See trailer for ‘Tiger’ playing at SXSW and Sundance Film Fiestval
Dana Tiger, a Native American artist based in Muskogee, is the subject of the short documentary “Tiger,” from Tulsa-based filmmaker Loren Waters.
- Dana Tiger, a Muscogee artist, uses art to cope with life’s challenges and continue her family’s artistic legacy.
- Her father, Jerome Tiger, was a renowned Native American artist who died young, leaving behind a legacy continued by his family.
- The Tiger family faced multiple tragedies, including the deaths of Dana’s father, brother, and mother, but their passion for art persevered.
- Filmmaker Loren Waters’ documentary “Tiger” highlights Dana’s life, art, and the family’s revitalized T-shirt business.
- The Tiger family hopes the film and their revitalized business will bring renewed attention to their gallery and artistic legacy.
(This story was updated because an earlier version included an inaccuracy.)
For Dana Tiger, creating art is more than what she does, what her family legacy has become or even who she is as a person.
It’s how the Oklahoma artist has weathered the tragedies and uncertainties of life.
“I wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for the art that I was able to learn to do. I would have been lost, I think, without my ability to do art. That comes from my dad, and then I had two children, and because of me and dad and Donnie, my husband, who is also a maker of beautiful things, they are artists,” she said.
“The artist is a way of looking at the world in that way that it should be. For us, we’ve got our vision of how things are supposed to be, and we put it down on canvas like that, or make sculptures of it. And that’s the way you can take care of yourself: work hard and share it with others, and they like it and they want to acquire that. So, that’s our life.”
An internationally acclaimed Muscogee artist and gallerist of Seminole and Cherokee descent who is based in Muskogee, Tiger is the focus of the acclaimed new short documentary “Tiger,” from Tulsa-based Native American filmmaker Cherokee and Kiowa filmmaker Loren Waters.
After premiering at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah, where it earned Waters a Short Film Special Jury Award for Directing, “Tiger” will be shown March 9 and 12 as part of the documentary shorts selection at the South By Southwest Film & TV Festival in Austin, Texas. SXSW 2025 is set for March 7-15 at various Austin venues.
“We were just asking, ‘How is this film so successful?’ But it’s really just because it’s Dana: She’s just a bright light and inspiring. She’s one of the happiest people I’ve ever met, even though she’s gone through so many things,” Waters told The Oklahoman.
“I really wanted this film, although it highlights the tragedy that her family has gone through, to also just be very positive in the end. I think it leaves audiences feeling hopeful and inspired.”
Who is Dana Tiger, the Oklahoma artist profiled in the SXSW short film ‘Tiger?’
Acclaimed for her watercolor and acrylic paintings depicting the strength and determination of Native American women, Dana Tiger also is the daughter of the late legendary Oklahoma Indigenous artist Jerome Tiger, whose paintings remain sought after more than half a century after his untimely death at age 26.
“Whenever you see his pieces, you know that’s a Jerome Tiger — and more than that, I think that you have the tendency to feel it. I think that’s really what separates Jerome from most other painters,” said Eric Singleton, a curator at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, which marked the 50th anniversary of Jerome Tiger’s untimely 1967 death with a 2017 exhibit.
“He only painted for five years as a professional painter, and yet his pieces are in museums across the state of Oklahoma, the region, and even in the Smithsonian.”
Dana Tiger was just 5 years old when her father died Aug. 13, 1967, of an accidental, self-inflicted gunshot wound. Her mother, Peggy Tiger, teamed with a cousin, Molly Babcock, to form the Jerome Tiger Art Company to make and sell prints of his work — she had to pretend a man ran it to make it successful — and founded the Tiger Art Gallery in Muskogee.
Johnny Tiger Jr., Jerome Tiger’s brother and fellow artist, stepped up to help raise Dana and her siblings, Lisa and Chris, and worked with their mother to launch a T-shirt business.
“My mom, it was her idea to make this company in the ’80s with my uncle’s art. … So, Mom invented that idea of putting Indian art, Native art, on T shirts. She was the first one to do that, and it just took off. JCPenney sold them over all over, wherever they would sell their stuff, and we were just so successful,” Dana Tiger recalled.
“We just all worked and lived together, doing our thing.”
By screen-printing T-shirts by hand, the Tigers managed to create one of the top JCPenney minority businesses at the time, selling shirts all over the world, Waters said.
