Yazzie Johnson

From Native American Information Superhighway Alltribes™ Wiki

Yazzie Johnson was born October 25, 1946 in Winslow, Arizona. His father, Matthew Johnson, was from Sanostee, New Mexico and his mother, Marilyn, was from Leupp, Arizona, both from the Navajo Nation. Both his parents worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs Inter-Mountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah where he met Gail Bird at age fourteen. He was influenced at an early age by one of the teachers at the School, Dooley D. Shorty, who was a silversmith (and had been a Navajo Code Talker in World War II). Johnson enlisted in the U. S. Army in 1966 and served in Germany and Vietnam. He studied at University of California Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

To many, they are best known for the thematic belts they make each year (since 1979) for the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) Santa Fe Indian Market, but they also design elegant earrings, bracelets, rings and necklaces which are shown in galleries and museums across the country. They are part of a generation of American Indian artists from the Southwest who have acknowledged and honored the traditions of their respective areas while pushing the creative boundaries and addressing contemporary concerns. Their work is characterized by an extensive knowledge of materials and by their technical skill and keen design sense… Bird and Johnson emphasize, “We see our jewelry as being very traditional in nature. But we carry the traditions further. The stones we use are of a wider variety than those usually associated with Indian jewelry. The symbols and narrative on our pieces are expansions of traditional symbols and stories.