Sonya Kelliher-Combs

Kelliher-Combs was born during 1969 in Bethel, Alaska and brought up in Nome, Alaska.[1] During her childhood she learned to make traditional everyday pieces like beadwork and sewing with skins from her mother. These pieces connected Kelliher-Combs with her past, as sewing skins allowed past Native Americans to resist the extreme cold, while beading allowed to add to their cultural aesthetic. She also spent time with artists in her area and studied their work. She has cited this as an influence as this exposed her to new art forms at a young age, specifically sculpture made from multiple materials. Kelliher-Combs has stated that she received many compliments and appreciation for her drawings from others as a kid, with others describing herself as having always been a ‘‘doodler’’,[1] but she did not initially take art seriously. She believed that she would be a lawyer or engineer, expecting that she would take the same journey that her grandfather took, who became a federal marshal and after that a judge in Nome.[1]

She married her high school sweetheart Shaun Combs after graduating from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Kelliher-Combs currently resides and operates in Anchorage, Alaska, where she is a member of the Alaska Native Arts Foundation Board, Alaska State Council in Arts Visual Arts Advisory, and the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Arts Board.[3][2]

Kelliher-Combs took art classes as a young girl and later attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she discovered that she was meant to be an artist and that this was what her heart desired. She studied under David Mollett, an artist and instructor she described as ‘‘honest, upfront, merciless’’.[1] At one point he explained that living as an artist is tough and demanding, and that based on the odds, just one person from the whole class would still be creating art as a career in twenty years. This speech helped her understand the significance of becoming an artist in order to carry on her Native American tradition and Kelliher-Combs states that this was the day she finally decided to put all of her effort into becoming an artist. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1992, after which she went to Europe in order to discover new things that may help improve her art and understand and observe different cultures and how they represent themselves.[1] Artists who she considered an influence to her work at that time and since then include Maya Lin, Ellen Gallagher, Jane Hammond, Anne Wilson, and an artist who used biomorphic forms, Eva Hesse.[1]

Kelliher-Combs went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University.[2][1] She has described this as a difficult time in her life as she had to be away from her husband, who had to stay and work in Nome. She missed both her family and culture greatly, stating that ‘‘We ran up huge phone bills . . . But I’d come home every summer to become re- energized . . . realized that my family, my culture and Alaska were the sources of my creativity’’.[1] She further remarked that it was all an important learning experience, where her work and her paintings began to appear more object-like and monochromatic.[1]

Kelliher-Combs began exhibiting while she was still at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the process of getting her bachelor’s degree.[1] During this time she reacted strongly to artists she learned in school such as de Kooning and Picasso, which influenced her to add abstraction into her work.[1] She also became quite interested in the formline approach common in Northwest Coast art, having learned this from her Alaskan Native Studies classes. She appreciated how form-line already abstracted animal shapes for her and believed that it would make her art unique, specifically her animal imagery.[1] She believed it gave her art aesthetic building blocks where she could remove and add with ease while maintaining a Native American cultural flare. However, she received much criticism for using designs from a Native culture that was not her own in the process of incorporating these new techniques into her work.[1] After that, she stumbled upon the work of Jim Schoppert that ‘‘took her breath away’’.[1] She ventured out many times to the University of Alaska’s Museum to see his works and said, ‘‘I couldn’t get enough of it. Schoppert, more than anybody else, was instrumental in helping me see in a new way. He opened a door in my mind that it was ok to do what I was doing’’.[1]

A combination of elemental and contemporary features became the main principles of Kelliher-Combs' work compared to when she first started out. According to the Encyclopedia of Native American Artists her attempts to be minimalistic and the colors she uses are typically colors of the body.[1]

• Hearts of our people : Native women artists. Ahlberg Yohe, Jill,, Greeves, Teri,, Silver, Laura (Editor),, Feldman, Kaywin,, Minneapolis Institute of Art,, Frist Art Museum (Nashville, Tenn.). Minneapolis, Minnesota. 17 May 2019. ISBN 978-0-295-74579-4. OCLC 1057740182.CS1 maint: others (link)

• Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas

• Official website