But tragedy struck the artistic family again in 1990, when Dana’s brother and fellow artist, Chris, was killed in a Muskogee shooting. His death at age 22, followed two years later by his sister Lisa’s HIV-positive diagnosis, left the family reeling.
“That really put a stop to everything. They just couldn’t really work through it and go back to it after that, even though they were really successful,” Waters said.
Still, the Tiger family endured and kept creating art. Although she had never planned to have children, Dana followed her sister’s advice to marry Donnie Blair in 1992, and they had a daughter, Hvresse Christie Tiger, and a son, Lisan Tiger Blair, who are both artists based in Muskogee, too.
“The goal is for us to gain support for the Tiger Art Gallery and the revitalization of her T-shirt business. … Dana talks about it back in the day (as) super lively. Everyone would stop by, pop in and out. Some people described as when they were working there, as some of the best times that they’ve had, just working in the back screen-printing shirts,” Waters said of her “Tiger” short film.
“It’s still there, it’s still open, they still sell art. It’s just very different than what it used to be. … It’s an old building, and it needs some work done.”
How did a celebrated TV show bring together the maker and subject of the short film ‘Tiger?’
Filmmaker and subject first met while Waters was casting background performers for the made-in-Oklahoma television show “Reservation Dogs.” Along with featuring Tiger’s artwork on the celebrated series, Sterlin Harjo, the Emmy-nominated comedy’s Tulsa-based Muscogee and Seminole showrunner, wanted Tiger to appear in an episode and asked Waters to call her.
“We just became good friends unexpectedly. Then, when I started to learn a little bit more about her, her story and her art — she depicts Native women in a positive way in her paintings that I was really drawn and that I was able to see myself in — I started to be interested in who she is,” said Waters, who was recently named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list.
“Then, I learned more about the Tiger T-shirt legacy and how important the Tiger Art Gallery was to the community. … So, it felt like the story was just needing to be told.”
Since Waters’ partner, Blackfeet, Shoshone-Paiute and Washoe cinematographer Robert L. Hunter, had an opening between jobs in fall 2023, they decided to visit Dana in Muskogee.
“When we got there, she and her son, Lisan, were screen-printing for the first time since 1990 on that day — and I had no idea until we got there that they were doing that. I was just like, ‘Wow, what are the odds?'” said Waters, who is also the executive director of the Lindy Waters III Foundation started by the NBA star, who is her brother.
Along with featuring artwork by Dana and her father, uncle and daughter, “Reservation Dogs” also showcased a vintage Tiger Art T-shirt.
“They were going on Etsy or wherever they could go on and buy those shirts that were created by my family back in ’80s. … Over the years, people have called me up from all over the world … to ask about the shirts,” said Tiger, who was inducted into the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame in 2001. “It meant so much to so many people … so it seems like a monumental yet step-by-step thing that we brought it back, because people love them so much.”
Not only has the Tiger family revived some of its old T-shirt designs to sell through their Muskogee gallery, but they’ve also come up with new designs, including a limited edition shirt based on the “Tiger” film.
“Now, my son is screening all these shirts himself. My husband, he’s down there … and my daughter is a digital artist and painter; she redoes those designs that my uncle had created so that we can redo the screens. And it’s all going on on the machines that Mom had back there. We have just refurbished these machines, so they’re still working, the ones that we were using when we started the business,” said Dana, who created the art for former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s upcoming book “Washing My Mother’s Body: A Ceremony for Grief.”
“The building is deteriorating … and so this is like a wind change and help that’s come along. We’re all artists, and it’s all on our land. It’s been there for a long time, and we’ve made it what it is. But these T-shirts and the art, that’s how we take care of it.”
Although she has enjoyed highlights like attending the Sundance Film Festival with Waters, the Tiger matriarch said she’s mostly grateful to the filmmaker for telling her family’s story.
“We needed our story to be told. My brother is no longer here; he was 22 when he was killed. My dad was 26 when he died. My uncle is gone; he died in 2015. My mom died in 2018,” she said.
“It was just an answer to my prayers, because gets harder for me to do things. I’m the oldest of all the Tigers; I’m the one who’s my dad’s firstborn. I have to be the one to make sure that it all keeps it going. So, Loren, she came in like a gift from the Creator.”
