Members of the group Artist Hopid in 1977, from left to right: Terrance Talaswaima, Milland Lomakema, Delbridge Honanie, Neil David, Sr. and Michael Kabotie.
Michael Kabotie was a United States artist and writer, who belonged to the Hopi tribe of Arizona. By word and action, poetry and art, Kabotie pointed the way of life as a journey into the mystery of the universe and of one's self within it. His works seem to have emerged from some abstract, elemental dreamtime.
Background
Michael Kabotie was born on September 3, 1942, on the Hopi Indian Reservation in northeastern Arizona, United States. He grew up in the village of Shungopavi. He was a son of Fred Kabotie, an artist, and Alice Kabotie, a basketmaker. It was through his early travel with his father to art shows and museums around the country that Kabotie was inspired to pursue the creative arts for his own life's work.
Education
Michael Kabotie attended school on the reservation until the Hopi high school was closed. He was introduced to jewelry making early while at high school but was also taught and learn from his uncle Paul Saufkie, who trained Hopi silversmiths after the second World War, with Fred Kabotie, Michael's father. His father helped develop many of the overlay techniques that have come to typify quality Hopi silverwork, and Kabotie learned these techniques as a teenager. He graduated from Haskell Indian School (now Haskell Indian Nations University) in Lawrence, Kansas in 1961. While in his junior year there he was invited to spend the summer of 1960 at the Southwest Indian Art Project at the University of Arizona. Participants included Fritz Scholder, Helen Hardin, Charles Loloma, and Joe Hererra, who became his lifelong friend and his primary artist mentor. Later, he said the experience "planted a seed" that blossomed "in different ways." In 1964-1965, he studied engineering at the University of Arizona. 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.
Michael Kabotie made artworks for close to fifty years. He was introduced to silverwork by Wally Sekayumptewa of Hotevilla in 1958. He used the overlay technique developed by his father and friends in the 1940s and 1950s. His painting reflects his Hopi mentors, the pre-European Awatovi kiva mural painters, and the Sikyatki pottery painters with a contemporary interpretation. His paintings and silverwork have an organic graffiti-like quality with dynamic motion and symbolism, with a rich color palette on canvas and an added dimension when rendered in silver. He created many public works of art including the murals at Sunset Crater and the Museum of Northern Arizona (with Delbridge Honanie), as well as a gate he designed in the style of his jewelry at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. Michael Kabotie worked for Hopi Cultural Center Museum as a muralist in 1975, as a consultant in 1977, and as a task team chairman since 1978. In 1975, he became a member of the editorial advisory board of the American Indian Art Magazine. In 1979-1980, he was a consultant for the California Academy of Sciences.
Published in 1987, Kabotie's poetry book "Migration Tears" was an inward self-portrait in verse. This early published work, showed Kabotie's interest in both Eastern philosophy and Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who felt that the western world relied too much on science and logic to solve its problems and should incorporate the idea of "harmony and balance" into our lives, if we were to live productively, happily. The book contains Kabotie's original poetry, complemented by six plates of his graphic artwork. Contrary to what one may assume, the "tears" mentioned in the title is not a direct reference to the "trail of tears" associated with Native American people. The poet is more specifically referring to the transitions that his people have been forced to make in their lives since the Indian Wars, and their continuing struggle between destruction and renewal in contemporary times. In the poem Transistor Windows, the narrator is looking out the window at his village, Shungopavi, reflecting on nature and watching the sun sink into "the deep abyss of the Grand Canyon." At the same time, his relatives are seated in the next room, laughing over their burned supper and watching the news of the day on television.
Michael Kabotie lectured across America, in New Zealand, Germany, and Switzerland. He was a longtime instructor in the Idyllwild Arts Academy Summer Program. As a key member of the school's renowned Native American Arts faculty for 26 years, Kabotie taught Hopi silversmithing in 1983-2009 and served as a consultant to the Native American Arts Festival since its inception in 2001.
In his recent years, Michael Kabotie moved into the exploration and production of limited edition prints in lithography, serigraphy, etching, and embossings. He began a series of collaborative paintings with Celtic artist Jack Dauben. Kabotie was actively engaged in cross-cultural and cross-discipline projects and collaborations. He also participated in archaeological and art historical research and conferences. He was a mentor and guide, making presentations and working with tribal AA groups around the country. At the time of his death, Kabotie was working on an exhibit and a book for the museum, called "Siitala: Life in Balance, World in Bloom."
