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Dawn Navasie & Donald Mahkewa Jr. - Hopi 
"Dawn Navasie is a superb artist in the Hopi Tewa tradition, she paints with a sure hand and has a design vision that recalls the beauty and quality of her mother's work..." --Jonathan Fairbanks, The Katharine Lane Weems Curator of American Decorative Arts & Sculpture Museum of Fine Arts - Boston, Massachusetts Dawn Navasie studied pottery making with her mother Fawn Navasie (d.1992) as well as with her grandmother Agnes Navasie (Pólíinih). Helping her create these magnificent pieces is her husband Donald Mahkewa Jr., who also studied with Fawn. Together they produce pottery of the highest quality. Dawn, who is a member of the Water Clan, uses design inherited from her mother as well as traditional shapes that express Hopi concerns regarding water. Their pottery exhibits big, bold shapes, with cloud or pain patterns and abstractions of water birds and thunder birds enveloping their forms. Her handling of negative and positive space is highly sophisticated. Dawn's native name is Pólaquimana which means Red Tail Hawk. She and Donald gather their clay in the same place that her mother harvested hers. In true Hopi tradition she uses natural sources for her paints: wild bee plant, hematite and red clay. The firing is likewise done in the traditional manner using dry sheep dung as fuel. Donald (a member of the Sun Clan) assists in the gathering of these materials as well as creating the pot's shape and polish. Dawn is solely responsible for the painting of each piece. Dawn and Donald's work has been featured in the February 1996 Arizona Highways magazine as well as in the book "Art of the Hopi -Contemporary Journeys on Ancient Pathways", They have also won many awards in Traditional Hopi Pottery: 1st place at the Gallup Ceremonial, 1st place at the Hopi Build and 1st place and Best of Pottery at the Museum of Northern Arizona. << Prev Artist HOME Next Artist >> |