Linda Lomahaftewa

Background

Linda J. Lomahaftewa was born July 3, 1947 in Phoenix, Arizona. Her parents had met at an Indian boarding school. Her late father was Hopi, her mother, who lives in Arizona, is Choctaw from Oklahoma. She and her family lived in Phoenix and Los Angeles, California.

She attended a strict mission boarding school in 1961 but transferred to Phoenix Indian School, then the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1962, the year the school opened. Upon graduation from IAIA, Linda earned a scholarship to attend the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California, along with fellow artists, T.C. Cannon, Kevin Red Star, and Bill Prokopiof. Of the four, only Linda graduated from SFAI. After earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, she went on to earn her Master of Fine Arts degrees at SFAI in 1971.

Artwork

Dawn Reno writes of Linda's work that, "She unites the ancient Indian world with the contemporary in her modernistic paintings and has done a series of abstract landscapes which are considered the most powerful in her body of work." Of her own art, she writes that her "imagery comes from being Hopi and remembering shapes and colors from ceremonies and from landscape. I associate a special power and respect, a sacredness, with these colors and shapes, and this carries over into my work."

Although best known for her printmaking, Ribbon Shirt, her contribution to the major traveling exhibit, Indian Humor, is a typical contemporary ribbon shirt bedecked with an array of medals, buttons, and award ribbons from various Native American art shows.

Career and honors

She has participated in innumerable group and solo exhibits including those at the American Indian Contemporary Art gallery in San Francisco; the Heard Museum in Phoenix; the American Indian Community House in New York City; and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe.

She was listed in the 8th Edition of the International Who's Who in 1984. Her work can be found in such public collections at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona; the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos, New Mexico; the US Department of the Interior, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, Washington, DC; the Southern Plains Indian Museum, Anadarko, Oklahoma; the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada; the Native American Center for the Living Arts, Niagara Falls, New York; and the Center for the Arts of Indian America, Washington, DC.

Linda began teaching at Sonoma State University and later at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976, she accepting a position teaching two-dimensional studio arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she still teaches today.

“I’m happy that I’m recognized as a Native woman artist,” she was quoted as saying. “And that I’m still doing work after all this time. A lot of people give up."

Personal

Linda has a son, Logan L. Slock, and a daughter, Tatiana Lomahaftewa Singer, who is a curator of contemporary Native arts. Her brother, the late Dan Lomahaftewa (1951–2005), was also a celebrated artist. Her first cousins, Roger and Marcus Amerman are internationally known Choctaw beadworkers.

Notable Exhibitions

Public Collections