facebookpixel
Select Page

Iva Honyestewa

2014

Eric and Barbara Dobkin Fellowship

A Hopi/Navajo basketmaker from Second Mesa, Arizona, Iva Honyestewa has been creating Hopi sifter baskets for sixteen years. “I learned how to make sifter baskets from my first cousin Beth Dawahongnewa. In 2006, my cousin told me she couldn’t believe how good I made them. That’s when I decided to enter the art competitions. I am excited that I am climbing the ladder of the artist world … I believe I can share my art with the world in creating new unusually unique baskets or figures.”

2014 Dobkin Fellow Iva Honyestewa speaks about her artist residency at SAR and new techniques in basketweaving. Video by John Sadd.

While in residence, Honyestewa intends to combine the processes of Hopi plaque weaving with sifter basket weaving in a project called, “Building on Life’s Creation with Yucca.” She will also work on creating flat weavings of Hopi clan migration symbols based on stories she has learned over the years in a project titled, “Where the Sun Fits In.” According to Honyestewa, “the IARC fellowship will help me by allowing me time to work on my baskets to create new ideas that I have been putting aside.”

In addition to basketmaking, Iva has owned and operated the Isasokpu Gallery, a Native American arts store for twenty years. She is also working part-time on revising a Hopi Cookbook for the Hopi Putavi Project in partnership with the Hopi Community Health Representative Office, the Hopi Special Diabetes Program, and the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension Hopi Office. Iva has contributed to the peer reviewed publication, Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition with her article, “Understanding Access to and Use of Traditional Foods by Hopi Women” (Volume 4 Issue 2, pp158-171.) Additionally, she has volunteered for many youth projects, including the Songoopafhoyam Youth Project, the annual Christmas program, Hopi language classes and Substance Abuse Prevention presentations. Working part-time for the United States Department of Agriculture, Iva supervised, tracked, reviewed and reported on sixteen enumerators who surveyed for the 2007 Agricultural survey.

Honyestewa will be in residence from March 3—June 2, 2014.

Sponsored by Dobkin Family Foundation.