Teri Greeves

Teri Greeves (born 1970) is an award-winning Kiowa-Comanche-Italian beadwork artist, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is enrolled in the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma.

Teri Greeves was born on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1970. Her mother, Jeri Ah-be-hill, owned a trading post on the reservation, while Greeves was growing up. "By repeating to customers what I heard her saying when she was selling to and educating the public," Teri says, "I unknowingly gained a broad knowledge of different beadwork from tribes around the US." Greeves took up beadwork at the age of eight. Although she is primarily self-taught, she also received instruction from Zeedora Enos (Shoshone) and Calvin Magpie (Cheyenne). Greeves attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies in 1995. She has also studied at St. John's College in 1988 and Cabrillo College in 1993.

Greeves employs a variety of beadwork techniques in her art. She uses a loom for beaded bracelets. Her larger pictorial work involved beads stitched onto brain-tanned deerhide, which she often mounts onto wood or other structures. For instance, she beaded a parade scene onto hide stretched onto an antique umbrella in her piece that won Best of Show in the 1999 Santa Fe Indian Market. She strives to simultaneously portray Kiowa realities and oral history with her contemporary experiences. She is widely known for her fully beaded tennis shoes, which feature pictorial elements on solid, hump-stitched backgrounds. Her humor is evident throughout her work, for instance, in her fully beaded high-heeled tennis shoes.

Reflecting on her tribe's traditions, Greeves said, "A long time ago, a Kiowa woman brought beadwork to her Kiowa people. She was compelled to express herself and her experience as a Kiowa woman of her day. My grandmother was a beadworker. She too was compelled to bead/express herself and her experience as a Kiowa living during her time. ... I must express myself and my experience as a twenty-first-century Kiowa, and I do it, like all of those unknown artists before me, through beadwork."

Her beadwork and dedication to furthering Native American art has earned Greeves innumerable awards and honors. Greeves won Best of Show at the 1999 Indian Market and since won many more awards at the Heard Museum, Indian Market, and Eight Northern Pueblos Arts and Crafts Show. She was awarded the Eric and Barbara Dobkin Fellowship from the School of American Research in 2003. Her work is found in such public collections as British Museum, Heard Museum, Montclair Art Museum, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Brooklyn Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, the Hampton University Museum, the Heard Museum, the Joselyn Museum, the School of American Research, the National Museum of the American Indian, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Sequoyah National Research Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

Greeves is a regular contributing writer to First American Art Magazine.

Teri Greeves is married to Dennis Esquivel, a Grand Traverse Band painter and woodworker. They have two sons. Teri's sister, Keri Ataumbi, is a noted jeweler, painter, and conceptual artist. Greeves frequently travels back to Oklahoma to maintain a close connection to her Kiowa relatives and friends.

• 2016 Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art Gallery, Kansas City, MO: Back Where They Came From
• 2014 Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, AR: State of the Art
• 2013 New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM: Alcoves 12.9
• 2011 Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY: Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains
• 2011 O’Kane Gallery, University of Houston, Houston, TX: Storied Beads: The Art of Teri Greeves
• 2011 Riverside Metropolitan Museum, Riverside, CA: Beyond Craft
• 2009 Royal British Columbia Museum, Canada, Treasures: The World’s Cultures from the British Museum
• 2009 Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA: The Perfect Fit: Shoes Tell Stories
• 2009 Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, NM: Native Couture II
• 2007 Craft In America: Expanding Traditions, traveling exhibit in conjunction with PBS series “Craft in America”, various cities
• 2007 New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM: How the West is One, Semi-permanent exhibit
• 2006 New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM: Native Pop
• 2006 Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, NM: Wondrous Works
• 2005 Museum of Art and Design, New York, NY: Changing Hands 2
• 2005 National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC: Our Lives
• 2004 Fort Lewis College, Durango, CO: Teri Greeves: Narratives in Beadwork
• 2002 Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX: Beadwork by Teri Greeves
• 2002 Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM: Mind Over Matter. Reworking Women's Work
• 2002 Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ: Be Dazzled: Masterworks of Jewelry and Beadwork from the Heard Museum
• 2002 National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK: Winter Camp Honoring the Legacy
• 2001 Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY: Horse Tales: Two Centuries of American Cultural Icons
• 2000 Southwest Museum, LACMA West, Los Angeles, CA: Native American Artists of the 21st Century
• 2000 Cowboy Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City, OK: Winter Camp 2000: Honoring the Legacy

• 2007 Artist in Residence, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champagne
• 2003 Dobkin Fellowship Recipient, School of American Research, Santa Fe, NM
• 2003 Signature Artist, Heard Museum Fair, Phoenix, AZ
• 2002 Ornament Magazine, Cover. Spring 2002