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Harry Fonseca
Harry Eugene Fonseca (1946 – 2006) was a Nisenan Native American artist, and illustrator. He was an enrolled citizen of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.
Harry Eugene Fonseca was born on January 5, 1946, in Sacramento, California. He was Nisenan and of Hawaiian and Portuguese heritage. He and his family belongs to the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.
Fonseca first studied at Sacramento City College. and then continued his study of art at California State University, Sacramento, with Frank LaPena, but later quit the program to pursue his own vision of art.
“Fonseca’s work combines Native and European traditions, contemporary art, and his vision. Harry’s mix of influences is the best of America in that he consumed so much of culture and life, and he gave it back.”
Fonseca's earliest pieces drew from his Nisenan heritage. He was influenced by basketry designs, dance regalia, and by his participation as a traditional dancer. Further, the creation of his people, as recounted by his uncle, Henry Azbill, became the source of a major 1977 work, Creation Story, which he would paint in many versions during his career.
In 1979, Fonseca began his popular Coyote series. Coyote, an Indigenous California trickster, appears in contemporary settings. As an example, his Coyote in the Mission depicts Coyote dressed in a leather jacket with many zippers and green hightop sneakers standing against a graffiti-covered brick wall in San Francisco's Mission District. Another image has Rousseauesque Coyote sitting in a Paris cafe.
In 1981 Fonseca illustrated a book, Legends of the Yosemite Miwok, compiled by Frank LaPena (Nomtipom Wintu) and Craig Bates.
Fonseca was particularly taken by petroglyphs in the Coso Range near Owens Lake, California, and petroglyphs from throughout the West and Southwest United States. In 1991 he reinterpreted the Maidu creation story using imagery influenced by petroglyphs. He began a series of paintings he called Stone Poems, that draw heavily from these petroglyphs. A series of these paintings were exhibited in the Southwest Museum (Los Angeles, California) in 1989 as well as the Nevada Museum of Art in 2021
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Harry Fonseca
Harry Eugene Fonseca (1946 – 2006) was a Nisenan Native American artist, and illustrator. He was an enrolled citizen of the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.
Harry Eugene Fonseca was born on January 5, 1946, in Sacramento, California. He was Nisenan and of Hawaiian and Portuguese heritage. He and his family belongs to the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians.
Fonseca first studied at Sacramento City College. and then continued his study of art at California State University, Sacramento, with Frank LaPena, but later quit the program to pursue his own vision of art.
“Fonseca’s work combines Native and European traditions, contemporary art, and his vision. Harry’s mix of influences is the best of America in that he consumed so much of culture and life, and he gave it back.”
Fonseca's earliest pieces drew from his Nisenan heritage. He was influenced by basketry designs, dance regalia, and by his participation as a traditional dancer. Further, the creation of his people, as recounted by his uncle, Henry Azbill, became the source of a major 1977 work, Creation Story, which he would paint in many versions during his career.
In 1979, Fonseca began his popular Coyote series. Coyote, an Indigenous California trickster, appears in contemporary settings. As an example, his Coyote in the Mission depicts Coyote dressed in a leather jacket with many zippers and green hightop sneakers standing against a graffiti-covered brick wall in San Francisco's Mission District. Another image has Rousseauesque Coyote sitting in a Paris cafe.
In 1981 Fonseca illustrated a book, Legends of the Yosemite Miwok, compiled by Frank LaPena (Nomtipom Wintu) and Craig Bates.
Fonseca was particularly taken by petroglyphs in the Coso Range near Owens Lake, California, and petroglyphs from throughout the West and Southwest United States. In 1991 he reinterpreted the Maidu creation story using imagery influenced by petroglyphs. He began a series of paintings he called Stone Poems, that draw heavily from these petroglyphs. A series of these paintings were exhibited in the Southwest Museum (Los Angeles, California) in 1989 as well as the Nevada Museum of Art in 2021