Shawn Tafoya

Ronald and Susan Dubin Fellowship

Shawn Tafoya is a Santa Clara/Pojoaque Pueblo artist who is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a member of the prominent Tafoya family of potters, and began making art at the age of five. Although Shawn is a traditionalist in terms of material and technique, his pottery and Pueblo embroidery work is strikingly innovative, and he is well known for it. He has won numerous awards for his work, and has participated in many shows and exhibitions.

Shawn is also one of the most gifted Pueblo textile embroiderers working today and teaches this traditional art throughout the northern villages. He participated as the youngest of eleven invited embroiderers in the School’s Pueblo Embroidery Convocation in February 1996 and assisted in planning an Embroidery Market at San Felipe Pueblo in October 1996.

Shawn has taught many courses in pottery and embroidery at the Poeh Center in Pojoaque, New Mexico, as part of an Indian Vocational Education Program.