Michael Kabotie

Hopi Pueblo, Second Mesa, 1942-2009

BiographyMichael Kabotie, 1942–2009, was a Hopi silversmith, painter, and sculptor.

Michael Kabotie was the son of the famous Hopi artist Fred Kabotie, and he grew up in the village of Shungopavi. Kabotie graduated from Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas in 1961. While in his junior year, he was invited to spend the summer at the Southwest Indian Art Project at the University of Arizona. Kabotie made art works for close to fifty years. His father Fred Kabotie helped develop many of the overlay techniques that have come to typify quality Hopi silverwork, and Kabotie 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 college. In the early 1970s Kabotie founded with painters Neil David Sr and Terranca Talaswaima a group called Artist Hopid which was dedicated to new interpretation of traditional Hopi art forms. After that, Kabotie painted, made jewelry, wrote poetry and essays, and lectured around the country.

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