Jolene Rickard, born 1956,[1] citizen of the Tuscarora Nation, Turtle clan,[2] is an artist, curator, and visual historian at Cornell University, specializing in Indigenous peoples issues.
[1] She received her BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and in 1991 she graduated with an MA from Buffalo State College.
[1] After her education and having worked as a television art director and graphic designer, she moved back to Tuscarora Reservation in upstate New York.
[6] Well known pieces by the artist include 3 Sisters, a 1989 black-and-white photograph and color xerox (the artist's sleeping face interposed with squash, beans and corn, the Three Sisters staple crops); and I See Red in the 90's, a 1992 six-panel photograph series in protest of the quincentenary of Columbus' landing in America, also including a self-portrait.
[6] Her ...the sky is darkening (2018), which incorporates beadwork by older traditional and contemporary artists, considers "deep reclamation of land by the Cayuga..."[7] She sees her photography as ultimately linked to "the manipulations of light and texture and the representations of cosmological space and spirituality of earlier generations of Iroquois beadwork artists".