After working around spring rainstorms, a vibrant mural on the west side of the Osage Nation Visitor’s Center is now complete. A ribbon cutting was supposed to be held on June 10 to celebrate the public unveiling, but due to flooding in the Visitors Center, the event was postponed.
The artwork is a bold and colorful tribute to Osage orthography and culture—a visual reminder that you are living on Osage land.
The mural incorporates multiple aspects of Osage culture, from traditional foods to traditional Osage dress and clan representation.
In 2023, Addie Hudgins, Wahzhazhe Cultural Center director, approached artist Ryan RedCorn about the idea. He agreed to be the Creative Director for the project. Originally, she said, there were to be three murals, but that plan didn’t pan out.
“We were then contacted again in early 2024 about doing the present mural that was completed,” said Todd Vetter, who works for RedCorn. “Once we got into talks with the Nation and we were sure that it was going to happen, we made a list of artists that we wanted to see about involvement.”
Dr. Jessica Moore Harjo, Erica Pretty Eagle and Yatika Fields were chosen to lead the project.
“Once we got Yatika, Jessica and Erica on board, it was then decided to bring in younger artists, the next generation, to learn the ropes of doing mural work,” Vetter said. “The purpose being to kind of pass the torch to them so that they can start taking over these projects as the current artists will someday become too old to handle the rigors of doing things of this magnitude.”
In total, seven youth apprentices were chosen: Pehanzhutse RedCorn; Aaliyah Wahwassuck; Jada Lynn Phetsacksith; LaMiyah Waterbird Moore; Raylea Kahdehas Coggburn; Mia Jones; and Cierra Wallace.
Pehan RedCorn shared her experience on painting the mural. She painted the fry bread, yonkapins and the meat pie, in addition to other things.
“It was so hot … but it was pretty fun,” she said. “Except no one told me how hard it was to draw or paint a meat pie and foil. And that fry bread, whatever you think of, it looks like you can’t paint it. It looks different to everybody, so it’s hard to tell.”
Osage Nation Princess Jada Lynn Phetsacksith was also included on the project. She has recently started painting, and the mural let her experiment with it further.
“I learned a lot just from this whole thing,” she said. “I just started getting into painting so this was a great opportunity. I learned new techniques and got to work with new mediums.”
She also helped paint the squash leaves and the tree.
“In the mural I did the parts of the squash leaves and I did the tree in the middle,” she said. “I mainly did what I was told to do in the mural since I was new to painting.”
During the development phase, Fields, Dr. Harjo and Pretty Eagle met together last fall to discuss their artistic ideas and what should be included.
“We wanted all three of our artistic styles to blend together in a cohesive, but beautiful way,” Dr. Harjo said. “The way we divided up the wall in our concept was sky, earth, and then kind of the middle part, which was sort of like a community area. I did the sky portion and Yatika did the earth portion and Erica did the middle community-based portion. If you look at the final art, you see those three sections as top, middle and bottom. Then we each sketched our ideas for those individual spaces initially, and then we went into a further development phase of overlapping these themes together and adding elements.”
Dr. Harjo explained some of the elements the artists chose to blend into the artwork to showcase Osage culture.
“It was a collaborative process working with the youth and emerging artists that we selected to work with,” she said. “They had individual perspectives on what to add and to include, and even if it was just a small little part in that capturing Osage culture is difficult because we have a lot of things to love about being Osage. And so we tried to include a lot of what that is with the understanding that we could never fully capture what Osage culture is. We put in some dancers and wanted to highlight that uniqueness about us, our dancers, drum, ribbon work, finger weaving. There’s a scene where there’s a cook and ode to food and table settings.”
In addition to culture, the artists thought the orthography was important to include.
“So things that we are proud of on the land and the orthography that is there, means you are living on Osage land. That was the theme that carried out throughout the whole conceptual development phase and really was the deciding factor on what was included. We wanted the mural to show that we are Osage, you’re living on Osage land, and this is who we are, and it’s a beautiful thing.”
Pretty Eagle was able to work with her sister, Dr. Harjo on the project.
“I love working with my sister,” she said. “We collaborate a lot on different projects and she’s used to doing a lot of public art and huge installations. This was actually my first mural, so I discovered a love for it. It felt like a full circle moment to just let all that out onto this huge canvas in front of me and my sister. We’re just a great team overall. We kind of have the same minds, we think alike.”
Pretty Eagle helped paint the figures and the arbors in the mural, in addition to other aspects of Osage culture.
“I’m really good at drawing figures,” she said. “So the people you see, the dancers and the baby with the cradleboard, and the cook over there and all the food. That’s kind of what I was originally in charge of. These are my initial sketches up there. It was more so everything in the middle part. If you step back, you can see all the lavender color is a big, huge ribbon work pattern piece. They said, ‘Erica, you just do everything inside of it.’ And then my sister Jessica did everything in the sky on top of it and then Yatika did everything on the bottom.”
The three artists being able to collaborate on different ideas made them a great team.
“Working with Yatika, him coming in and being on a team together, it was the same thing,” Pretty Eagle said. “We just found out that us three make a really, really amazing team. I would be more than happy to do more projects with them in the future.”
Fields explained the importance of the artists sharing ideas of culture together.
“When you’re working with other artists in a collaboration project, you really have to be mindful of a lot of things,” he said. “And when it comes to a collaborative project, it depends on where it’s at, what community it’s in or what it’s about. There’s a high cultural influence emphasis on this, specific to the Osage Nation, specific to Pawhuska, specific to who we are as Osage people, as those Osage artists and an Osage young artist and students. We’re all coming from different backgrounds, and we’re all coming from different knowledge and at different ages.”
Fields contributed to multiple parts of the mural, but his main portion to work on was the representation of the earth.
“I worked on pretty much everything,” he said. “But my main thing I did was mostly the whole bottom of the foliage, the earth, because we had different points of what we were doing, earth, sky, and land and stars and things like that. And then camp and the people. But my main thing that I did was representation of the earth.”
The artists hope the mural can represent Osage culture thoroughly and remind visitors and tourists of the rich heritage that surrounds them.
“As an artist, as a public artist and a muralist, I know the impacts that these things can do for a good and beneficial way,” Fields said. “I think it will do some really beautiful things. And I’m happy that it’s in Pawhuska. It really brings in a new fresh sense of inspiration. But now you have this really beautiful story of color and there are going to be a lot of people that are coming in June, and I think it’s the first of its kind, this colorful, and it’s beautiful. I think there’s a lot of aspects to this mural, not only visually, but also a mentorship and things like that.
“I think it’s a one-of-a-kind piece that Oklahoma should see.”
This story was updated on June 9, 2025, to reflect the postponement of the ribbon cutting.
