Next on Gallery America, we're celebrating Native American Heritage Month by opening up the archives of two decades of gallery stories on great Native American artists.

Plus, we're getting an inside look on this historic theater in Fairfax.

It's coming right now.

Hello, Oklahoma.

Welcome to Gallery America, the show that looks at art, creativity and expression all around Oklahoma and the nation.

Today, we're opening up our archives and adding more to all the stories we've done for over 20 years.

In particular, we're looking at great Native American stories we've been told about artists, cultural institutions.

And we're beginning with the creator of this sculpture, Allan Houser, is one of Oklahoma's most iconic artists.

Here's a piece of the story we told on Gallery.

Have a look.

Or.

Or.

We're very pleased to be here this morning installing five works at the Oklahoma State Capitol building, which were made by the late artist Allan Houser.

2014 is the 100th anniversary of Allan Houser's birth.

He was born June 30th, 1914, in Apache, Oklahoma, on the family farm there.

He was the first child to be born out of captivity in his family at Fort Sill.

His father wanted him to take over the farm, but Allan at a young age, started making drawings, and he was just born with the muse.

He didn't have any art teachers.

There were no art classes.

There was no support or anything to do with art.

He just had this motivation to draw.

And he was 20 years old.

He was in the Indian office in Anadarko, Oklahoma, and he saw a flier that had been posted for a painting class that had been created at the Santa Fe Indian School.

And he looked at that flier and thought, you know, gosh, this is something I'd really like to do.

So in 1934, he arrived in Santa Fe and became one of the first students from outside of the Santa Fe area to study at this painting class.

They were very successful in that.

They they they helped develop the careers of hundreds and hundreds of artists.

Allan himself was a little frustrated by the fact that they weren't working in contemporary European motifs.

They weren't exploring expressionism.

But he went with it and he he actually became the most famous of all of these students.

By the time he was 24, he received a commission from the Department of Interior in Washington to do his first major public works.

There were a series of five murals that were done in the Interior Department building there.

You know, times were tough.

He was selling his paintings.

He was the most famous Indian painter, but he was selling his paints for $2, $5.

Every once in a while, he'd get $10 for a painting.

Then at the end of the war, in 1947, he was commissioned by the Interior Department again in Washington to do a piece for the Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas.

He thought that it was going to be another mural commission and that they approached him because of the success of his murals.

But it turned out that the school had been given an eight foot block of Italian marble by a patron.

And when they approached him and said, We'd like you to do this, but we're a little concerned that you haven't done much sculpture.

He said, Oh, that's no problem.

I've done a lot of sculpture.

He fudged a little bit on his experience in sculpture.

So in 1948, it was dedicated in Lawrence, Kansas.

His first major piece, it's called Comrade in Mourning.

It's a beautiful, magnificent white marble Carrara sculpture.

And it was not only his first major sculpture, it was the first major sculpture done by a Native American artist in the 20th century.

In 1962, back in Santa Fe, a new art school was created for Native American students.

This was kind of the successor to the old Santa Fe Indian School of painting class that the very first person was hired to teach.

There was Allan Houser.

He was already the most famous Native American artist.

He was experienced and well-loved teacher from his 11 years of teaching up at the inner mountain school.

And ironically, this new school had taken over the campus of the Santa Fe Indian School.

So he actually came back to teaching work in the very same classrooms that he'd been a student at 30 years before.

As he started working alongside his students and teaching them about the sculptural ideas that he loved.

Slowly, a whole genre of American sculpture evolved, and Allen emerged this style.

It became known literally as the Houser style.

Before Allan, there were no Native American sculptors.

By the time he retired from teaching.

There were thousands.

When he finally retired in 1975, that's when he went to work.

He set up his own studio.

He hired an assistant between 1975 and his death in 1994.

He created about 900 pieces of sculpture.

I estimate in his lifetime.

He created about a thousand pieces of sculpture and 90% of those he did in his retirement.

You've probably heard of Killers of the Flower Moon, the book, the movie by Martin Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone that was set in Osage Nation in Oklahoma.

In fact, primarily here in Fairfax, Oklahoma, where there's a historic theater from that time period.

We're going to find out a little more about right now.

This is the beautiful Tall Chief Theater in downtown Fairfax, Oklahoma.

It was built in 1928 by Alex Tallchief, who was the father of the famous ballerinas from here.

Maria and Marjorie Tallchief.

I just think the whole thing is astonishing.

And so the.

The mezzanine, the balcony, I just think is beautiful.

And beautiful views from there.

The Tall Chief Theater once sat 850 visitors.

It's unique in that it's the only known theater in the U.S. built by Native Americans.

He built it initially for vaudeville.

And then when talkies came in, they started having movies.

So it's entire life.

It was mostly used as a movie theater.

He built it partly to improve the mood of the community after the horrible murders during the reign of terror.

The front of the theater has an exhibit on the Osage murders that Carol created with her late husband, Joe.

Meanwhile, she has bigger hopes for the theater that's been closed since the 1960s.

So the plan is to rebuild the theater as a community venue.

