Native artists are breaking boundaries beyond ‘Indian’ art labels, making their own paths

6 mn read

Flat-roofed homes with exterior walls hand-stacked from western New Mexico’s signature buff, mud-plastered limestone cluster around the central plaza in this Laguna Pueblo town. 

One is more than 300 years old, a structure that has been repaired and added to with modern concrete blocks. An electric line snakes in from a nearby pole, and a satellite dish glints in the sun. The stout walls and roof are constructed with wooden beams that support waterproof roofing material to keep the dwelling warm and dry on a blustery spring day.

Welcome to the home of Pat Pruitt.

Stepping through the plain wooden door, visitors see far more than just an old house. The living quarters are small — Pruitt said his entire family of five used to sleep in the existing bedroom — but behind the original house lies an addition that tells a different story.

Three large rooms house the tools of Pruitt’s trade. Lathes, drill presses, computer-controlled machining tools known as CNC, milling machines, computer stations for design work and hand tools sit everywhere. Skateboard decks and other art pieces brighten the stark gray walls.

The largest room serves as a storage room and, when boxes and crates are shifted to the walls, a dining hall for feast days. A second floor with more living space and a media room was a recent addition.

Like many Native artists, Pruitt is a metalworker, though his preferred materials aren’t silver or gold, but stainless steel or titanium. Instead of intricately cut and inlaid stone, he prefers rougher industrial diamonds or stingray skin to adorn his creations.

“I was involved in a pretty traumatic bike accident when I was 15,” he said. “It fractured my skull, knocked out seven teeth and laid me out so I had a pretty intensive healing period.”

During his recovery, Pruitt was bored and asked a neighbor, silversmith Greg Lewis, to teach him the trade. Later, Pruitt worked with another Laguna artist, Charlie Bird. Between the two acclaimed artists, Pruitt gained a firm foundation in working metal.

Pruitt fell back into jewelry while a “starving student” at Southern Methodist University in the early 1990s, where he studied mechanical engineering.

“The body piercing scene had come out from underground and I got involved in the scene,” he said. “I was like, ’I can make this jewelry.’” 

Soon what began as making pieces for friends grew into a thriving business producing jewelry for the industry. It was also his introduction to stainless steel and titanium.

But Pruitt’s business stalled with the arrival of cheaper imported jewelry. So the ever-adaptive artist pivoted: He cut a new path in Native art by merging his early training in silversmithing with his newly acquired machining skills and interest in non-traditional materials.

The result was, at first, mixed. Like other artists whose work doesn’t shout “Indian,” Pruitt found collectors turning their noses up at his pieces. Some museums and galleries, mistaking his work as factory-made, didn’t want to carry it.

But they came around after he won one of the first Conrad House Innovation Awards at the Heard Museum Indian Fair & Market in 2007 for a rubber timing belt and stainless steel collar and leash set, “Lucky 13.” The award is named after the Navajo/Oneida artist who created expressive artworks in a variety of media.

Since then, Pruitt has delved into the limits of metals such as anodized titanium accented with stingray skin, rubber and industrial diamonds. 

His career has allowed him to move back to the Pueblo, where he said he’s been able to fulfill his role as a Pueblo man: serving on the council, helping with orchards and other agriculture, helping dig graves for funerals.

At age 50, Pruitt embarked on a new road: He went back to finish his bachelor’s degree at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“I’ve gone as far as I can without a degree,” he said. Pruitt is also using the time to continue growing as an artist. He will continue working from his Paguate studio, improving his home a bit at a time as he accumulates funds.

“They don’t give home improvement loans on the reservation,” he said.

And he’s committed to controlling his destiny, which includes exhibits. Pruitt terminated the contract for a proposed mid-career retrospective exhibit when the museum said his early work in body piercing art, which started him on a life in metal-crafted art, wouldn’t be part of the show.

In wind-swept Winslow, Arizona, two brothers lay their route

The town that the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway built is a study in contrasts. 

