View “Inside the Hopi Creators’ World”

Photography by Kitty Leaken
Written by RoseMary Diaz

Although she closed her Santa Fe gallery and retail space, Singular Couture, in 2020, artist and collector Sarah Nolan still commissions the hand-painted, one-of-a-kind silk coats for which her shop was well-known. Working with about 20 different artisans, including eight who are Native American, Nolan now showcases these wearable objets d’art from her own studio, Singular Joy, and the proceeds are donated to local charities. Some of Nolan’s favorite pieces have titles as memorable as the garments themselves—”Waving Moons,” “Celestial Waters,” “A Change of Seasons”—and are meticulously decorated with Hopi symbols of rain clouds, water, the sun, fire, cosmic dust, stars, and the night sky. These coats are the work of Hopi artisan Lorne Honyumptewa, who lives with his wife and three children in Tuba City, Arizona, just outside the Hopi village of Moenkopi.

“Lorne’s work is outstanding,” says Nolan. “Each piece is unique and distinctive. I myself have a collection [of his coats], because I couldn’t bear to sell them to anyone else.”

Moenkopi, Lorne’s ancestral home, has been continuously inhabited since the 13th century. Today it is completely surrounded by the lands of the Navajo Nation. Tuba City (pop. 9,098) lies to the north of Moenkopi, within the Navajo Nation, though a number of Hopi people also live there. Many of the mud-and-stone dwellings of Lower Moenkopi do not have running water or electricity. Ladders are used to ascend and descend the multi-story adobe structures and to reach the dirt roads below. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is presently closed to all except its residents, and access is guarded at other times.

As a whole, Native Americans have been the ethnic group hardest hit by the pandemic; mortality rates in Native communities are estimated to be as much as 2.8 times the national average. In the Southwest, where Native tribes have maintained a significant presence, many close-knit Indigenous communities have been devastated. And, tragically, many elders—the keepers of tribal languages and traditional stories—have been lost. Though curfews and stay-at-home orders have now been lifted and vaccination rates have been high, many mesas and villages in this region remain closed, and strict mask mandates continue. A cloud of pain and shock lingers.

It is difficult to convey just how remote Hopi Land is. A sovereign nation within a nation, it exists as a separate world, a microcosm where the ancient and the sacred are part of the everyday; where the land is the weft and warp of Hopi identity; and where ancestral knowledge continues to guide generations of Native artists and craftspeople. Visitors from outside the community are rare.

“I knew Lorne’s work from my photography for Singular Couture,” says Santa Fe-based photographer Kitty Leaken. The Honyumptewa family graciously invited Leaken to visit, and to photograph this intimate glimpse inside their Hopi creators’ world. Eager to learn more about the artist and his family, Leaken volunteered to deliver three sets of pre-cut silk patterns to Tuba City—about a 6-hour drive from Santa Fe.

Hopi artisan Lorne Honyumptewa, 43, lives with his family in a purple, double-wide trailer just off Tuba City’s main street. “It was love at first sight,” his wife ReAnna recalls. She was 21, dancing at a rite of passage ceremony for young Hopi women when she first saw him, and she says she knew right away he was “the one.”

Lorne had spent his early years in Picuris Pueblo, about 400 miles east of the Moenkopi community, so ReAnna had to work some family connections to find out who he was. She then baked a batch of cookies—cooking is a coveted skill among the Hopi—and presented them to his grandmother, passing her first culinary test.

A note attached to this pink fabric instructs Lorne to paint on the matte side, which is unusual. He has learned how the shiny side accepts acrylic paint, a tricky process that he spent years finessing, but this was an entirely different challenge.

ReAnna Honyumptewa, 36, and an artist in her own right, often incorporates Lorne’s designs into other usable items, such as quilts, aprons, curtains, and handbags. She also makes black-and-white beaded cuffs, which Lorne painstakingly graphs out, bead by bead, in dazzling, hypnotic patterns.

Lorne and ReAnna often gather around their kitchen table with their daughters, Loranna (12) and Maya (7), and their son Max (5). Every morning, Lorne writes an inspirational message on the family’s bulletin board—guidance for the day taken from the Galactic Calendar, based on De. Jose Arguelles’ Mayan studies. Today is a “Red Electric Earth Day,” which in Mayan astrology denotes a day of change, creativity, and integration.

Lorne’s work draws from his Hopi identity, wherein supernatural beings shape our world. As a result, he delights in the small, intricate details of Mother Earth’s designs, exploring different forms with pencil and pen, watercolor, and acrylic. The outline of this drawing of Old Moenkopi village represents a “Mudhead” katsina, also known as a Koyemsi. While mostly self-taught, Lorne says he learned a lot from his father, the artist Stetson Honyumptewa.