Michael Kabotie was selected for a prestigious one-man show at the Heard Museum very early on. It sold out and his art career took off. He also graced the cover of Arizona Highways magazine. Kabotie's works are represented in many public and private collections, including the Heard Museum, Museum of Humankind (London), and the Gallery Calumet-Neuzzinger (Germany). In 1968-1970, and in 1978, he was honored at Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonials. In 2003, Kabotie was named an Arizona Living Treasure by the Arizona Indian Living Treasures Awards, Inc., and in 2006, he was awarded a fellowship from the National Museum of the American Indian's Smithsonian Research Program.
Michael Kabotie's art is fashioned from an intuitive facility for simple resonant images, ambiguously stated, that connect people deeply and intricately with the infinite regions of the unknown and unnamed. His gifts reach back into the ancient arts of the imagination, leading the viewer to examine one's unique and universal experiences. Like other artists who have avoided the neutral objective quality of much of current art and its artifacts, Kabotie searched in his artworks for its warmly transformative qualities and metaphors - those expressive instruments of both the ephemeral and the eternal. By exploring spiritual areas of ritual and ceremonial representation, Kabotie signified all life as part of the grandeur and sacredness of nature and of its infinite aspects of birth, destruction, and rebirth. These magical icons of Michael Kabotie suggest one way to self-discovery, reconciliation, and acceptance, and ultimately are personifications of never-ending joy. Kabotie was deeply intrigued by Carl Jung and latched onto his ideas, seeing the parallel of Jungian and Hopi philosophy. He was inspired by the Swiss doctor to use his own Hopi dreams, religion, and myth in his own artwork.
Quotations:
"Jewelry is my job. Art and painting is my journey."
"My paintings speak a lot louder than me."
Membership
Wuwuchim (Hopi Men's Society)
,
United States
In 1973, Michael Kabotie along with fellow artists Delbridge Honanie, Terrance Honventewa, and Milland Lomakema, was a founding member of Artist Hopid, a group of painters experimenting in fresh interpretations of traditional Hopi art forms. This group of five artists worked together for over five years. The members of this group include Terrance Talaswaima, Milland Lomakema, Delbridge Honanie, and Neil David, Sr.
As a group, Artist Hopid was acclaimed for their massive, but meticulous work, which pushed the edge of what was then considered "safe" Indian art, featuring non-controversial subject matter such as animals, day-to-day reservation life scenes, and landscapes. Artist Hopid would incorporate contemporary subject matter into their paintings, unafraid to make a heavy social comment with paint on canvas or murals that showed the more outrageous social or political activity that was part of every Hopi living. At the same time, their group would also collaborate on major art murals or projects that would reflect the deeply spiritual Hopi side of life and its cultural obligations using vivid colors or lightly applied metallic washes.
Artist Hopid
,
United States
1973 - 1980
In 1970-1974, Michael Kabotie was the president of the board of directors of Hopi Arts & Crafts Co-Op Guild. In 1976-1978, he was its manager.
Hopi Arts & Crafts Co-Op Guild
,
United States
1970 - 1978
In 1975-1980, Michael Kabotie was a member of the board of directors of the Indian Arts & Crafts Association.
Indian Arts & Crafts Association
,
United States
1975 - 1980
Personality
Michael Kabotie was an avid reader and student of both archaeology and other religious philosophies. He often compared them to his own Hopi culture, which would sometimes inspire biting political or completely humorous life observations in his artwork. It was Kabotie's own personal search for a sense of harmony and balance that left the greatest impression on people who knew him well.
Quotes from others about the person
Shelby Tisdale, a director of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, said: "His wide range of work, from silver jewelry and kachina carvings to his large-scale colorful paintings, draw on the Hopi traditions he grew up with. I will always remember his warm smile, his subtle way of teasing, his contagious sense of humor, and his gentle way of teaching the world about Hopi art and culture."
Frank H. Goodyear Jr., a director of Heard Museum said: "Michael was a quiet man, with a deep respect for the traditions of his Hopi culture. He made powerful images drawn from Hopi artistic traditions that are testimonies to his own creative excellence. His death leaves us deeply saddened."
William Lowman, a president of Idyllwild Arts (IA), said: "Michael Kabotie was an extraordinary artist of the Hopi tradition, but also an extraordinary artist in any culture. We marveled at his jewelry design and craft. We were inspired by his paintings and prints. And we were moved by his poetry. Most of all, his alter ego as a trickster amused and confounded us all. He was a great artist."
Heather Companiott, a director of the Native American Arts Program at IA, said: "Michael was an extraordinary human being, full of humor, humility, talent, curiosity, and compassion. To know or work with Michael was to be forced to think more broadly, to see and find connections between people, concepts, and ideas, and to come to know the world - and yourself - a little differently and a little better than you had before. This is a loss not only for his friends, colleagues, and students at Idyllwild Arts but for the many people whose lives he touched across the country and around the world. He will be sorely missed."
