“I believe the mind holds no boundaries, no laws or nothing that any society can keep from exploring.”

Santa Fe – Hoka Skenandore, of the Oglala-Lakota/Oneida/La Jolla Band of Luiseño Nations is a graduating senior this semester and former Associated Student Government President. As he prepares for his thesis show opening in April, I sat down with him and discussed his college/academic experience at IAIA.

Skenandore learned how to draw at an early age, which naturally progressed into wanting to know the art world by his sophomore year in high school. With a main interest in graffiti, his loving family inspired him.

“Everything or nothing is art,” Skenandore said of art. “A lot of it is bull@%$# fluff. As long as you get a reaction out of it, that’s the first step.”

We stood in the Senior B.F.A studios and he directed me to his studio-like cubicle. There were paintings hanging on the walls and dozens of popular magazines laid around waiting to be assembled into one of his pieces. We walked to the cleaning area in back, where a table and a built in sink sat unclean. There was a tinge in the air of coffee and wood chips.

“I am a third generation IAIA student. My grandmother, Rose Kerstetter and father, Joe Skenandore, came here,” he said. Skenandore enrolled into IAIA in the fall of 2002, expecting to learn how to expand his artistic nature.

He believed having to manually explore variations of ideas so that he could create a better technique of painting that would be comfortable and pleasing for him.

“This school pretty much put contemporary Native American art on the map and I figured it’d be an interesting starting point for me,” Skenandore said.

As he turned the stereo that sat next to us to a more relaxing station, I asked him if he weaves in any of his Native American heritages into his artwork.

“If some random white guy can paint an Indian on a horse, why should I? It doesn’t make me more or less of an Indian,” he replied, “I’m not for sale.”

“When one looks at Hoka’s art, they see a sort of collage-like quality that expresses freshness and ravishing stories,” said student and friend Corey Garcia during a conversation at dinner.

“It’s sort of like having dewy skin in the driest desert.”

Garcia tells of how Skenandore shares the same ideas as the late Pop Artist Andy Warhol, using material exacerbated through mass production to depict fresh ideals. Warhol depicted the stories of the American disasters and the American dream in his 1960’s silk-screens.

With his senior thesis show coming up, April 3rd, Skenandore said his artistic voice is not exactly like anyone else attending IAIA.

“I wish the school would have embraced my art work more,” he said looking down at his finger nails, “but I’d probably be ‘pimped out’ like previous IAIA graduates; I think my art work is fine when I look at it that way.”

“Artists like April Holder, Doug Two Bulls, Michael Schweigman, Micah Wesley, Cougar Vigil and Corey Garcia have an ability to get my attention because they have this certain way of getting the point across without overuse,” he said of some fellow IAIA students.

Skenandore hopes that after the end of his academic studies, IAIA will continue to be the best contemporary Native art school. But it all depends on the faculty and, most importantly, the students.

After an exhausted sigh he expressed his excitement about the fact he is finally graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in the Studio Arts program, which allows him to focus more on painting and his printmaking skills. More importantly, he wants to continue preparing the road ahead for his 2 year-old son.

Perhaps a future student with the willingness for keeping a taste for a certain idea could look up to Skaenandore by staying true to him or herself and living with that precarious movement that he appreciates every day.

“I believe the mind holds no boundaries, no laws or nothing that any society can keep from exploring,” Skenandore contemplated, “but you have to be willing to not be afraid of using your mind and its chances.”

Copyright © IAIA CHRONICLE 2006