Artist Talk: Action/Abstraction Redefined

A student of IAIA’s first graduating class, Douglas “Doug” Hyde (Nez Perce / Assiniboine / Chippewa), enrolled at IAIA in 1963, where he studied sculpture under Allan Houser, jewelry under Charles Loloma, and ceramics under Ottilie Loloma. He then received a scholarship to study at the San Francisco art institute, which he attended from 1967 until he enlisted in the US Army and served in the Vietnam War.

It was also around 1967 that he created the work Sun and Moon Gods, which embraces his experimental, organic style of “emerging” figures. The painted nails resemble beadwork an add a complex texture and personality to the piece. His sculptures often express his culture’s belief system and oral history. Sun and Moon Gods’ abstract figure also evokes petroglyph depictions of spiritual beings.

After his service in Vietnam, Hyde returned to IAIA in 1971 to teach sculpture. His works have been exhibited at the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, Texas; Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona; Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Eiteljog Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Frank Buffalo Hyde (b. 1974; Santa Fe, NM) is an Onondaga/Niimíipuu (Nez Perce) artist whose paintings examine and elevate an image of contemporary Indigenous life through a vibrant pop-sensibility and uncompromising satirical eye.

His work has been shown at museums including the Wheelright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, NM; the C.M Russell Museum, Great Falls, MT; and Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK. It is in the public collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Iroquois Museum, Cobleskill, NY; Longyear Museum at Colgate University, Hamilton, NY; the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM; the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. Hyde lives and works in Northfield, MN.

Tatiana Lomahaftewa-Singer is the Curator of Collections at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) in Santa Fe, NM. She is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and Hopi and holds a BFA in Fine Arts Administration from the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Lomahaftewa-Singer has more than 30 years of experience with contemporary Native American art and has curated or project-managed exhibitions at MoCNA including: The Stories We Carry, Experimental Expression: Printmaking at IAIA, 1963-1980, Action/Abstraction Redefined: Native American Art, 1940s to 1970s, iCon: A Tribute to Allan Houser, Lloyd Kiva New: Art, Design & Influence</i<, 50/50: Fifty Artists, Fifty Years, Drawing from the Collection, Voices from the Mound: Contemporary Choctaw, and Lifting the Veil: New Mexico Women and the Tri-cultural Myth.

She currently sits on the New Mexico Capital Arts Foundation Board, Terra Foundation Indigenous Advisory Council, and has juried numerous art programs including the Forge Project Fellowships, Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Fellowships, and the Santa Fe Art Institute Visual Arts Review Committee.