amanda crowe artist viral-a

This Friday google doodle was found celebrating Amanda Crowe who happens to be a Cherokee artist. Starting a revival of the native American art with her animal cravings.  The video Doodle highlights Crowe’s work and words, with music by her nephew Bill, and is part of Google’s nod to Native American Heritage Month.

The pieces which are seen in this video are housed at Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual. Which happens to be the country’s oldest American Indian cooperative in Cherokee, North Carolina. Charlotte’s Min Museum and Atlanta’s High Museum are few of the other places where Amanda Crowe works has been displayed.

July 16, 1928 in North Carolina’s Qualla Boundary; Which was own by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Amanada Crowe artist was born.

Amazingly at the age of four she started making the art which she learnt form woodcarver uncle Goingback Chiltoskey

“I was barely big enough to handle a knife, but I knew what I wanted to do—I guess it was part of my heritage,” Crowe once said, according to the encyclopedia. By the time she turned eight, she was selling her woodwork.

“The grain challenges me to create objects in three dimensions,” she said of her craft. “A mistake or flaw in the wood will improve your design. To me, a knot can be the best part.”

In the year of 1952 she went to earn a Master of fine arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Where she studied from sculptor Jose de Creeft in Mexico. After which she returned to Cherokee High School and started teaching art classes.

Where over the course of 40 years she happily passed her skills to more than 2,000 students. Also illustrating the 1956 book Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears.  When in 2004 the world lost a great human and Cherokee artist.

In many countries outside the US, Friday’s Doodle paid tribute to Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu, one of the world’s first female engineers, on what would’ve been her 131st birthday.

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