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Steven Yazzie - Navajo / Laguna Pueblo
Interview by Sarah Curtis
March 2010
I have been living away from my desert home for about three years now. Though I’ve been immersed in lush, green, gorgeous Oregon working on my undergrad, I can feel my bones aching for smells, sites, sounds and the embraces I left behind in Phoenix. When I saw artist Steven Yazzie’s work the aching in my bones dulled and I felt comfort. I was able to see and feel home through Steven’s eyes and the images were so rich and complex I couldn’t help but dive in headfirst. He seems to capture the physical tension, this sort of constant tug-of-war that holds The Valley in place and creates that palpable desert energy. Steven balances the surreal and the serious and to travel through his body of work is a complete experience – it’s beautiful, thought provoking, sad, funny, political, whimsical, stark, intimate… it is a gift and an immeasurable opportunity for growth to explore the canyon land through Steven Yazzie’s personal insight, paintings, installations, and collective endeavors.
Sarah Curtis: You seem to deal with the idea of place a lot in terms of connection to place and an interaction with Landscape. What about the idea of home? What is home for you? Is home stationary? Is it dependent on place and landscape?
Everywhere I Go I Take Another Place With Me
Steven Yazzie: Lately, the idea of place and home has become something I’m more interested in as a point of departure in my work. When I think of home, or the idea of home, I tend to think both of the geographic place I’m from and where I’m living today. I grew up in small rural communities on and off the Navajo Reservation: Black Mesa, LeChee, and Page, Arizona. I eventually moved to Phoenix later during my high school years, and ended up back here after the military and traveling around the country. There is something for me about living in the desert and coming from canyon land that gives me a connected feeling, and in those places I’m home. I don’t think sentimentally about it as much as I think context, experience, and relationship. This could get more abstract, so to answer your question, yes, place and landscape are big factors for me.
SC: In Coyote Interiors, do you see the coyotes as adapting to the current sprawl of the valley, or the valley having to eventually adapt or concede to the coyotes? Is that maybe the ongoing struggle physically and psychologically?
SY: The coyotes I‘m painting represent the idea of adaptation itself. I want the meaning of these figures to be flexible as they represent different things for different people, especially in the indigenous community. For me, they are the instigation and an adaptation metaphor within the larger narrative of expansion, growth, and development of man-made communities. The coyotes are the intersection of the natural and man-made. I started this series with the sprawl of Phoenix in mind. Now that the real-estate market collapsed recently, it seems that the coyotes are invading the space, giving the sense of an apocalyptic feel, which I think is just as interesting.
Welcome to the Contemporary North American Indigenous Artist Blog.
I suggested to William LePore, the Chair of the Department of Art at Portland State University, that I would like to teach classes focusing on topics about Contemporary Native art. To my delight he took me seriously and gave me the amazing opportunity to teach a class called “Contemporary Native American Art” during the winter term of 2010.
I was very nervous about teaching the course. My nervousness came from wanting to give adequate represent to my fellow Contemporary Native Artists and their work, while also trying to convey some issues related to Indigenous struggles both in the past and currently. Even if the Native artists’ works that we examined had nothing to do specifically with indigenous subjects, it seemed like the course could not function without an overview of Native and First Nation’s history.
While preparing for the course I considered several approaches to take, none of which really satisfied my desire to learn about these artists in very direct ways. So, I decided to employ the Internet to allow me to build my course around student engagement with Native Artists in person.
The first day of class I presented my idea to my fourteen students. I asked them if they would be interested in helping me build a blog that would archive student conducted, e-mail based interviews with Contemporary Native Artists. The general response was excitement with a bit of nervousness. I compiled a list of over fifty Native Artists and gave short presentations on each artist showing a few of their major works. Each student than picked an artist from the list to contact for the project.
The students had over six weeks to research the artist’s work, formulate questions for the interview, respond with a second round of questions, select images, and upload the final interview to the blog. All interviews except for one were conducted through e-mail. At the end of the student’s interviews I requested that they each ask their artists two of my own questions:
• Do you think of yourself as a “Contemporary North American Indigenous Artists?” Do you think terms like that one are useful or not? Do you feel like there is a separation between contemporary indigenous artists and the rest of the art world as represented by mainstream art magazines, biennials, art fairs, etc.?
• Can you recommend another artist that we should interview for this blog in the future?
When making the blog I wanted to make sure not to exclude First Nations Artists. The course title was Contemporary Native American Art but many of the artists we researched are from Canada. So the blog title is an attempt to be as inclusive as possible: Contemporary North American Indigenous Artists, with the idea being to focus on contemporary art made by North American Indigenous artists regardless of subject matter.
It was an amazing ten-week process. The class met every Tuesday from 1-4:50pm. The students gave updates to the class about their interactions with their artists. Students would read their responses to the class and that would inspire conversations which might not ever have happened had the class been structured in a more traditional lecture format.
Throughout the process the students and I felt a range of emotions from excitement to suspense. One of the artists had a baby during the course of the interview and another artist was traveling throughout Asia. Knowing about these life events made the students feel more connected to their artists. On the final day each student gave an in depth presentation on each of their artist’s work and talked about some of the highlights during the interview process. I think the students were surprised to find that they can gain access to people they are interested in researching more easily than they thought. For the most part the experience was very positive and the students are proud to be providing the public with more information on contemporary Native Art.
I have gained great inspiration from this process and a feeling of community with the artists included in the project. I would like to thank all of my students for making this blog possible and all of the amazing, talented, and generous artists who participated with my students.
Wendy Red Star
Adjunct Professor
Department of Art
Portland State University
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