Symphony OF SHAPE AND COLOR
IAIA exhibit a retrospective of sixty years of art by Linda Lomahaftewa
Linda Lomahaftewa’s bold Hopi landscapes unite the ancient world with the contemporary in a symphony of shape and color.
“The Moving Land: 60+ Years of Art by Linda Lomahaftewa,” featuring 70 paintings and works on paper, is open at Santa Fe’s IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. The exhibition runs through July 17.
Best known for her prints, the show marks Lomahaftewa’s first solo exhibition in a retrospective spanning her career from high school to retirement.
“We have works from when she was 15 years old,” said Lara Evans, guest curator and associate professor of art history. “In the beginning, she was experimenting with Abstract Expressionism. Then she breaks out into the aesthetic of explosive mark-making. Then she expands it with figurative work, influenced by Hopi and Choctaw painting.”
Lomahaftewa’s father was Hopi; her mother was Choctaw
The works follow Lomahaftewa as a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts, her scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute, where she earned both her bachelors’ and master’s degrees, to her work as a teacher at IAIA and beyond.
“I think she’s been overlooked at bit,” Evans said. “She was in the first cohort of IAIA.
“There historically wasn’t as much publicity about the women of her generation as much as the men.
“She’s sort of an artist’s artist,” Evans continued. “She’s collected by many Native American artists as well.”
In San Francisco, Lomahaftewa’s class included T.C. Cannon, Kevin Red Star and Bill Prokopiof. Of the four, only she graduated. She would go on to teach at Sonoma State University and the University of California at Berkeley before returning to IAIA.
“Healing Prayers for a Pandemic Universe” is a mixed-media collage from 2020.
“We all have a different way of praying,” Lomahaftewa said. “It
could be an abstract version of a healing prayer. When I put the stars in, it was to the universe for healing.”
The museum rented Lomaheftewa studio space to create her current work.
“It’s a very abstracted interpretation of balance and imbalance,” Evans said. “Some works are evocative of the virus and others are of things coming together.”
“Untitled (detail),” late ’60s-early-’70s, is a large (65by-60.5 inches) oil on canvas splashed with the artist’s signature vibrant color palette.
“That was when I was in San Francisco,” Lomahaftewa said. “The corn to me is growth; the triangles are mountains. The diamonds and triangles are also from the Choctaw culture.”
The exhibition marks the first time the series has been publicly displayed, Evans said.
“It gives you an idea of her composition, the forms; they’re really compelling,” she said.
In San Francisco, Lomahaftewa felt the mammoth influence of the Abstract Expressionist movement, as well as the psychedelic handbills tacked to the telephone poles, as shown in the pen and ink drawing “Untitled (from Artist College Portfolio),” ca. 1965-75.
In 2001, Lomahaftewa created a monotype in reaction to the Cerro Grande Fire. The 2000 fire started as a controlled burn, then spread because of high winds and drought conditions. At the time, she was living in Pojoaque and working in Santa Fe. The composition features Black Mesa with the fires raining down and a row of cornstalks in the foreground.
“I was driving back and forth and looking at the night sky,” she said.
For the monotype “Crescent Moon” (1999), Lomahaftewa lifted the image of a lizard-like motif in the foreground from a Utah petroglyph.
“I was calling it the horned serpent and then the dragon,” she said. “The spiral represents the migration path.”
The Awatovi parrot is another repeated symbol.
“I did a series of that parrot,” Lomahaftewa said. “It came from one of the kiva ruins of a parrot that was destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt.”
Awatovi is the name of a Hopi village.
“The parrots are very important natural symbols that came from Central America,” Evans said. “They are associated with water, rainfall. Their long feathers attract the rain and drip over their backs.”
Lomahaftewa came from an artistic family who encouraged her creativity.
“I just have to paint,” she said. “I’ve done artwork ever since I was little. In kindergarten I wanted to be either an artist, a nurse or a teacher. I think I became all three.”
Lomahaftewa’s influence can be seen in the work of her former students Tony Abeyta, Ken Williams and America Meredith.