In 1903, Norma Howard’s grandmother, Ipokni, walked nearly 500 miles from Mississippi to Oklahoma, where she homesteaded a small parcel of land in the dusty cow town of Stigler, in what was then known as Indian Territory. This is also where Howard (Choctaw/Chickasaw), a beloved watercolorist and a warm presence for more than two decades at the Santa Fe Indian Market, was born in 1958 — and where she became an artist. It is also where Howard died on April 30 at the age of 65, surrounded by her loved ones.
Howard spoke of her childhood and early artistic steps in an extensive interview she gave at her studio in Stigler in 2019 for the Oklahoma Native Artists Oral History Project. “When I was little, I went to a country school, just about three miles from here, and I went to school with all my brothers and sisters,” Howard said. “I would go to school, and I would see these little kids taking things to school, and I would wish I would have it, because I didn’t have the things that they did.
But I still was a little girl, and I still liked dolls. Blue Rain Gallery’s Annual Celebration of Native American Art group exhibition Through Sunday, August 18 544 S. Guadalupe Street 505-954-9902; blueraingallery.
com “This one little girl came to school with a little Chatty Cathy, and I always wanted one. Oh, and I wanted one so bad. So, what I did was, when I got home, I would draw it, and when I would draw it, it gave me that feeling like I had it.
So, that was how I got my.