So it wouldn't just be movies, it could be drama or it could be in a wedding venue.

We could use it for many things.

Fairfax isn't a very big town, and so we can't just do one thing here.

I understand that ballet in the Osage is happening now.

Yes, it is.

There's a stage ballet happening.

Yes.

So a couple of people with a lot of passion for ballet started an Osage Ballet, Randy Tinker Smith.

And they have created an Osage Ballet Wash, which shows periodically.

And it's astonishing in its scope.

It tells the history of the Osage in ballet.

That's brilliant.

It's wonderful.

Imagine that being right.

Oh, I so want to see that.

I still want to see that.

Next, we're going to see a couple stories that was shot recently on our Western Oklahoma road trip, about two Native American places.

One is a cultural institution that's really unique in Cyril.

The second is a portrait artist in Enid who is taking old photographs and turning into very colorful paintings.

Have a look.

Tap, tap, tap.

Oh, this bird's name that we gave him is my warmack.

My roommate is our Comanche word, for one who changes form and shape.

He's got all these exaggerated postures.

He takes ties in with courtship behavior.

Sia is not an acronym.

It is our Comanche word for Feather, because our connection with our people, both past, present and future, is through the feather.

The only you might be from someone else.

Sia has a unique federal permit that allows them to raise eagles and hawks and distribute their feathers for ceremonial purposes to tribes nationwide.

Hey, baby.

Girls, stop, Stop these living creatures that are much more than living creatures.

Here they are our spiritual connectors with the Almighty.

Yep.

Anthony was hatched here six years ago and she was hand-reared for the purpose of totally socializing her so that we could call on her energy to share with people.

There's still ceremonies that we rely on where an eagle doctor will ask for the presence of Live Eagle Energy and the Eagle priests in calling on the Eagles energy will very often call at the heart where they connect with the heart energy of the eagle and then transfer that to the person being doctored.

Another key feature is its shrine of rescued religious items from around the world.

We don't own these items that you see here.

We're custodians.

For them, that includes a Taurus saved from the Nazis and Buddhas saved from destroyed Asian temples.

You're looking at the representation of millions and millions of prayers.

And we have people from the different denominations that will come to see you mainly because of this.

You know, this is one Bill kept busy during the quarantine by creating this new edition, we can't see.

What you're seeing here is a Comanche crooked lance that was designed specifically from drawings that my great grandfather provided.

I think the most important thing to leave Sia with is the understanding and the realization that our historic lifeways are not something to think of in the past.

They are vibrant and alive today.

My name is J Nicole Nahmi-A-Piah Hatfield.

Curtis.

And I am a Comanche Kiowa artist.

And this is what I do.

If I come in here every day, I come in here and I paint and I do my little routine, get my coffee and turn my music on.

And I don't just have flute music on your plate, you know, because that's what people think.

And I like to use a lot of yello And that's what it's about.

You know, creating art is about, as, you know, feeling good.

You know, when I first started, I wanted to inspire the youth because we were going through a an issue with with suicide, you know, within our communities.

And I wanted to inspire the youth to find something to help them.

And, you know, it's very healing and therapeutic.

And I like to say art is medicine.

This woman, I don't know much about her, the title.

It just says Comanche woman.

Originally, when I started doing all these portraits, I my main focus was to recreate these historical photos of these particularly the women.

Because in a lot of these captions, they don't say their names.

The photo actually has another girl in there, which I believe is her sister.

And so it's to me, it looks like she's her protector and she's strong.

I think she's probably the thinking, Who's this person taking my picture, We're in Hominy, Oklahoma, to see the famous Hominy murals that are all over downtown here.

They're colorful stories of the Osage by a local artist by the name of Cha Tullis.

Another artist that does a lot with color is Ben Harjo Jr. And we had the pleasure of meeting up with him in 2014.

Here's an excerpt from our story from the gallery archives.

Have a look.

My name is Benjamin Harjo Jr.

I'm an enrolled absentee Shawnee and Seminole.

You know, I think as a as an artist and having a vivid imagination, I was always drawing when I was in grade school and also when I was in high school.

My dad wanted me to be a banker.

He said I could make a living at it better than being an artist at.

The great thing about your artwork is that it can take you to a lot of different places.

When I first started doing it, I was doing a lot of pen and ink drawings using photographs of Indian people.

And then I would get bored with that and I'd move into another phase and then I'd get bored during that phase and then I'd move into another one and I finally discovered a style that didn't bore me, that allowed me to experiment and allowed me a lot more freedom and expression.

And it became geometric patterns and repetitious forms.

But I still like to do my printmaking.

I like to do pen and ink, and I like to do paintings and try and combine those three mediums into a singular, recognizable art form.

For me, with an active imagination of an artist, you are continually sketching, a lot of us, and sometimes these sketches will become a painting.

A lot of times they'll just be a sketch or a record.

Like this one was done in May of 01 and this one was a sketch for a large painting, and it's now in the Supreme Court building here in Oklahoma City.

When I start my drawing, I turn the pad and I'll add more lines or I'll add some shadowing, and I turn it again and I add more to it until eventually I see something emerging.

