The art of Melanie A. Yazzie aims to bring healing and good into the world. Her new exhibition is a culmination of her artistic journey.
At first glance, the organic shapes and colors in Melanie A. Yazzie’s art evoke a dreamlike world filled with fanciful animals, full-skirted women, flitting birds and butterflies, and plants in a fertile symbology all her own. On closer inspection, the artist’s varied iconography invokes her Native American identity and personal experience. A member of the Navajo Nation (Diné), a longstanding matrilineal society, Yazzie puts what she carries deep within as an Indigenous woman into printmaking, painting, sculpting, ceramics, and installation art.
In addition to being a practicing artist, Yazzie is currently an art professor and the head of the printmaking department at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her journey to this position took her from her early studies at Arizona State University in Tempe to teaching posts at the University of Arizona in Tucson and the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe. She received her master’s at the University of Colorado, where her current post has helped expand her vision into other media, including bronzes, large-scale outdoor installations in steel and aluminum, and designs in jewelry and scarves. But Yazzie is best-known for her multilayered monotypes, one of-a-kind print pieces reflecting a magical environment that speaks of another time and place while carrying a deeply personal message.
The Dream, 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 48”.
The art of printmaking often entails the unexpected, since pulling a print off a plate can have varying results. This element of serendipitous surprise enhances Yazzie’s approach to her work and teaching style. “There’s something about the plates and surface and how I can alter each one that gives me a certain centeredness,” she says. “I tell my students not to worry — the print that looks ugly is the one you want. I’m OK with experimentation and the space to learn, to find my own path.” For Yazzie, who has struggled with health challenges, it’s not just about the surface design, it’s about manifesting through art her dream of “creating a beautiful and healing world.”
That’s the energy that imbues her aptly titled one-woman exhibition, Waking Dream, at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West, where the artist is quoted about her process and purpose: “Often in life we wait till we fall asleep to dream. I, on the other hand, live in a space where much of what I make and see in my work comes from dreams that are ever-present. Many come when I am doing my morning walks and find myself in a calm space at the beginning of my day. I work at finding calm and peace and begin to create what this brings to me. I find that sharing this part of me evokes positive energy, which I further share in my work. I try hard to focus on balance. There’s so much unbalance and sadness in the world and not many places for good and for happiness. The work I make is about this space — a space for us to be filled with colors and with calm.”
Remembering Brittany. Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”.
Yazzie credits her grandparents for her outlook, inspiration, and early experiences that would influence her creativity. She was raised by parents who were both educators and who maintained a home on the school campus in Ganado, Arizona, but it was visiting her grandparents in Wide Ruins, a remote part of the Navajo Nation, that provided a strong experiential and visual foundation. Her grandmother was a traditional rug weaver and was a major influence on her. Her grandfather tended sheep and a few horses, but surrounding their rustic home ranged rabbits, coyotes, prairie dogs, birds, and other desert denizens — wild things that would dwell in Yazzie’s memory, destined to surface again.
“My grandparents were the very foundation of how I see the world,” she says. “My grandpa was very resourceful, repurposing old signage into siding and fencing, indirectly preserving graphic images of American culture. My work is largely based on these memories, a way of transmitting stories, experiences, and feelings I have had.”
Grandmother, 2018. Aluminum with powder coat, edition of eight, 60” x 25” x 21”.
Also formative were the road trips her parents took the family on to visit national parks and much of America. “They wanted us to see beyond the borders of the Navajo Nation,” Yazzie says. Today, travel remains a big part of her life since she’s become a sought-after speaker and artist-in-residence worldwide. Her growing reputation has taken her to Japan, Russia, France, New Zealand, and Italy, to name a few. Not surprisingly, the image of an airplane appears in many works, a symbolic conveyance reaching across distance and time.
Yazzie’s long-term success in the art world, measured by a significant list of exhibitions and museum shows, can be attributed in part to her commitment to her craft and in abundance to her joyful spirit. As a printmaker especially, her brilliant layered images speak to an evolving creative force that inspires the imagination and fuels a world of good.
Planting Helper, 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 48”.
Waking Dream: Works by Navajo Artist Melanie Yazzie is on view through July 14 at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West (scottsdalemuseumwest.org). She is represented by Glenn Green Galleries in Santa Fe (glenngreengalleries.com).
From our July 2024 issue.
HEADER IMAGE: Thinking Good. Mixed media on paper, 30” x 42”.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Glenn Green Galleries, Santa Fe