Arlene nofchissey williams biography

Holt was excited about the event and is sure it will be interesting since the council chooses its guest artists for their diverse talents. Williams is an award-winning artist, potter, sculptor, painter, seamstress, actress and Grammy-nominated singer, and is said to be the first American Indian woman to have been honored so.

Arlene Nofchissey Williams is

In fact, this event will be her first step back into the art world since her sabbatical. Williams said she grew weary of the attention, both positive and negative from the media, the public and her own people, the Navajos. But I am honored and humbled by my roots. I represent the red in the colors of the rainbow. The red men are my stewardship.

Known to some by her Navajo name, Tiny Hummingbird, because the diminutive bird visited and blessed her as a baby, year-old Williams is a full-blooded Navajo. She was born in Fort Defiance but raised off the reservation. She said she had a hard time straddling the two cultures of Navajo and white man. Often in her artistic journey, Williams says she has crossed cultural lines, which made her native people uncomfortable.

Associating with the dead, something Williams claimed as a Navajo taboo, inspired a fired pot she made in college that tells of spiritual experiences, all while using a female pelvic bone as the base shape of the design. The pot likely will be on display during the Highland Art Council guest event. Williams is a mother to seven children and grandmother to After making and selling purse dolls, which Williams described as a cross between a Cabbage Patch Kid and a medicine bag, she changed her focus.

She said after recognizing the common thread, that basic need of everyone to be loved and healed, she became more comfortable shifting between cultures and peoples, becoming more well known and traveling abroad to visit places like Mongolia.