Kyle Kootswatewa
4 products
Kyle Kootswatewa is an enduring practitioner of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and a rising traditional weaver and potter utilizing natural materials. He is of Hopi descent, coming from the Kachina clan in Mungapi, Arizona. While Kootswatewa emerged as a traditional artist, he has also merged his knowledge into higher academics. Earning a BA at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Kootswatewa studied within the Indigenous Liberal Arts Department and its strong interdisciplinary curriculum. He utilized his academic training and traditional ecological knowledge towards fortifying earth stewardship and to help preserve Hopi basketry and pottery.
Kootswatewa works include plaiting, coil, and wicker basket weaving. His polychrome basketry work can be achieved from both natural and commercial dyes. Pottery style is inspired by pre-contact Hopi vessels and creates using those prehistoric methods. Kootswatewa fires pottery using both traditional manure and ancestral coal firing.
Learning to work with the earth has been attributed to Kootswatewa’s maternal clan grandparents, mothers, uncles, and friends. The processes of foraging, creating, cooking and building has allowed Kootswatewa to become well versed in the traditional sciences of agriculture, botany, nutrition, permaculture, geology and the chemistry that brings all these natural sources into act within his community.
Kootswatewa works include plaiting, coil, and wicker basket weaving. His polychrome basketry work can be achieved from both natural and commercial dyes. Pottery style is inspired by pre-contact Hopi vessels and creates using those prehistoric methods. Kootswatewa fires pottery using both traditional manure and ancestral coal firing.
Learning to work with the earth has been attributed to Kootswatewa’s maternal clan grandparents, mothers, uncles, and friends. The processes of foraging, creating, cooking and building has allowed Kootswatewa to become well versed in the traditional sciences of agriculture, botany, nutrition, permaculture, geology and the chemistry that brings all these natural sources into act within his community.
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