Steven Yazzie

Last updated

Steven Yazzie (born 1970) is a Native American artist, who is enrolled in the Navajo Nation and of Laguna Pueblo descent of his father's side. He creates video art and installation environments but described painting as his first and most important medium. [1]

Contents

Personal life

Yazzie was born in Newport Beach, California, during 1970 and has three younger brothers. [2] [3] His parents divorced when he was four and less than a year later his mother married to a Navajo man. When he was six years old Yazzie's stepfather moved the family to an Arizona reservation in Black Mesa. [2] [4]

Yazzie later joined the Marine Corps and participated in the first Gulf War, in Desert Storm and Desert Shield. [3] When he returned Yazzie discovered that his paternal grandfather had participated in World War II as a code-talker. His grandfather has inspired and been included in many pieces. [2]

Education

Yazzie completed his bachelor of fine arts degree in intermedia at Arizona State University. He graduated from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts in 2014, being named the outstanding graduate. He briefly studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. [3]

Artworks

Some projects Yazzie has headed include Digital Preserve, LLC and Postcommodity, the latter of which he helped found with Kade L. Twist (Cherokee Nation) and Nathan Young (Delaware/Pawnee/Kiowa/Cherokee). [4] He has since left Postcommodity, which is now headed by Twist and Cristóbal Martínez. He also co-founded the Museum of Walking with Angela Ellsworth, located on the Arizona State University campus in the Tower Center Building. [1]

Drawing and Driving

Drawing and Driving was a performance, drawing, and film piece. Yazzie built a wooden cart that had a way to attach an easel so he could use an easel while driving in the cart. Riding down Monument Valley, he would try to replicate the landscape, including the buttes and mesas in view onto the easel attached to the wooden cart. While he rode and created, he would be filmed riding through the areas. This allows the observers to connect the piece to the environment Yazzie was traveling on and through. When displayed, the piece would include a video of Yazzie riding in the cart, the piece he created while on the cart and the piece he created. [2]

Mountain Project

The Mountain Project started as a personal effort to understand the four outlying sacred mountains of the Navajo people better. This project is made of several different projects. The first phase of the project included traversing Sis' naajinni of Colorado and Dook' o' oosłíí of Arizona. Yazzie has expressed feelings of distance from the Navajo and his family because he cannot speak the language, [2] so he used this project to try to understand the significance of these places more closely and personally. He video-recorded his process of hiking up the mountains, documenting his thoughts and explorations of the land. These works started as personal process of understanding and exploring the cultural importance of these mountains. As of August 2015, he is working on the next phase of this project, which aims to include the culture into his deeper discovery of his culture. He works to connect these works, which looks at the cultural and social impact and how that connects to his own personal experiences with the locations. He is developing the purpose of the project, which is to understand the connection of community and himself. He aims to help preserve the feeling of community and culture and the impact the location he is exploring on the community. This project was funded with the help of the 2015 Artist Research and Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. [1]

BWBY (Black White Blue Yellow)

Another project that includes the four sacred Navajo mountains is BWBY (Black White Blue Yellow). These colors represent the cardinal directions for the Navajo people, representing North, East, South, West, respectively. [5] These colors and cardinal directions represent DIb' e Nitsaa, Sis' naajini, Tsoodzil, and Dook' o' słíí respectively. BWBY is a sound and video project. It explores the significance the mountain has on the continuation of the Navajo culture and knowledge that the mountains represent. [6]

Exhibitions and collections

Some exhibitions Yazzie has been a part of have been located at:

Honors and awards

Several awards Steven Yazzie has been awarded include:

Some national and regional grants he has been awarded include:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Navajo</span> Native American people of the United States

The Navajo or Diné, are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute of American Indian Arts</span> Public tribal college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, US

The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic Santa Fe Federal Building, a landmark Pueblo Revival building listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Federal Building. The museum houses the National Collection of Contemporary Indian Art, with more than 7,000 items.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raven Chacon</span> Diné-American composer and artist (born 1977)

Raven Chacon is a Diné composer, musician and artist. Born in Fort Defiance, Arizona within the Navajo Nation, Chacon became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his Voiceless Mass in 2022.

