three-dimensional orb, surreally hovering above the Oklahoma landscape. The original designer of Oklahoma’s flag expropriated the Osage shield—a sacred object used both in battle and spiritual practice—transforming it into a symbol of “defense of the state.” Even more perversely, the Oklahoma flag was wielded by one of the first to breach the Capitol on the sixth of January. Fields returns the expropriation, encircling the Osage peace pipe with a protective wrapping of barbed wire. The artist renders the pipe in vivid detail, restoring it to its traditional form. Oklahoma’s crepuscular landscape is dotted with the glittering lights of cars, trucks, homes, and businesses—reminders of the instrumental conversion of earth into property and resource. Power lines traverse the scenery, stretching between posts marking territorial expansion.

Personal and social struggle have long been integral to the artist’s practice. After joining the Water Protectors at the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016, Fields increasingly centered the Indigenous history of hope and struggle in his work, particularly in his studio practice. In his 2017 series, Tent Metaphor Standing Rock, Field recovered tents after the infamous February 22, 2017 police raid on the protesters. The artist recombined the vivid tenting material—the mainstay of middle-class camping holidays that has become an icon of homelessness and protest movements—into traditional Indigenous patterns, anti-pipeline slogans, and into dynamic, compelling abstract compositions. As in his graffiti works, Fields blurs the line between abstraction and representation, creating stylistic compositions out of recognizable elements, and setting them against dynamic, swirling fields of color and twisting forms. The works blur the boundaries between political polemic and abstraction, between distress, resistance and hope.

Born in 1980 in Tulsa, Yatika Starr Fields is a member of the Cherokee, Mvskoke (Creek), and Osage Nations. Fields studied landscape painting at the University of Oklahoma’s Sienna, Italy summer program before enrolling at the Art Institute of Boston from 2001 to 2004. While living on the East Coast, Fields developed a keen interest in street art. His dynamic, vibrant graffiti works quickly attracted attention, generating public and private mural commissions in Portland, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Santa Fe, Bentonville and Siloam Springs, and Urique, CHIH, Mexico.

Fields has participated in more than 40 solo and group exhibitions at venues across the United States and Europe, including: the Southern Plains Indian Museum (2008, Anadarko, Oklahoma); Chiaroscuro Contemporary (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, Santa Fe); BlueRain Gallery (2015, 2016, 2018, Santa Fe); Peabody Essex Museum, (2015–2016, Salem, MA); Rainmaker Gallery (2017, Bristol, UK); the Grand Palais (2018, Paris); Philbrook Museum of Art (2018, Tulsa); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, 2019); and the Gilcrease Museum, (2019, Tulsa).

Fields’s paintings are featured in private collections and the collections of museums across the country, including: Heard Museum (Phoenix); Hood Museum (Dartmouth College); Oklahoma State Museum of Art; Peabody Essex Museum; and Sam Noble Museum (University of Oklahoma, Norman).

Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to represent Yatika Starr Fields.

War Club relation to Red Power

Yatiksa wrote on his Instagram feem onf that "War Club is a symbol of Native resistance and a metaphor for the art of activism. Through storytelling and community gathering, this intergenerational collaboration honors Oklahoma’s Red Power movements in the face of colonial displacement and genocide. Organized by mother-son artists @nativefields and @yatikafields War Club consists of public panels, culminating in a portrait exhibition of regional Indigenous activists.

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Osage Warrior in the Enemy Camp by Sculptor John Free.
Osage Warrior in the Enemy Camp by Sculptor John Free.
Three Faces of the Pioneer Woman by Artist Daniel Pickens at our Ponca City location.
War Club" by Osage Artist Yatika Starr Fields
Three Faces of the Pioneer Woman by Artist Daniel Pickens. located in City Centra in Ponca City.
Pickens Doctor Pickens Museum of Turquoise Jewelry and Art.
Native American Artist Yatika Starr Fields Completes Mural for Pickens Museum.
The World's Largest Naja. Future location of Pickens Museum on Route 60 and "U" Street West of Ponca City
Architectural Renderings of Pickens Museum.
Future location of Pickens Museum west of Ponca City
Display of Turquoise Jewelry.
Drum player by Allan Houser. This stone carving is part of the collection at Pickens Museum.
"Red Man" by Native American Artist Fritz Scholder. Pickens Museum Director Hugh Pickens on right.
Osage Warrior in the Enemy Camp.
Native American Jewelry Artist Tonya Rafael with a silver frame she created to honor Dr. S.J. Pickens.
Native American Artist Jolene Bird with her Fender Stratocaster guitar
American Indian by Paul Manship This piece at Pickens Museum is the only known existing copy of this sculpture.
Painting by Peruvian Artist Josue Sanchez. Photo Credit: Hugh Pickens Pickens Museum

Pickens Museum Acquires "War Club" by Yatika Starr Fields

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