Home to about 10,000 people, Winslow, Arizona, is a bit rough around the edges. Yet it boasts an elegant, restored Fred Harvey Company-era hotel, one of a handful of Amtrak stations in the state, bars, restaurants and lots of places in its Victorian-era downtown to purchase Route 66 memorabilia. Even the sculptor of the iconic bronze “Standing on the Corner” that pays homage to the Eagles’ song “Take it Easy” hawks T-shirts featuring his work.

But the little railroad town that is now a crew-change hub for BNSF Railway is also a mini-hub for another industry: artists. Several Native artists have settled in Winslow, or Béésh Sinil, the “Place of Steel Rails” in Navajo. 

Two of those artists are brothers Marlowe and Yancey Katoney.

Marlowe’s pictorial textiles resemble nothing like the usual Navajo motifs. Instead of folksy scenes of hogans, sheep, women bedecked in rich velvet skirts and turquoise and their men sporting wide-brimmed hats and boots, Marlowe Katoney’s works depict skateboarders, realistic images of Code Talkers, all-seeing eyes radiating out and the Navajo Tree of Life featuring a flock of Angry Birds. His colors can be dazzling near neon-bright or subdued like the first glimmers of sunrise.

Marlowe didn’t set out to become one of Indian Country’s most unconventional weavers, though he’s been interested in the art since observing his maternal grandmother weave. 

“I was always fascinated by the strings and what they did,” Marlowe said. “But I thought I was going to be a teacher.”He went to the University of Arizona on a scholarship, inspired by Native art legends and fellow rebels Charles Loloma, the Hopi jeweler whose work was at first rejected because it wasn’t “Indian” enough, and Luiseño painter Fritz Scholder, who never really felt he was Native. Both studied at UA. Marlowe studied art history, American Indian studies and literature, intending to move into painting.

But the money ran out and Marlowe struggled to work and attend college. “Eventually it just didn’t work out like I wanted so I ended up coming home,” he said. 

Back in Winslow, Marlowe waited tables at the Turquoise Room at La Posada and worked as a patient registration clerk at the Winslow Indian Health Care Center before moving to art full time. Grandma showed Marlowe the ropes — or the strings — of weaving so he would “have something to fall back on.” 

Marlowe paints portraits using dyed wool instead of oils, pastels or watercolor, wielding his eye for color, his love of popular culture and Navajo culture and his formal art training.

Some of his first works were butterflies, “three maroon butterflies with blue dots.”

A visit to the R.B. Burnham Trading Post in Sanders proved to be a turning point as he wove his career with vegetal-dyed yarn. 

“Sherry Burnham and her husband had seen my weaving and said they saw something in it,” Marlowe said. Her dad, trader Bruce Burnham, had a supply of specially ordered yarns from Britain and Pennsylvania that he planned to use to revive the Germantown weaving style, and gave Marlowe one skein of every color. 

“Let me see what you can do with this,” Bruce said.

Marlowe’s career took off from there. He soon became known for his unique takes on both Navajo traditions to street skating and raves. In 2017, Marlowe won a Conrad House award at the Heard Indian Fair for a breakdance textile. 

Since then, Marlowe has made a name for himself as an eclectic artist. He said he works with both vegetal and aniline-dyed yarn to create textiles that are more paintings than traditional Navajo design.

The “Angry Birds” textile, which is in the Heard Museum’s collection, was recreated in Lego bricks. He also had a one-man exhibit of his work at the UA’s Museum of Art in 2023. 

After taking a hiatus from markets, he’s headed to the Heard Indian Fair in 2025. “I owe them a lot,” he said. 

Marlowe’s younger brother Yancey also works in color–paint and ink. Yancey is a talented muralist whose work brightens the brick and block walls of Winslow buildings.

He brought a reporter and photographer from The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network, to a side wall of a café and former trading post that he adorned with Navajo, Hopi and Hispanic symbology, including wedding baskets, textiles, Frida Kahlo and a figure resembling a cross between a kachina and R2D2 from “Star Wars.”

Yancey said he wants to move his tattoo shop to bigger digs. He had been renting a corner in an existing tattoo and body piercing shop but would like more space.

He showcased his exacting work in ink at his current space. Yancey carefully guided the needle loaded with black ink into the arm of one of his customers, tracing the outline of a Greek god onto the man’s bicep. The customer would return to have the picture filled in once he saved more money. 

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