This is the first post in a series to introduce the participating printmakers and their collaborators for the 2016 edition of the Intersecting Methods Portfolio. Every two weeks, into mid-December, a new profile of a collaborative pair will be posted. This segment profiles Melanie Yazzie, Professor and Head of Printmaking in the Department of Art and Art History at University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, and her collaborator, Dakota Nanton.
Melanie Yazzie
As a printmaker, painter, and sculptor, Melanie Yazzie’s work draws upon her rich Diné (Navajo) cultural heritage. Her work follows the Diné dictum “walk in beauty” literally, creating beauty and harmony. As an artist, she works to serve as an agent of change by encouraging others to learn about social, cultural, and political phenomena shaping the contemporary lives of Native peoples in the United States and beyond.
Yazzie uses her travels around the world to connect with other indigenous peoples. Her visits to New Zealand, the Arctic, the Pueblos in the Southwest, and to indigenous peoples of Russia, these travels have been the impetus for continued dialogue about Indigenous cultural practices, language, song, story-telling, and survival.
She has exhibited widely, both in the United States and abroad. Her works are in the Phippen Art Museum, The Australian National Gallery and the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Print Collection, Providence. She has been reviewed in Focus Magazine, Santa Fe, the Los Angeles Times, New Zealand Herald, and she is mentioned in Printmaking in the Sun by Dan Welden and Pauline Muir, Native American Art in the Twentieth Century by W. Jackson Rushing III, and The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multi Centered Society by Lucy Lippard. She has had over 150 group and solo exhibitions combined. Yazzie makes prints, sculptures, paintings, and mixed media works. Her work can always be found at the Glenn Green Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Ms. Yazzie is a Professor and Head of Printmaking in the Department of Art and Art History at University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.
Here are three examples of Melanie’s printmaking work.
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- Pollen Girl 2013
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- Dream 2013
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- Girl in Pendleton 2013
Dakota Nanton
Dakota Nanton was drawn to printmaking by its complex relationship between the right brain and left. A Professional Research Associate for the Boulder School for Condensed Matter and Materials Physics and the Soft Materials Research Center an NSF MRSEC, Nanton graduated summa cum laude from the University of Colorado with both a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Fine Arts. His work in the sciences focuses on scientific outreach and education in the emergent fields of soft matter, biophysics and materials research.
His artwork draws inspiration from such diverse areas as pulp comics, scientific illustration, mythology, and science fiction. Borrowing from the images and iconography of the past, and mixing old techniques with new, he explores the complexities and contradictions of living in the modern world. His work has been exhibited all around the world and is held in permanent collections in the United States, Canada, Italy, Australia, Egypt and New Zealand.
He is currently completing a three-year emerging artist fellowship with the Venice printmaking studio.
Look for the next profile in two weeks. In the meantime, R&D editions will have its regular bi-weekly updates on studio work in between the profiles.
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