Heidi Brandow, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) current Local Artist-in-Residence, will give a talk at 12 pm, her studio will be open to the public from 12–4 pm. Brandow is a Santa Fe painter and printmaker whose work is commonly filled with whimsical characters and monsters that are often combined with words of poetry, stories, and personal reflections. Hailing from a long line of Native Hawaiian singers, musicians, and performers on her mother’s side and Diné storytellers and medicine people on her father’s side, she finds that her pursuit of an artistic career came natural. Drawing her inspiration from everyday life, Brandow’s work concerns discovering, defining, and redefining personal identity by questioning authority and deconstructing mainstream assumptions of Native American identity. Brandow’s work engages personal, cultural, and historical experiences while incorporating perspectives of critical theory.

A graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Brandow also studied design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, MA, and Istanbul Technical University in Istanbul, Turkey.