Biography of:
Hoka Skenandore
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In 2006, Albuquerque based artist Hoka Skenandore (Oneida/Oglala Lakota/Luiseno) earned his BFA in Studio Arts from Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). He is the third generation of a family of American Indian artists to study and graduate from the IAIA.
As an emerging artist, his disarming paintings explore his influence and clear fascination of popular culture: music, street art, graffiti, outsider art, and skateboarder culture.
Skenandore’s use of vibrant color, form and bold subject matter including written word and cultural icon narratives successfully lend a smart and fresh collage quality to his paintings. As an example, Skenandore, who is also a DJ, known as DJ Rob Gordon, has found an inventive way of recycling old vinyl albums; creating a series of works using 19-inch vinyl as canvas. Whether using canvas or vinyl his pieces are intricately painted using a variety of different media including paint and markers, creating a complex, layered effect. His works represent a variety of interesting approaches to the curiosities of young urban Indian life.
In 2006, Skenandore won the Diederich Award for Painting at the Red Cloud Art Show in Pine Ridge, SD. Still in high school, Skenandore won second Place, New Directions: Mixed Media, at the SWAIA Indian Market, Santa Fe, NM. His work has been included in many solo and group exhibitions in New Mexico, California, South Dakota, Colorado, and most recently, the “Outsiders Within: Contemporary Work from Regional Latina/o and Native American Artists” exhibition at the Tempe Center for the Arts in Tempe, AZ. Hoka’s paintings are also part of the permanent collection of the Heritage Center at the Red Cloud School in Pine Ridge, SD. The Berlin Gallery is Skenandore’s first Arizona showcase.
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HEARD MUSEUM
