Featured Contributor
Ehren Kee Natay
A Message from Ehren
“I have a prayer, a spirit, a breath that is inside me. It tells me to create. It cannot be silenced. It can only be quieted by creating.
I am aware of it, naturally. I listen to it. I submit to this intuition and combine it with my experiences. To connect with this prayer, this spirit, this breath is divine.
When I have captured some form of self-identity in a work of art, it is finished. A thought, an emotion, an experience is solidified, and I can separate from that identity. There is a journey in every piece of art, and also a lesson. When I can share this journey and this lesson with another human, an exchange of wisdom takes place.”
Ehren Kee Natay is a multi-media artist from Santa Fe New Mexico and is a recognized member of the Navajo Nation. Ehren began playing percussion at the age of twelve and became a career professional by the age of nineteen. He toured and performed in venues in the Southwest and West-coast of the U.S. as he played drums for various groups in multiple genres. Meanwhile, Ehren dabbled as a self-taught painter. At the age 23 he decided to seek a new discipline in the field of art. He began studying silver-smithing, polychrome-pottery and 3-D fabrication at the Poeh Arts Institute at the Pueblo of Pojoaque. Now at the age of 34, Ehren has several of his visual works being preserved at two New Mexico Heritage Museums and at the Indian Arts Research Center. He has held exhibitions both nationally and internationally through galleries, museums, public installations, and site-specific theatrical performances. His current work further infuses his musical craft with visual aesthetics via live-performance. He continues to impact the youth as an arts educator in New Mexico public schools and among Native American communities across the nation.
