Melanie Yazzie


Melanie Yazzie is a Navajo sculptor, painter and printmaker.

Background

Yazzie was born in 1966 in Ganado, Arizona, United States. She is Navajo of the, born for. She grew up on the Navajo Nation. Although she grew up on the Navajo Nation, Melanie Yazzie is of the Salt Water Clan born for the Bitter Water Clan.
She first studied art at the Westtown School in Pennsylvania. Yazzie earned a BA in Studio Art with a minor in Spanish from Arizona State University in 1990 and an MFA in printmaking from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1993.

Artwork

Melanie Yazzie works a wide range of media that include printmaking, painting, sculpting, and ceramics, as well as installation art. Her art is accessible to the public on many levels and the main focus is on connecting with people and educating people about the contemporary status of one indigenous woman and hoping that people can learn from her experience.
Her subject matter is significant because the serious undertones reference native post-colonial dilemmas. Melanie's work focuses primarily on themes of indigenous people. Her work often brings images of women from many indigenous cultures to the forefront. Thus her work references matrilineal systems and points to the possibility of female leadership. There are many layers to the works and with in the story layers many discover that our history is varied and deep. It is made clear that there are many indigenous peoples in the world and we all have different stories and it sometimes has a sad connection to mainstream society. Often misunderstood and overlooked are the ways in which we can all learn from each other and make a better world. Yazzie also collaborates with other indigenous nation artists to increase further cognizance and create shared experiences through art practice about indigenous people.
A recurring motif in some of Yazzie's work has been Blue Bird flour sacks, which provided clothing material to many people during their childhoods. The flour sacks are also known to be used for table cloths, food protection, curtains in hogan homes. The Blue Bird flour sacks are an essential icon from Yazzie's childhood. They serve as a connection to her grandparents and also a connection to memories of butchering sheep, a time honored event with her family while growing up.
Yazzie is known for her multilayered monotypes that focus on storytelling and reflect her dreamtime friends and companions. The works are filled with colors and textures that reflect different world. The works are made with stencils and often she is printing with soy based inks called Akua inks that are safe for the artist and the environment. The works most often are printed on Arches 88 due to the absorbing quality of that 100% rag paper. It is a fine art paper made in France and very soft to the touch. It is a paper designed originally for screen printing but is the perfect surface for many of the works Yazzie creates. The works often are monotypes as opposed to monoprints. So the works are a one of a kind work of art and not made in multiples. The monotypes are often what she creates on travels to various printmaking studios worldwide in which she shares these techniques and sometimes collaborates with other indigenous artists worldwide.

Professional career

Yazzie has led over 100 international print exchanges over a 20-year time period. Many of these exchanges include artists from Siberia, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Germany. These international print exchanges examine many issues relevant our current day societies and the invited artists are asked to respond to the issues or themes in making their work for a these exchanges. These projects are community building events that help people connect over large distances and often they are also used as teaching tools in art studios across the globe. Some of the projects are held in the Artist Printmaker Research Collection at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX. It is an excellent resource for researching many artists in the contemporary printmaking scene. Website: http://artistprintmakerresearchcollection.org/tag/peter-briggs/ Other projects can be seen by visiting the University of Colorado at Boulder Special Collections located in the university library.You many make an appointment to see some of these amazing projects through this website: https://web.archive.org/web/20140407094714/https://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/specialcollections/
In addition to teaching at the Institute of American Indian Arts, the College of Santa Fe, Boise State University, and the University of Arizona, Yazzie taught at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art in France.
A selection of major exhibitions from the 1990s to present include "Between Two Worlds" at Arizona State University, "Traveling" at the Heard West Museum, "About Face: Self-Portraits by Native American, First Nations, and Inuit Artists" at the Wheelwright Museum, "Making Connections" in Bulova, Russia, "Navajo in Gisborne" in Gisborne, New Zealand and "Watchful Eyes" at the Heard Museum.
She is a Professor and Head of Printmaking at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She teaches printmaking courses and travels extensively to indigenous communities within the United States and abroad. She can always be found through the University of Colorado Art and Art History Department.
She is included in books by Zena Pearlstone, Lucy Lippard and Jackson Rushing, and collected nationally and internationally in private and public collections.
In 2012, the Denver Art Museum welcomed Yazzie as artist-in-residence, making her the first in the Native Arts department.
On September 2013 she co-curated the exhibition "Heart Lines: Expressions of Native North American Art" in Colorado University Art Museum, partially based on her private collection and including her work "Pollen Girl".
In February 2014 she opened the largest retrospective of her work in 20 years at the University of New Mexico Art Museum titled Geographies of Memory curated by Lisa Tamiris Becker, Director of the UNM Art Museum. The exhibit ran through May 2014. A beautiful catalogue was published for the exhibition.
Yazzie's solo show, “Histories Beyond Homeland,” opened on October 8, 2015 at the University of Denver Museum of Anthropology. This exhibit consists of Yazzie's depiction of landscape drawings, drawn from the perspective of someone looking down at the earth. Works displayed use guache, an opaque substance similar to watercolor paint, and handmade paper, in these aerial view interpretations.
The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, New Mexico opened a solo show entitled "Memory Weaving:Works by Melanie Yazzie" in May 2018. The exhibit continued through October 6, 2018. https://wheelwright.org/exhibitions/memory-weaving/