Hopi Artist Michael Kabotie Passes Away

: Image via Wikipedia

Renowned Hopi artist Michael Kabotie recently passed away at the age of 67 on 23 October.

Born and raised on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona, he became a world famous painter and jeweler. He continued the work of his father Fred Kabotie in the technique of using silver overlay which had become a signature of Hopi silver jewelry.

He was greatly involved in bringing to the modern age traditional Hopi art with new interpretations, and founded a group known as Artist Hopid in 1973.

His involvement with painting started at an early age. He enrolled as an engineering student at the University of Arizona, but dropped out. Instead his artistic career blossomed with a one-man show at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, which still houses his works, as do museums in England and Germany.

He taught his overlay techniques at the Idyllwild Arts Foundation in California, and was well-received as a lecturer at home and abroad. In addition to painting and jewelry, he also sculpted and wrote poems and essays.

He was undoubtedly, as was his father, an icon of Hopi art.