Tom Farris has been immersed in American Indian art his entire life. The child of passionate collectors, Farris spent a good deal of his formative years in various museums, galleries and artists' homes. Having such intimate contact with the genre, Tom found inspiration for his own growing artistic aptitude. A member of the Cherokee Nation and Otoe-Missouria tribe, he draws from his culture and his life-long influence of American Indian art to create his works.
Farris has a great deal of professional experience in the business of American Indian Art. He has served as the Assistant Director of the Oscar Jacobson Foundation and Native Art Center, the creator and manager of the Cherokee Art Market, owner and operator of the Standing Buffalo Indian Art Gallery & Gifts, manager of Exhibit C Gallery & Gifts and most recently the museum store manager at First Americans Museum. His credits also include a number of judging honors including the Red Earth Festival Art Show, Cherokee Heritage Center's Trail of Tears and Cherokee Homecoming shows.
As a professional artist Farris has been honored to participate in and has received awards from a number of nationally acclaimed art shows including: The South Eastern Art Show and Market, The Cherokee Art Market, The Artesian Art Market, The Trail of Tears Art Show, The Indigenous Fine Art Market, The Eiteljorg Indian Art Market, Red Earth, The Artesian Art Market and The Southwestern Association of Indian Artists Santa Fe Market, where his pioneering was recognized with the Creativity Award in 2015 and the Innovation Award in 2019. He has exhibited at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. and New York City. His work appears in numerous major private collections and the permanent collections of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, The Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana, The University of South Carolina at Lancaster American Indian Museum, the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Sam Noble Natural History Museum in Norman, Oklahoma.
