Bill Glass Jr.

Bill Glass Jr. is a Cherokee Nation ceramic artist, sculptor, and public artist, who was named a Cherokee National Treasure in 2009.

Background and education Glass was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and spent his childhood there and in Arizona. The Native art Glass saw while living in Arizona instilled a love of native culture and art in him.

He attended Central State University in Edmond, Oklahoma in 1973, During this time, Glass coordinated arts and crafts workshops for the Cherokee Nation, occasionally attended schools to share art with young students, and demonstrated art techniques. Cherokee Art Market, and Artesian Arts Festival.

Bill Glass is the father of artist Demos Glass, and in the early millennium the father-son team began to build public sculptures together. The two share a large studio where they can craft their public pieces. The two convened Team Gadugi, an intertribal group of artists to create the public sculptural installation, The Passage (2003) about the Trail of Tears in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Father and son also sculpted Touched to Above for the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Glass led a team of artists to create Origins, an installation at the Cherokee National History Museum in downtown Tahlequah, that depicts Cherokee oral history of an ancient migration.

Awards and honors The Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Oklahoma, named Glass a Master Artist in 1986. The Tulsa Indian Art Festival named him their Honored Elder Artist in 2015. that expanded to become the Southeastern Indian Artists Association, a Tahlequah-based nonprofit organization.

Personal As of 2007, Glass lived near Locust Grove, Oklahoma.