Mario Martinez is a Native American contemporary abstract painter. He is a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe from New Penjamo, the smallest of six Yaqui settlements, in Arizona. He lives in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melanie Yazzie</span> Navajo artist

Melanie A. Yazzie is a Navajo sculptor, painter, printmaker, and professor. She teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gail Bird and Yazzie Johnson</span> Southwestern American Indian artists

Gail Bird and Yazzie Johnson are Southwest American Indian artists known for their innovative jewelry which uses varied stones and blends both contemporary and prehistoric design motifs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harrison Begay</span> American painter (1914/17–2012)

Harrison Begay, also known as Haashké yah Níyá was a renowned Diné (Navajo) painter, printmaker, and illustrator. Begay specialized in watercolors, gouache, and silkscreen prints. At the time of his death in 2012, he was the last living, former student of Dorothy Dunn and Geronima C. Montoya at the Santa Fe Indian School. His work has won multiple awards and is exhibited in museums and private collections worldwide and he was among the most famous Diné artists of his generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art of the American Southwest</span> Visual arts of the Southwestern United States

Art of the American Southwest is the visual arts of the Southwestern United States. This region encompasses Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of California, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Utah. These arts include architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, and other media, ranging from the ancient past to the contemporary arts of the present day.

Jolene Nenibah Yazzie is an American graphic designer, specializing in comic art. Her artwork predominantly features women as Native American warriors, and she utilizes bright colors and contrast in her works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angela Ellsworth</span> American artist

Angela Ellsworth is a multidisciplinary American artist traversing disciplines of drawing, sculpture, installation, video, and performance. Her solo and collaborative works have addressed wide-ranging subjects such as physical fitness, endurance, illness, social ritual, and religious tradition. She is interested in art merging with everyday life and public and private experiences colliding in unexpected places. She is a descendant of LDS prophet Lorenzo Snow and was raised as a Mormon; some of her work relates to her religious upbringing. She is openly queer and married to writer/ performer Tania Katan.

Sybil Lansing Yazzie Baldwin was a Diné (Navajo) painter active in the 1930s.

Melissa Cody is a Navajo textile artist from No Water Mesa, Arizona, United States. Her Germantown Revival style weavings are known for their bold colors and intricate three dimensional patterns. Cody maintains aspects of traditional Navajo tapestries, but also adds her own elements into her work. These elements range from personal tributes to pop culture references.

Cristóbal Martínez is a Chicano artist and the founder of Radio Healer, an indigenous hacker collective. He is a member of Postcommodity, a Southwest Native American Artist collective. His work was featured in the 17th Whitney Biennial, 57th Carnegie International, and the Sundance Film Festival.

Kade L. Twist is a Cherokee Nation interdisciplinary artist who works with video, sound, interactive media, text, and installation. Twist serves as the vice president of the Native Networking Policy Center. He is co-founder of Postcommodity, a Southwest Native American Artist collective, with Steven J. Yazzie. His work has been displayed nationally and internationally.

Postcommodity, a Southwest Native American Artist collective, was founded in 2007 by Kade Twist and Steven Yazzie. Their name refers to the "commodity era" of Native American art trading in the late 1800s and 1900s, with the "post" being in reference to their modern take on traditional Native art forms.

Shonto Begay is a Native American artist, illustrator, writer, and teacher. He began his artistic career in 1983 and his art features landscapes and other cultural elements of Navajo life.

Teresa Montoya is a Diné media maker and social scientist with training in socio-cultural anthropology, critical Indigenous studies, and filmmaking.

Dustinn Craig is a Native American filmmaker and skateboarder from Arizona. Craig is an enrolled citizen of the White Mountain Apache Tribe of the Fort Apache Reservation and Navajo descendant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gregory Sale</span> American artist

Gregory Sale is a socially engaged, multidisciplinary artist, educator, and advocate. Collaborating with individuals and communities on aesthetic responses to social challenges, Sale creates and coordinates large-scale and often long-term public projects that are organized around collective experiences. Participants become creative co-producers focused on collective artistic experiences that identify, address, and transform lives. With the commitment of a wide range of constituencies and institutions, his creative practice includes projects with primary partners in activist circles, social service agencies, non-profit organizations, and government. His most prominent and continuing projects focus on issues of mass incarceration, illuminating the complexities of justice, democracy, and how we practice care as a society.

Clifford Beck, Jr. was a Navajo American painter, illustrator, photographer and educator born in Keams Canyon, Arizona. He exhibited his work across the United States and is known for his work in oils and pastels, particularly his portraits of older native people.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Steve Yazzie: 2015 Artist Research and Development Grant Recipient, 11 August 2015, retrieved 2020-02-18
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Everett, Deborah (2008). Encyclopedia of Native American Artists . Greenwood. pp.  247-249. ISBN   978-0313337628.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Miller, Nina. "Steven Yazzie". Emerge. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  4. 1 2 "Meet the Art Community of the US Southwest: Steven J. Yazzie Sees Creative Community in a Climbing Gym". Hyperallergic. 2019-12-06. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  5. ↑ "Navajo Culture | Navajo Indian Culture and Traditions". www.navajoindian.net. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
  6. ↑ "Black White Blue Yellow ("BWBY")". Heard Museum. Retrieved 2020-02-18.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.