Begaye, Nathan

Nathan Begaye was born to a Hopi mother and Dineh father in Phoenix, AZ in 1958. He was raised by his maternal grandparents at Third Mesa and in Tuba City, AZ. Tuba City is on the boundary between the Hopi and Dineh Reservations. It’s also where the nearest high school is.

Nathan expressed an interest in working with clay when he was about 10 and had his first public showing a year later. His upbringing included deep learning in the customs, religion and history of both the Dineh and Hopi peoples. He also learned the basic methods of pottery production as practiced by both tribes.

Nathan earned a scholarship from the Southwest Association for Indian Arts that allowed him to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts High School in Santa Fe beginning when he was 14. It was at IAIA that he worked with his famous aunt, Hopi potter Otellie Loloma. It was there that he earned a scholarship to spend a summer at the New York State College for Ceramics at Alfred University. He got to mingle with an international population of potters that “made me more open to things in the world…my work became more modern.”

Although his upbringing was quite conservative, his art developed in an unexpected and unorthodox manner with a “maverick sense of form, texture, color and design.” He often favored Hopi (Sikyátki-Revival) pottery styles but his designs varied back and forth through the symbolism of both Hopi and Dineh heritage, including designs taken from rock art thousands of years old. His body of work has been summarized as “Post Modernist Indian Pottery.”

Sadly, Nathan passed on in December, 2010.