WHITMAN, Richard Ray 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born May 14, 1949, in Claremore, OK. Education: Institute of American Indian Arts, A.A., 1970; attended California Institute of the Arts, 1972, and Oklahoma School of Photography, 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Walter Phillips Gallery, 107 Tunnel Mountain Dr., P.O. Box 1020, Station 14 Banff, Alberta T1L 1H5, Canada.

CAREER:

Photographer, filmmaker, artist, curator, and actor. Makers (artists' cooperative), member. Oklahoma State Arts Council, artist-in-residence. Coproducer of films and videotapes, including Carriers of the Light, 1990, Humanities Voice, 1992, and The Grand Circle, 1994. Actor in films, including War Party, Hemdale Productions, 1987, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1989, Lakota Woman (television film), Turner Network Television, 1994, and American Indian Grafiti, 2003. Exhibitions: Solo exhibitions staged at Living Arts Space, Tulsa, OK, Kings Gallery at St. Olaf College, and International Hall of Photography, Oklahoma City, OK; participant in group shows, including exhibitions at Ripley Center of the Smithsonian Institution, Gilcrease Museum, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, American Indian Community House Gallery, New York, NY, and Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Martin Luther King, Jr., Humanitarian Award, 1987.

WRITINGS:

Contributor to books, including Image and Self in Contemporary Native American Photoart, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH), 1995; and T. C. Cannon: He Stood in the Sun, by Joan Frederick, Northland Publishing (Flagstaff, AZ), 1995. Contributor to periodicals, including Exposure.

SIDELIGHTS:

Artist Richard Ray Whitman, a Yuchi native and Canadian resident, captures the lives and culture of Native Americans through his camerawork, poetry, painting, and film work. Regarding his love of painting, Whitman commented in Native North American Artists: "There is nothing that will ever replace the feeling of being in front of a blank canvas or a blank sheet of paper or a blank space, It's just you and that space, and that is very organic. I don't think that feeling of unity, of communication with the medium, will ever be replaced."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Eight Native American Artists, Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Fort Wayne, IN), 1987.

Rushing, W. Jackson, Green Acres: Neo-Colonialism in the United States, Washington University Gallery of Art (St. Louis, MO), 1992.

Indigenous Investigations, University of North Texas Art Gallery (Denton, TX), 1992.

St. James Guide to Native North American Artists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998, pp. 625-628.

PERIODICALS

Aperture, summer, 1995.

Exposure, fall, 1993, Theresa Harlan, "A Curator's Perspective: Native Photographers Creating a Visual Native American History."

Oklahoma Today, June-July, 1996, Joan Frederick, "Talking Heads."

OTHER

Five Portraits (documentary film), 1988.*