Most of the times I define the abstract imagery into an animal former into a person form.

I think you developed a way of seeing things a little different from the way other people see them, but also in some of my work, people will see things that I didn't see, but then they'll bring it to my attention and I go, Oh yeah, yeah, it's in there.

And I think that's a wonderful thing about doing artwork is something else will emerge.

Inspiration for me comes in not only what I see when I'm driving down the road, maybe a smudge on the back of a semi bug splatter on my windshield.

Also what I read and I like books on legends and stories and history.

Just a lot of things that inspire me to to draw.

I've enjoyed my use of color.

I use a lot of primary colors.

Sometimes they're complimentary and sometimes they cause that color to react.

With the other color, I place beside it so that it will dazzle the eye.

Really.

A lot of people have walked into my boots and they say that my colors make them feel very happy.

That is a piece called Come out and play.

And if I'm really feeling like I just walk over, look at those pieces and then I. I always feel better.

You know, we've got some pieces that are not contemporary pieces, but we've pretty much stopped ever buying that once.

Those kinds of pieces were traditional pieces.

Once we started seeing Barnes because there was a nice blend of contemporary art with Native American art and you don't find that a lot with a lot of Native American artists.

This is the healing rock.

It's near Lake Skiatook.

And for generations, Native Americans have come here for healing.

And traditions play a big role in this next artist.

You're going to meet the late, great kind When artist Russell Bates, who found himself writing for TV shows in L.A. and ended up writing the first ever Emmy Award winning script for a little show called Star Trek.

I'm Russell Bates, Kiowa Native American writer from Anadarko, Oklahoma.

I've worked in Hollywood both as a writer and an actor.

I've written for about 20 television series in my time, and I was in seven movies as an actor and just generally have been very, very lucky to find a career that I could satisfy and that could satisfy me.

Leave him alone.

It was John's mistake, how badly he hurt, just his pride.

I used to write in school and never thought of it at all as something that I might want to do as a career.

I was in college and was drafted in the Air Force and became a missile technician stationed in the Florida Panhandle after a terrifying accident in the missile shop.

I was in the hospital for nine months.

As therapy, they asked me if I had a hobby and I said I once tried to write science fiction stories and they got me a typewriter and a bunch of paper wrote science fiction all day long.

Somewhere along the line I stopped just typing and said, I'm a writer.

At the beginning of 1969, I'd only been on the air for six months.

All of a sudden, I found myself in Los Angeles, working at Kaiser Permanente Hospital on Sunset Boulevard and going to class at night at the Writers Guild to learn how to write for TV.

I was only in school three months and a story of mine was seen by this one producer.

He hired me as his trainee, and I found myself working at Universal Studios on a series called The Name of the Game that began it all.

And I worked 12 years in the industry writing for some 20 to 30 television shows.

It was when I was accepted into the open door classes at the Writers Guild that I met Gene Roddenberry and Dorothy Fontana.

When it came time, some four years later, for another Star Trek series, the animated one for Saturday morning children's shows Space The Final Frontier.

Since I was Native American, they wanted a Native American Star Trek story or allied with a young filmmaker named David Wise.

And the two of us wrote a teleplay called How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth where the Mayan God Kulikan returns in Star Trek time, intent on destroying all of mankind because they had disobeyed him.

The Enterprise meets him in deep space and he captures them, and it's up to them to convince him that he's wrong.

Mr.

Walking Bear.

How do you know who's aboard that ship?

I am a Comanche captain.

I've studied the histories of many ancient Earth peoples, especially my own.

That ship out there bears a strong resemblance to a God in Mayan and Aztec legends, Kulikan, captain.

This story was given to Filmation Studios for the Element Star Trek.

The episode was produced and within a year it won an Emmy award and was the first major Emmy ever won by any Star Trek series.

And now is the only major Emmy award that they ever have won.

Where are your weapons of destruction?

Use them on me if you dare.

We have no weapons.

And if we did, we would use them only with reason.

Where is your heart?

Star Trek teaches us that man will learn the error of his ways and no longer destroy the people that he meets.

And for Native Americans, then that's hopeful that what they had to suffer will not be suffered by anyone else in the future.

And that basically, I think, is the attraction of Star Trek help for its audience, hope, peace and long life.

I'm hoping that from my story, I show that Native Americans exist alongside the rest of the peoples of the world taking part in this world as it exists and will continue to do so for quite a long time to come.

What I leave behind is a legacy of stories that still will continue to teach even after I have departed this earth.

Because there's one thing that I can say time and life may still a writer's hand, but not his voice.

That's all the time we have for Gallery America.

Hope that you've enjoyed our look at Native American Heritage Month and stories we have in our archives.

You can see them anytime you want at OETA.tv/GalleryAmerica or just look up Gallery America on YouTube and find them there.

Don't forget about the new Gallery America podcast wherever you find your podcasts.

And this month, we're looking at all the ways you could be using fish sauce in your home.

That's definitely art.

Thanks again for watching.

We'll see you next time.

Until then, stay arty Oklahoma.