Coyote as Clown, Cowboy, and Creator
Artist Harry Fonseca Transformed the Native American Folk Figure Into a Commentary on 20th Century Culture
In 2006, during the last few months of his life, the artist Harry Fonseca often spent Sundays in his Santa Fe studio with the curator Patsy Phillips. His ability to work curtailed by cancer, Fonseca liked to talk about making art, which he once called his “heartbeat,” and the ways in which it functioned as a conduit between his Native heritage and the world at large.
Fonseca was of Hawaiian, Portuguese, and California native Nisenan Maidu heritage. Thinking perhaps of some of the barriers he had struggled with during his …
