Page 15 - the NOISE January 2015

THe conscioUs eXPressions
oF ed KABotie
FROM FAR LEFT: Path to Balance, Freedom Runner (among the artist’s most recent works) and a bracelet of Mr. Kabotie’s, which carries on the tradition of Hopi silversmithing.
By CLAiR AnnA RoSe
At The Artists Gallery in downtown Flagstaff, I meet with reservation have been hurt by politics, we’ve been hurt and
it is a journey,” Mr. Kabotie recalls. “We make a choice as to how we’re going to live in this life. It may sound a little bit morbid, but I like to look at my life at the end—how I’ll be remembered and what I’ve left behind. To me that’s the most important thing.”
Mr. Kabotie came to Flagstaff starting a new chapter in life in the Fall of 2011. “It was a very low point in my life. I was dealing with divorce and personal legal issues. I needed the experience where I could bring myself to be in a place where I could see straight. When I moved here my father had just passed away,” he reflects. “It snowed, and with my father be- ing Snow Clan and being next to the mountain that was very significant.”
“I was restricted in what I could do, so I started playing mu- sic on the street,” says Mr. Kabotie. “That was survival mode for me. I was busking throughout the winter. It was a tough existence.” It was playing on the street that also led him to meet the members of summit dub squad, a local band he now plays drums for and has formed a second project that he fronts with band members Hunter RedDay and Andrew Baker, called Tha yoties.
Since coming to Flagstaff, Mr. Kabotie has been involved in The Artists’ Gallery and is currently artist in residence at the Museum of northern Arizona. “It is because of them that I am able to do what I do,” he says. “My residency has been a catalyst to establish myself as an artist and musician in the community.” As artist in residence he is grateful for the opportunity to explore his own creativity and to share his knowledge through lectures at the museum. During his resi- dency he has also taken classes at Coconino Community Col- lege and been a recipient of a Business Empowerment Grant through Coconino County Community Services. This last year he was nominated for a Viola award in the performing arts through the Flagstaff Arts Council.
Mr. Kabotie leaves me with these thoughts on his art, “My hope is that through the arts I’m able to give something con- scious to this world, even if it causes negative feelings within us, even if it stabs at our conscience. Life is about living con- sciously. I am not a picture of virtue by any means, but I hope that my art is an expression of the best parts of me—distilled like a cloud, and strong like a mountain. These are things that I aspire to.”
Join Ed Kabotie and his bands Twin Rivers, Tha Yoties and Summit Dub Squad, along with Innastate, Pato Banton and oth- ers on January 24, 2015 at the orpheum Theater for “rumble on the Mountain,” a celebration of water. edkabotie.com
Clair Anna Rose enjoys snow made fresh from the clouds. editor@thenoise.us
Ed Kabotie, Okhuwa P’ing, which in Tewa means “Cloud Mountain,” who begins to tell me about his artwork. “Path to Balance is a drawing illustrating the universal journey of life: from conception to dysfunction, from destruction to restora- tion, and ultimately... to balance,” Mr. Kabotie says.
In Yellow Snow on the Mountain, a Hopi/Tewa clown skis on the drifts of yellow snow created by the reclaimed water that is shown being piped onto the San Francisco Peaks. “This is a very appropriate place for the clown, understanding our culture,” Mr. Kabotie says. “Katsinas represent all that is good,
virtuous and spiritual, while the clown represents humanity
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with all of its dysfunction and disregard for natural order. He’s
having a good time up there, meanwhile this water is sinking down into the ground.” Above ground a rainbow in a color sequence of red, green and yellow represents the water in the atmosphere, while below ground the colors appear in the or- der of red, yellow and green. “There’s something chemically altered about the water as it seeps down,” he says. “It’s affect- ing the sensitive species.” He shows me how he has drawn the frogs to all be female, representing endocrine disruption. He explains the presence of the plumed serpent Paalolokon. “Being the guardian of water he’s rising up in anger, he’s pissed. His appearance is associated with judgment and natural di- saster—like earth quakes and floods—when things are out of balance and messed up in this world. I think it’s very impor- tant that we remember that this issue is not over.”
Freedom runner, commemorates the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. “When most people think of the origins of American history they think of Jamestown,” Mr. Kabotie says. “We lived under inquisitional Catholic oppression from 1598 all the way
to 1680. As pueblo people, we are first contact people.”
After a public hanging of four medicine men and the scourging of men accused of lesser crimes in the Santa Fe Plaza, a Tewa man, Po’pay, organized a plan for revolt of the Puebloan people against Spanish rule. Runners were sent to all the pueblo villages across Arizona and New Mexico. “It was
illegal for a Native American to own a horse, so this was a re- ally remarkable feat,” Mr. Kabotie continues. “They brought knotted chords to the war chiefs of each village and told them to untie a knot at the dawn of each day. The untying of the last knot would be the signal for all the villages to simultane- ously revolt. It’s a little known fact that the Puebloan people of the Southwest are the only group of Native Americans to oust an established European colony from their homeland in history. The Spanish came back in 1692, they took over New Mexico but they never re-conquered Hopi.”
“I feel like that one thing is what saved our cultures, giving them the vibrancy of life that they have today,” Mr. Kabotie says. “Not to say that we haven’t lost anything, but we still live in the same places that we were living at the time of con- tact and in some cases the very same houses. People on the
damaged by being introduced to a totally foreign system. In 1906 my great-grandfather was imprisoned for refusing to send my grandfather to school. My grandfather was forced to go to school at 15 and didn’t return home until he was in his 30’s. My father was sent to Kansas for boarding school and I was sent to Santa Fe. To me, we’re still trying to pick up the pieces of not only our personal lives, but also dealing with all of the chaos of what’s happening with the stripping away of our resources and the way that it’s been done.”
“My vision as an artist is to express the values, virtues and sometimes the vices of my people,” Mr. Kabotie tells me. “I’m fascinated with our history. I feel like people in the greater culture are very ignorant of our history. I think this is also true when it comes to where people get their electricity from. People turn on their lights not realizing that their electricity comes from resources from our reservations and we experi- ence the pollution and the drying up of springs. I want my artwork to give voice to that.”
The history of his culture and of his family heavily influ- ences the art and music Mr. Kabotie creates. His Hopi Grand- father, Fred Kabotie, is noted for his murals at Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert and the teaching of Hopi silver-smith- ing techniques. “My grandfather is significant because he was taken from home and he adapted his life to living in the great- er culture, and yet maintained who he was,” Mr. Kabotie says.
“He was a US ambassador to India for a world agricultural sum- mit, his work was shown in Venice, Italy prior to WWII and he was a Guggenheim fellow. He was a prolific painter and yet at the end of his life he was a Hopi farmer who lived in harmony with the cycles of the sun and moon.”
Prior to World War II the Museum of northern Arizona was encouraging Hopi silver-smiths to pursue new jewelry techniques—differentiating their jewelry from the Navajo and Zuni styles. Fred Kabotie, along with his brother-in-law Paul Saufkie, taught silver-smithing classes to Hopi WWII Vet- erans that led to a cooperative, which later gave birth to the Hopi Cultural Center. Ed Kabotie continues the tradition of Hopi silver-smithing.
Mr. Kabotie was born to his Tewa mother who was raised in Santa Clara Pueblo, north of Santa Fe and his Hopi father, Michael Kabotie, who is well known for his life’s legacy in the arts and his Kiva Mural on permanent exhibit at the Mu- seum of northern Arizona. Mr. Kabotie spent his childhood school years in New Mexico and his summers in Hopi. At 17 he had a son, and shortly after took a break from art and mu- sic to raise his children.
About 10 years ago, Mr. Kabotie began to rekindle his inter- est in art and music, and shared the news with his father. “My father told me, ‘I’m really happy to hear you say that, but, one thing that you need to understand is that art is not a career, it’s a journey.’ I feel like his statement prepared me, because
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