MICHAEL KABOTIE

– MICHAEL KABOTIE (LOMAWYWESA) –

Hopi, 1942-2009

Michael Kabotie was born September 3, 1942, in Shongopovi, Arizona to Alice Talayaonema, a traditional Hopi basket weaver, and the Hopi artist Fred Kabotie. He grew up in the village of Shongopavi and when the high school on the Hopi reservation closed, he moved and graduated from Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas in 1961. While in his junior year in high school, he was invited to spend the summer at the Southwest Indian Art Project at the University of Arizona, other participants included Fritz Scholder, Helen Hardin, Charles Loloma, and Joe Hererra (Hererra became a lifelong friend and a primary artistic mentor).

Kabotie inherited his mothers membership in the Snow Clan and he was initiated into the Hopi Wuwutsim Society in 1967. During this ceremony he was given the Hopi name, Lomawywesa (Walking in Harmony), which he used to sign his paintings and hallmark his jewelry.

His father Fred Kabotie helped develop many of the overlay techniques that have come to typify quality Hopi silverwork, and he learned these techniques as a teenager. He began to paint soon after high school and had a one-man show at the Heard Museum, soon after dropping out of University of Arizona engineering in 1966.