Lisa Rutherford (Cherokee Nation) balances her creative time between clay arts and textile arts, including pottery, sculpture, 18th century clothing, feather capes, southeast applique beadwork, and twined textiles. A graduate of Northeastern State University, she worked as an executive assistant for tribal administration for several years. She has been making ancestral style pottery since 2005 and began making historic clothing to wear while she demonstrated her art, leading to her career as a living history interpreter as well as an artist. She creates historic clothing for museum exhibits, specializing in feather capes and historically accurate reproduction 18th century Cherokee clothing.
She has demonstrated cultural and historic arts at numerous venues including Colonial Williamsburg, VA and the National Museum of American Indians. She is a member of the Southeast Indian Artists Association (SEIAA). In 2018, she was named a Cherokee National Treasure by the Cherokee Nation for her work in preserving and promoting Cherokee pottery and culture.
Her work is in many museum collections including the Smithsonian Museum’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art, the McClung Museum at University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Medium: Beadwork, Metalsmithing, Pottery, Sculpture, Textiles
