WalkingStick was born in Syracuse, New York, to a Cherokee father and a non-Native mother. Her work deals with issues of mixed ancestry, the balance between land and space, and the relationship between the physical and spiritual self. In the mid-1980s, WalkingStick began an ongoing series of diptych paintings (as well as drawings and prints) in which a pair of juxtaposed images—one realistic and the other abstract or symbolic—represents different aspects of a subject or theme.
     
 
   
  © 2004 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION