Sonya Kelliher- Combs (Inupiaq/Athabaskan)

Sonya Kelliher-Combs is growing into one of the premiere Native Alaskan artists working today. Her work is rooted in painting but is interwoven and influenced by traditional skin sewing and sculptural elements using animal hides in the development of her installations. She was a featured artist in the Hide: Skin As Material and Metaphor exhibit curated and developed at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in DC and NYC and which now on tour at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art (MoCNA) in Santa Fe. Her work is influential and she is a past recipient of the Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship. She received her MFA at Arizona State and currently sits on the Board at the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA).

The NACF Artistic Innovation award for Sonya in 2010-2011 supported the development of a solo exhibition at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Alaska. Sonya’s two new installations and a series of drawings reference her Inupiaq/Athabaskan heritage, family, history, and sense of place. Included in her work this year was a residency at the University of Fairbanks Native Arts Program working with artist and professor Melanie Yazzie. As Sonya says of her work this year, “The most valuable thing for an artist TIME, the time being able to focus and work in the studio is invaluable. This grant has enabled me to create two new installations, which I consider to be ‘break-through’ pieces.”