(1948 - ) Ramona Sakiestewa is a contemporary Hopi artist who lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Sakiestewa is renowned for her tapestries, works on paper, public art and architectural installations. Sakiestewa was born in Albuquerque, NM to a Hopi father and German-English-Irish mother. In the late 1960s she studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She then returned to the Southwest, where she took a job as an arts administrator at Santa Fe's Museum of New Mexico. Sakiestewa is a self-taught weaver using prehistoric Pueblo techniques from the American Southwest. Her early work employed hand-spun and hand-dyed yarns. Sakiestewa researched native plant dyes of the Americas along with developing and reproducing cochineal and indigo dyeing techniques. She adapted traditional upright, continuous warp weaving methods to horizontal floor loom weaving. In 1981 Sakiestewa opened her weaving studio, Ramona Sakiestewa Ltd., weaving one-of-a-kind tapestries full-time. Sakiestewa's earliest weavings were simple, banded floor rugs in classic Pueblo style with a contemporary palette. She mastered techniques for dyeing yarn and began showing her work at Santa Fe Indian Market, her preferred tapestry size being 50" x 70" inches. Sakiestewa’s imagery remains abstract—the style that comes most naturally, she says, and captures the essence of her subject, whether inspired by ritual objects, ceremony, or the landscape of the Southwest. The artist presses issues of scale, texture, color and tone in works that shatter old barriers separating weaving, painting and mixed-media. In the late 1980s Sakiestewa wove thirteen tapestries from the drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Phoenix, AZ. From 1985 to 1991 she completed six tapestries for the Gloria Frankenthaler Ross atelier, New York City, of paintings by contemporary painter Kenneth Noland. Sakiestewa was commissioned to design a series of limited-edition blankets for Dewey Trading Company, woven by Pendleton Blankets, Pendleton, OR., and a limited edition, Ancient Blanket Series, woven by Scalamandre, Long Island City, NY. In 1994 Sakiestewa was invited to join the architectural design team for the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Mall Museum, Washington, DC. In a 10-year project, she created a design vocabulary for the initiative and collaboratively designed architectural elements for the museum that opened September 21, 2004. She authored the contributing essay, Making Our World Understandable in the companion book, Spirit of a Native Place: Building the National Museum of the American Indian. In 2009 Sakiestewa closed her weaving studio to further develop her works-on-paper, painting and architectural projects. Continuing her work with architects, Sakiestewa designed architectural elements for the Tempe Center for the Performing Arts, Tempe, Arizona (2002–07); the Kurdistan Regional Government project, Erbil, Iraq (2008–11); the Chickasaw Cultural Center, Ada, Oklahoma (2002–04); and the Komatke Health Center, Gila, Arizona (2006–07).Sakiestewa's experience with public art and her expertise in Native American culture has developed into her being a sought-after advisor for national and international cultural projects. In 1980, she became the first Native American woman to lead the Southwester Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA), the nonprofit that hosts the annual Santa Fe Indian Market.