Kelley Hays-Gilpin, Michael Kabotie's friend and exhibit curator, MNA's Edward Bridge Danson Jr. Chair of Anthropology, said: "Artist, poet, "mythical archaeologist," ritual clown, and trickster-Michael Kabotie explored the journeys of humankind by playfully meshing his own Hopi traditions with myth and imagery from around the world."
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
Carl Jung
Connections
Michael Kabotie's partner was Ruth Ann Border. He had six children: Paul Kabotie, Wendell Sakiestewa, Claire Chavarria, Ed Kabotie, Meg Adakai, and Max Kabotie. At the time of his death, he had 14 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Father:
Fred Kabotie
Michael Kabotie's father, Fred Kabotie, was also an artist and greatly influenced his son's career. He was born in 1900 into a highly traditional Hopi family at Second Mesa, Arizona. Born of the Bluebird Clan, his family was one of the founding families of the village of Hotevilla, where his family and clan members were committed to preserving the Hopi culture and traditions that were under constant attack from growing Western influences. Even as a young child, he drew images of Hopi Katsinas with bits of coal and earth pigments on rocks near his home.
Both Michael and his father were innovators in the Native American Fine Arts Movement, creating paintings that reflect traditional Hopi life in contemporary media. Fred Kabotie is credited with the early development of the trademark, traditional Hopi overlay style jewelry. With this family art inspiration and Picasso-esque style of painting, both Michael and Fred are considered two of the innovators of what is called the "Native American Fine Arts Movement." He was also the painter of the Watchtower murals in the Grand Canyon.
Mother:
Alice Kabotie
Son:
Ed Kabotie
Ed Kabotie is from Santa Clara Pueblo and the Hopi village of Shungopavi. His art is reflective and inspired by these two dynamic cultures. Santa Clara is well known for its red and black pottery. Ed Kabotie specializes in etchwork, and often collaborates with relatives that produce fine polished pottery. He comes from a notable artistic heritage on his Hopi side. His grandfather, Fred, and father, Michael, are well known in the Indian art community for their contributions to silver and visual arts. Ed carries on this tradition through paintings, jewelry, and carvings. He is also an accomplished musician. Though known mostly as a percussionist, he has recently released a seven-song demo that features his own bilingual compositions accompanied by acoustic guitar and Native flute.
Son:
Paul Kabotie
Daughter:
Meg Adakai
Sister:
Hattie Lomayesva
life partner:
Ruth Ann Border
Ruth Ann Border met Michael while she was working at the Museum of Northern Arizona where he was working on a mural called The Journey of the Human Spirit. After college, she created graphic art for several publications. She opened her own studio, Del Rio Studio and Gallery in 1999. She worked at the museum part-time and headed the Flagstaff Artists Coalition from 1999 to 2003. Ruth Ann Border is the owner of an art store, called Visible Difference, which is located in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Uncle:
Paul Saufkie
Paul Saufkie was a Hopi silversmith that pioneered overlay techniques seen in contemporary Native American jewelry to this day. After his father taught him the craft in the 1920s, Paul in turn started to teach silversmithing to return soldiers that fought in the Second World War. In 1949 Paul, with friend and painter Fred Kabotie, created the Hopi Silvercraft Cooperative Guild. This organization trained many Hopi silversmiths in the 1950s, provided materials, a place to work, and even financial support. The success of this institution cemented Paul Saufkie's place in the identity of Hopi jewelry.
Cousin:
Walter Polelonema
Cousin:
McBride Lomayestewa
Mark Lomayestewa was a Hopi silversmith, who began producing in 1955.
Cousin:
Mark Lomayestewa
Mark Lomayestewa was a Hopi silversmith, who was active between the 1950s and 1995.
Friend:
Robert Breunig
Robert Breunig was Michael Kabotie's friend for almost 35 years. Breunig retired as a president of the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) on June 30, 2015, after which he became a president emeritus of MNA. He had served 11 and a half years as a director and CEO of MNA and most recently as a president. Throughout his museum career, he has been active in many professional organizations and has served on many boards. In the early 1970s, he served as an anthropology professor at Northern Arizona University.
Friend:
Kelley Hays-Gilpin
Kelley Hays-Gilpin is an archaeologist and a professor and the Edward Bridge Danson Chair of Anthropology at the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA). She has numerous articles and books published, including Ambiguous Images: Gender and Rock Art (AltaMira Press), which won the 2005 Society for American Archaeology book award.
Friend:
Joe Hererra
colleague:
Jack Dauben
Jack Dauben and Michael Kabotie exchanged canvases back and forth, Jack bringing his Celtic images, Michael interweaving the Hopi. Their paintings take on a life of their own, merging seamlessly the two cultures.