When Lorne first met Sarah Nolan, at the Santa Fe Indian Market in 2016, she offered him a chance to assemble and paint silk coats for her to sell. This made it “real comfortable for me to freestyle a try-out coat,” he says. His first coat was “painted” with nothing more than a permanent marker. “I was nervous,” he says, “but she showed me work by other artists and that got me into it.”

Max shows off one of his *katsinas* (also called kachinas or kachina dolls), the hand-carved wooden figures that represent Hopi supernatural beings. Katsinas play an integral role in everyday Hopi life, guiding the people to live in harmony, and in accordance with Hopi beliefs and lifeways. Among other functions, the katsinas are believed to bring renewed balance to the world, ensure successful harvests, initiate children into the Hopi ways, and—most importantly—to bring the rain.

Skilled katsina carvers can be found in every Hopi village. Family friend and neighbor D’Armon Kootswatewa, 56, has sold his award-winning katsinas at Garland’s in Sedona, AZ, for more than 30 years. He says his work follows the “action” style, expressing movement with details such as flowing hair, swinging turquoise earrings, and well defined muscles. D’Armon, who studied with noted Hopi carver Cecil Calnimptewa, Sr. (also from Moenkopi), has just finished this “Long Hair No Shoe” katsina, carved from cottonwood roots.

Lorne also includes katsinas in some of his work. The constant, often dire need for water in these arid lands forms the basis of Hopi spirituality. “The basic concept,” writes Barton Wright in the book, “Hopi Kachinas” is that “all things in the world have two forms: the visible object, and a spirit counterpart, a dualism that balances mass and energy. Katsinas are the spirit essence of everything in the real world. When the clouds form over the mountaintops and drift over the Hopi villages, it is the rain-bringing katsinas who are there.”

Lorne typically needs two to four weeks to complete a coat (on the quicker side when the creative flow is high). He sells them to Sarah Nolan for $400 each, and the retail price doubles from there. On average, he makes about six coats a year. Because epileptic seizures prevent him from working full-time or driving, Lorne stays at home with Max while the girls are in school and ReAnna goes to work.

While the traditional Hopi ribbon skirts that ReAnna sews are in high demand, she still has to keep a day job. ReAnna has worked as a baker and a hotel housekeeper, and currently works at the Department of Economic Security. The Hopi are a matriarchal society, and it’s important to ReAnna that she earn enough to support the family’s dreams. “We work together in a natural, creative flow, where our criticism is a sharp, helping tool to excite us [about our work].”

While Max runs around with his katsina dolls and flips through the television stations, Lorne starts planning the design for the pink coat. He has seen this color before, he says: “A while ago, I had a dream about a world where everything was different colors of pink. The sky, the earth, even the plants had giant blades of transparent pink grass.”

A few months after Kitty Leaken’s visit to Tuba City, in April 2022, the Honyumptewa family traveled to Santa Fe for the annual Indian Market, and to deliver the finished pink coat to Sarah Nolan. Lorne has participated in the Market since 2016 (though it was closed for two years because of COVID). “The pandemic has slowed us down, and forced us to be more distant,” Lorne says. “It forced us to stop socializing in customary, traditional ways.”

Loranna, who inherited her parents’ artistic leanings, sketches characters inspired by Japanese anime, incorporating design elements from her Hopi heritage. She has already sold some of her drawings, and she won a first-place ribbon at the Indian Market this year. “Our Bean Dance in February will be a very special and important time for our daughter,” ReAnna says. “She will mature into a young woman and be initiated [into the way of the katsinas].”

The finished pink coat, titled “Butterfly Rose,” was delivered to Sarah Nolan, who decided to keep it for her personal collection. Lorne Honyumptewa’s hand-painted silk coats are available exclusively through Singular Joy and at the Santa Fe Indian Market. His work is also on display at Hotel Santa Fe (owned by Picuris Pueblo).

Kitty Leaken, a veteran photojournalist, specializes in documenting the arts and cultures of Indigenous Peoples around the world. Her work appears in many books and articles; and some of her portraits are currently on exhibit at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, NM.
RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo), is a freelance writer and editor based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She studied literature and its respective arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa University, and at University of California, Santa Cruz. Diaz has written dozens of articles on Native and Indigenous arts, artists, and culture for publications such as Beadwork, First American Art Magazine, Metalsmith, Native Peoples, and New Mexico Magazine. She is also the author of an original online series, "Native Foodways: New Seasons," for Indian Country Today.