| Martha Berry | |
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Berry at the Cherokee Art Market in Catoosa, Oklahoma. |
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| Born | Oklahoma, United States |
| Nationality | Cherokee |
| Field | Beadwork |
| Training | Family, self-taught |
| Movement | Traditional |
| Influenced by | Southeastern Woodland beadwork |
| Elected | 1999 Delegate Cherokee Nation Constitution Convention |
| Website | http://www.berrybeadwork.com/ |
Martha Berry is a Cherokee beadwork artist, who has been highly influential in reviving traditional Cherokee and Southeastern beadwork, particularly techniques from the pre-Removal period.
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Martha Berry was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is a registered tribal citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her grandmother and mother taught her how to sew and embroider at age five. She made her own clothes and became a professional seamstress. She has expanded her skills by developing elaborate beadwork art. She taught herself the lost art of Cherokee beadwork by studying photographs of artifacts and examining Cherokee beaded artifacts at the Smithsonian Institution.[1][2]
Berry creates beaded bandolier bags, moccasins, belts, knee bands, purses and sashes. She often uses beadwork designs that evolved from pre-Contact Mississippian pottery into traditional 18th and 19th century Southeastern beadwork. Berry discovered a unique stitch only used on Southeastern sashes.
She has won innumerable prizes for her beadwork at the Cherokee Art Market, the Five Civilized Tribes Museum, the Heard Museum, and the Cherokee Heritage Center. Berry has delivered lectures on the revival of pre-Contact Cherokee beadwork at the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia; the Bead Museum in Glendale, AZ; Tyler Museum of Art in Tyler, TX; Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa; Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City; Creek Council House Museum in Okmulgee, OK; and the Cherokee Heritage Center in Parkhill, OK. Photographs of her work have been published in many books and magazines. For a full list of prizes, lectures, workshops and publications visit her website at www.berrybeadwork.com.
Berry participated in the Native American Community Scholars Grant Program of the Smithsonian Institution. She has visited their collections to do further research into pre-Removal Southeastern beadwork, which has informed her own work.
Berry recently curated Beadwork Storytellers: A Visual Language, a Cherokee beadwork exhibition at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma.[3] The exhibition included beadwork from Scottish collections which had not been seen in the United States in almost two centuries. Berry also wrote the text for the show catalog.[1]
Berry lives in Tyler, Texas[2] with her husband, David. Her daughter, Christina Berry, is also a beader, photographer and publisher of "All Things Cherokee."[1] Her daughter, Karen Berry, is a Cherokee gourd artist.
She served as a delegate to the 1999 Cherokee Nation Constitution Convention in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.[1] She is currently an active member of several Cherokee organizations including the Cherokee Artists Association.[4]
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