Burneta Venosdel
burneta@eaglechiefstudios.com www.eaglechiefstudios.com
Burneta Venosdel was raised on a small farm in Oklahoma near where the Land Run of 1893 rooted her family. When she was 8 years old, she took a painting class from a local artist and knew then that she wanted to become an artist.
Not realizing her dream until in her 60s, Venosdel has accomplished very much in a very short period of time. Her accomplishments include a sculpture placed in the Fort Sill National Historic Landmark and Museum in Lawton, Oklahoma; a featured artist’s show at the Museum of Western Art in Kerrville, Texas; a three-woman show at the Carriage Factory Art Gallery in Newton, Kansas; and a sculpture unveiling at the Hot Springs Museum of Contemporary Art in Hot Springs, Arkansas—to name a few.
As a founding member of Preserving Arts in the Osage, Venosdel has helped organize and bring fine art shows to Pawhuska, Oklahoma. She has volunteered many hours to education, mentoring and working on a largerthan-life monument of actor Ben Johnson for Bronze Horse Foundry in Pawhuska.
She has also dedicated countless hours to several art communities and organizations to which she belongs, helping form TOSS, a sculpting group in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that is a secondary group of the Oklahoma Sculpture Society. Venosdel is also a former co-chair for the Women Artists of the West (WAOW) National Exhibition in Bartlesville, Oklahoma and serves as the vice president of WAOW’S executive board.
“As a sculptor, my subject matter is connected to my upbringing and pioneering roots in Northwestern Oklahoma,” she says. “I am driven to express myself and record these subjects in bronze.”