A Deep Conversation With Artist And Educator Amber DuBoise-Shepherd

WATCH ON YOUTUBE
https://youtu.be/2V0dCd7cuxI

Jeff sits down with artist and educator Amber DuBoise-Shepherd to hear about what her work means to her at a deeper level, about her artistic perspective, and about how her work is informed and inspired by having grown up in a home immersed with different Native cultures, traditions, and languages.

She also speaks about her work that will be displayed in the upcoming OVAC Momentum exhibit at Living Arts of Tulsa from April 2 through the 23rd.

To learn more about Amber and her work, visit
https://www.amberlduboise-shepherdart.com

Amber L. DuBoise-Shepherd depicts contemporary Native American narratives based on her family heritage of Navajo, Sac & Fox, and Prairie Band Potawatomi. Her mixed media pieces and oil paintings reference an illustrative quality. She has an Associates of Art from Seminole State College and completed her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Spring 2016 at Oklahoma State University. She was accepted into Momentum March 2017, March 2019, March 2020, and in 2021 she was accepted as Spotlight Artist in Oklahoma that was hosted by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. 

She won Best of Show in 2016, 1st Place in 2017, and 1st, 2nd, and Judges Choice Award in 2018, and Best of Show in 2019 in her categories for the Cushing, OK Native American Heritage Festival Juried Art Show and Native Fest Juried Art Show. She also won 1st in her category for the Stillwater Art Guild’s Spring Show 2019. She won grand prize and runner up in the IMAGEN Art Competition: “Native Tradition is Medicine: Resilience and Native Lifeways during COVID-19” in 2020.

 She was asked to show work in an exhibition at Studio112 and a Half in January 2018 for the show named Unframed. DuBoise-Shepherd was also a speaker for Native American artist of Oklahoma at the Indigenous Arts Ecology presented by First Peoples Fund. DuBoise-Shepherd was also one of two selected for the first ever Red Earth’s Emerging Artist Award in 2018 by the Red Earth board for her body of work. She has exhibited Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko, OK consisted of her most recent body of work in her exhibition Tradition Through Modern Eyes 2018. 

Her most recent exhibition was a solo exhibition at the Jacobson Native Art Center from April-May 2019. 

She started off the year 2020 exhibiting at the TAC Gallery in Tulsa, OK for her exhibition Living on the Native Oklahoma Reservation, as well as being accepted into two Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Exhibition Concept/Survey at the Ahha Gallery in Tulsa, OK and Momentum 2020 in Oklahoma City. DuBoise-Shepherd will also be exhibiting work at the Ahha Gallery in July 2020 for the Re/Convening exhibition and Azhwakwa: Contemporary Anishinaabe Art exhibition at the Jacobson Native Art Center in Norman, OK in August 2020. She exhibited for the Speak: Speak While You Can exhibition at the Living Arts Center in Sept. – Oct. 2020. 

She has increasingly been showing at different markets to sell and show her work to the public and was accepted in the Santa Fe Indian Market August of 2018 and 2019, which is the biggest Native American arts market in the world, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She attended the Artesian Native Art Market in Sulpher, OK, and The Cherokee Art Market in Catoossa, OK for the first time in 2019. DuBoise-Shepherd is the Manager of Education and Outreach at the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in Shawnee, OK since April 2019. She is married and currently lives in her hometown of Shawnee, OK with her husband Josh Shepherd.