Background

Doering was born in Hominy, Oklahoma

Hominy, Oklahoma

Hominy is a city in Osage County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 3,565 at the 2010 census, a 38 percent increase from 2,584 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Hominy is located at ....

 and was the third generation of a family of basketmakers. She was mostly self-taught. Beginning in the 1970s, she researched weaving techniques from books in libraries and museums.

Art

Her baskets were of post-removal

Cherokee removal

Cherokee removal, part of the Trail of Tears, refers to the forced relocation between 1836 to 1839 of the Cherokee Nation from their lands in Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina to the Indian Territory in the Western United States, which resulted in the deaths of approximately...

 Cherokee

Cherokee

The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...

 basket patterns and materials, but with her own personal element such as painted elements and attached elements such as feathers and beads, baskets that honored legends, and baskets in the shape of clay pots. Most were double-walled.

She gathered her own materials and learned to make her own dyes from nut hulls, berries, and leaves, mostly obtained from her mother's allotment

Dawes Act

The Dawes Act, adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey Indian tribal land and divide the land into allotments for individual Indians. The Act was named for its sponsor, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The Dawes Act was amended in 1891 and again...

 land near Tahlequah

Tahlequah, Oklahoma

Tahlequah is a city in Cherokee County, Oklahoma, United States located at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. It was founded as a capital of the original Cherokee Nation in 1838 to welcome those Cherokee forced west on the Trail of Tears. The city's population was 15,753 at the 2010 census. It...

 in Eastern Oklahoma

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

. Basket materials she used included buckbrush

Buckbrush

Buckbrush is the common name for several species of North American shrubs that deer feed on, including but probably not limited to:*Andrachne phyllanthoides, maidenbrush * Some western North American species of the genus Ceanothus...

, reed

Reed (plant)

Reed is a generic polyphyletic botanical term used to describe numerous tall, grass-like plants of wet places, which are the namesake vegetation of reed beds...

, honeysuckle

Honeysuckle

Honeysuckles are arching shrubs or twining vines in the family Caprifoliaceae, native to the Northern Hemisphere. There are about 180 species of honeysuckle, 100 of which occur in China; Europe, India and North America have only about 20 native species each...

 runners, white oak

White oak

Quercus alba, the white oak, is one of the pre-eminent hardwoods of eastern North America. It is a long-lived oak of the Fagaceae family, native to eastern North America and found from southern Quebec west to eastern Minnesota and south to northern Florida and eastern Texas. Specimens have been...

 splits, ash splits, rivercane, and cattail

Typha

Typha is a genus of about eleven species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. The genus has a largely Northern Hemisphere distribution, but is essentially cosmopolitan, being found in a variety of wetland habitats...

 leaves. In addition to a wide range of natural dye

Natural dye

Natural dyes are dyes or colorants derived from plants, invertebrates, or minerals. The majority of natural dyes are vegetable dyes from plant sources – roots, berries, bark, leaves, and wood — and other organic sources such as fungi and lichens....

s, Doering also experimented with brilliant aniline dyes.

Exhibits, honors, and legacy

Doering exhibited her baskets widely, including at such venues as the Southern Plains Indian Museum, Coulter Bay Indian Art Museum, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian

The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is a museum devoted to Native American arts. It is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was founded in 1937 by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who came from Boston, and Hastiin Klah, a Navajo singer and medicine man....

, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is an art museum on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, Oklahoma.-Overview:The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is one of the finest university art museums in the United States. Strengths of the nearly 16,000-object permanent collection...

, Oklahoma Historical Society

Oklahoma Historical Society

The Oklahoma Historical Society is an agency of the government of Oklahoma dedicated to promotion and preservation of Oklahoma's history and its people by collecting, interpreting, and disseminating knowledge and artifacts of Oklahoma....

, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and the Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

Folklife Festival. In 1982 and 1983, she received majors commissions from the Oklahoma State Arts Council for over 50 baskets.

Mavis Doering taught several contemporary Cherokee basketmakers, including Peggy Brennan, how to weave double-walled baskets.