PHOENIX, ARIZONA–The Heard Museum family is mourning the passing of Hopi artist Michael Kabotie.The painter and jeweler, 67, passed away in a Flagstaff hospital on October 23 from complications related to the H1N1 flu.
“Michael was a quiet man, with a deep respect for the traditions of his Hopi culture,” says Heard Museum Director Frank Goodyear, Jr.“ He made powerful images drawn from Hopi artistic traditions that are testimonies to his own creative excellence. His death leaves us deeply saddened.”
Indian Fair Chair John Miller says, “I was saddened to hear about Michael's death this morning. Michael will remain the featured artist for the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, and we will honor him by dedicating the Fair in his memory.” Miller relates that the Kabotie family is pleased that the Heard will continue to honor his life and work.
Both Kabotie and his father Fred Kabotie were innovators in the Native American Fine Art Movement, creating paintings that reflect traditional Hopi life in contemporary media. Kabotie’s paintings reflect his Hopi mentors, the pre-European Awatovi kiva mural painters and the Sikyatki pottery painters, with a contemporary interpretation.
Michael Kabotie was born on September 3, 1942, on the Hopi Indian Reservation in northeastern Arizona. He grew up in the village of Shungopavi. While in his junior year of high school, Kabotie was invited to spend the summer at the Southwest Indian Art Project at the University of Arizona. Participants included Fritz Scholder, Helen Hardin, Charles Loloma and Joe Herrera, who became a lifelong friend and his primary artistic mentor. Kabotie later said that the project had “planted a seed; that seed began to grow and then blossomed at later times in different ways.”
Kabotie added that the experience eventually led to the establishment of the Artists Hopid in 1973, of which he was a founding member.
After high school, Kabotie attended the University of Arizona and studied engineering. However, he discovered that his true calling was art. After dropping out of college, he held a one-man show at the Heard Museum and his work was on the cover of Arizona Highways magazine.
In 1967 during his Hopi manhood initiation into the Wuwutsim Society, Kabotie was given his Hopi name, Lomawywesa (Walking in Harmony).
Kabotie was introduced to silverwork in 1958. His cousins Walter Polelonema, McBride Lomayestewa and Mark Lomayestewa also influenced him early on. He used the overlay technique developed by his father and friends in the 1940s and ‘50s while developing his own distinct style.
Kabotie, Terrence Talaswaima, Delbridge Honanie, Neal David and Milland Lomakema founded the Artists Hopid as an exploration of Hopi culture and art, and created fresh interpretations of traditional Hopi art forms for more than five years. “We wanted to experiment with Hopi, our past, its visual activity, its ceremonial activity,” he said. Some of the work that sprang from this collaboration included the mural “The Four Directions” and other murals, which were given to the Hopi Museum in order to preserve Hopi culture and art within the reservation borders.
Michael’s book of poetry, Migration Tears: poems about transitions, was published in 1987 by the University of California Press. He lectured in America, New Zealand, Germany and Switzerland and taught Hopi overlay techniques at the Idyllwild Arts Foundation. His work lives on in museums around the world, from the Heard Museum to the British Museum of Mankind in London, England, the Ethnology Museum in Berlin and the Museum of World Cultures in Frankfurt, Germany.
In 1991, Kabotie was a participant in the conference which accompanied the Heard’s exhibition Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in the Twentieth Century. The exhibition and conference were aimed at the upcoming commemoration of the quincentenary, or 500th anniversary, of Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas. The exhibition and conference also delved into what had been the overlooked Native American Fine Art Movement and its contributions to not only American Indian culture and art, but also that of the nation and indeed, the world.
He was a featured artist in many of the Heard’s exhibitions. In 2006, Kabotie designed the front gate of the Berlin Gallery, the Heard Museum’s contemporary American Indian art gallery.
In recent years, Kabotie moved into the exploration and production of limited edition prints in lithography, serigraphy, etching and embossing. He also ventured into a series of collaborative paintings with Celtic artist Jack Dauben.
Kabotie’s life and career were, indeed, a work of art.
Kabotie was named as the signature artist for the 52nd Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, which will be held on March 6 and 7, 2010. He created a special painting that will grace the cover of the Fair program as well as T-shirts and posters. During the Fair, Kabotie’s life and work will be honored for his contribution to American Indian fine art.
Works by Michael Kabotie (Lomawywesa), 1942-2009, Hopi.
Upper left: “Rainbow Maiden with Chanter,” 2007, Acrylic on canvas, 8x10, Private Collection.
"Deer Dancer Protestors," 1972, Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 16”.
Gate to Berlin Gallery at the Heard Museum, 2006.
Cover of MIgration Tears: poems about transitions.
Above: "Awatovi Prayers,"
2003, Pen and pencil on paper, 22” x 90”.
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