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= Steven Yazzie =

Education
Yazzie completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Intermedia at Arizona State University. He graduated from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts in 2014, being named the outstanding graduate. He briefly studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.

Artworks
Some projects Yazzie has headed include Digital Preserve, LLC and Post-Commodity. Yazzie helped found Post-Commodity with Kade L. Twist and Nathan Young, but has since left Post-Commodity, which is now headed by Cristobal Martinez and Kade L.  Twist. (See also, post commodity) He also co-founded the Museum of Walking with Angela Ellsworth, located on the Arizona Sate University campus in the Tower Center Building. While the museum space is not big, being connected to Ellsworth's office in the Tower building which is not usually open to the public (and only open when she is there), it is stressed that the project and museum is not confined to the exhibition space, rather a larger project that can exist anywhere.

Drawing and Driving
Drawing and Driving is a performance, drawing, and film piece. Yazzie built a wooden cart that had a way to attach an easel so he could use an easel while driving in the cart. Riding down Monument Valley, he would try to replicate the landscape, including the buttes and mesas in view onto the easel attached to the wooden cart. While he rode and created, he would be filmed riding through the areas. This allows the observers to connect the piece to the environment Yazzie was traveling on and through. When displayed, the piece would include a video of Yazzie riding in the cart, the piece he created while on the cart and the piece he created.

Mountain Project
The Mountain Project started as a personal effort to understand the four outlying sacred mountains of the Navajo people better. This project is made of several different projects. The first phase of the project included traversing Sis' naajinni of Colorado and Dook' o' oosłíí of Arizona. Yazzie has expressed feelings of distance from the Navajo and his family because he cannot speak the language, so he used this project to try to understand the significance of these places more closely and personally. He video-recorded his process of hiking up the mountains, documenting his thoughts and explorations of the land. These works started as personal process of understanding and exploring the cultural importance of these mountains. As of August 2015, he is working on the next phase of this project, which aims to include the culture into his deeper discovery of his culture. He works to connect these works, which looks at the cultural and social impact and how that connects to his own personal experiences with the locations. He is developing the purpose of the project, which is to understand the connection of community and himself. He aims to help preserve the feeling of community and culture and the impact the location he is exploring on the community. This project was funded with the help of the 2015 Artist Research and Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts.

BWBY (Black White Blue Yellow)
Another project that includes the four sacred Navajo mountains is BWBY (Black White Blue Yellow). These colors represent the cardinal directions for the Navajo people, representing North, East, South, West, respectively. These colors and cardinal directions represent DIb' e Nitsaa, Sis' naajini, Tsoodzil, and Dook' o' słíí respectively. BWBY is a sound and video project. It explores the significance the mountain has on the continuation of the Navajo culture and knowledge that the mountains represent.

Exhibitions and Collections
Some exhibitions Yazzie has been apart of have been located at:

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

2008: National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada

The Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Santa Fe, NM

2017: Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix Art Museum

Arizona State University Art Museum

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art

Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art

Tucson Museum of Art

Museum of Northern Arizona

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine

Lew Allen Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM

Berlin Gallery, Phoenix, AZ

Honors and Awards
Several awards Steven Yazzie has been awarded include:

2014 Outstanding Graduate for the Herberger Institute for Design and International Exhibitions

Joan Mitchell Award

Some national and regional grants he has been awarded include:

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation

National Endowment for the Arts

2015 Artist Research and Development Grant from the Arizona Commission of the Arts