Melanie Yazzie and the Making of Stories of Water

When Melanie Yazzie is around, you feel it right away. There’s an ease, a warmth, and a kind of energy that invites people in. Things start to open up, conversations, ideas, possibilities.

For Yazzie, collaboration isn’t just a concept, it’s something she lives. It’s rooted in curiosity, shaped by exchange, and grounded in a belief that creativity grows stronger when it’s shared.

Yazzie first connected with the Donkey Mill in 2022 as an Artist-in-Residence and organizer of the exhibited print exchange,  Supporting Indigenous Sisters, where artists created works to activate conversations about missing and murdered Indigenous women. Since then, her relationship with the Mill has continued to deepen. This April marks her third visit, each one strengthening an exchange of knowledge, culture, and learning.

Yazzie is the organizer behind the Mill’s current exhibition Stories of Water: An International Print Exchange, the roots of which took hold during Yazzie’s second visit to Kona during her  sabbatical in the spring of 2025. 

Inspired by the meaningful connection made with the waters of Kona, Yazzie called on fellow printmakers to participate in a print exchange responding to the question, “What does water mean to you?”

“I’m of the Navajo Nation, of the Salt and Bitter Water Clans. I wanted to do something that involves water because I am of water and I want to come back to a place of water,” she shared during her remarks at the Opening Reception on April 4, 2026.

What began as an inquiry into one’s relationship with water quickly grew into a larger, collective exploration. With 84 responses, Yazzie organized the exchange into a system of shared print portfolios that allowed each artist’s work to circulate widely. Each participating artist made twenty-five prints, twenty-one shared with one another, and four full collections provided to different learning spaces, including the Donkey Mill.

The result is a powerful and layered exhibition that brings together artists from across cultures and geographies. Each work offers a different relationship to water, some grounded in memory, others in loss, resilience, identity, and place. Water is a shared thread connecting all of us. Yazzie’s hope for viewers is that they feel inspired to create their own story with water, in any modality.

Beyond the gallery, Yazzie’s time at the Mill extended into the classroom. In collaboration with 8th grade students from Ke Kula ʻo ʻEhunuikaimalino, she led a two-day project centered on collaboration and intergenerational knowledge through storytelling. Months prior, under the direction of Kumu Krista Johnson, students began by researching their own family’s connection to water and place, then worked with Yazzie to visualize those connections. Using paintings created by Yazzie and fellow exhibiting artist Marina Kassianidou as a starting point, students layered their own imagery, colors, and shapes to create new narratives.

Sometimes, the hardest part of making is beginning. By offering a starting image, Yazzie created an entry point, an invitation. Students could respond to it, transform it, or move beyond it entirely. The result was a powerful reminder that creativity is not about perfection, but about participation. As Yazzie shared with students, “Don’t let anyone else tell your story.”

Her impact extended further into the printmaking community during her time in Hawaiʻi. Yazzie served as a juror for the Honolulu Printmakers 2026 98th Annual Juried Exhibition and also led a printmaking workshop at their studio. These collaborations reflect a shared commitment to supporting and growing the medium of printmaking across Hawaiʻi, while creating opportunities for artists at all levels to learn alongside one another.

What makes Yazzie’s presence at the Mill so meaningful is not just what she brings, but what is exchanged. Through her ongoing relationship with the Mill, she has connected artists and staff across places, welcoming members of the Donkey Mill team to the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she teaches, and continuing to build bridges between communities. It is a true exchange of manaʻo, of energy, of experience.

As she shared during the opening, her connection to the island of Hawaiʻi continues to deepen with each visit. The Mill, and the community around it, has become something like home, a place of return, reflection, and belonging.

Yazzie is an incredible example of how true collaboration is not a single project or moment. It is something that builds over time, rooted in relationships, trust, and a shared willingness to show up for one another.

Melanie Yazzie is a Professor of Art at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. As a printmaker, painter, and sculptor, Melanie Yazzie’s work draws upon her rich Diné (Navajo) cultural heritage. Her work follows the Diné dictum “walk in beauty” literally, creating beauty and harmony. As an artist, she works to serve as an agent of change by encouraging others to learn about social, cultural, and political phenomena shaping the contemporary lives of Native peoples in the United States and beyond. Her work incorporates both personal experiences as well as the events and symbols from Diné culture. Her work is informed and shaped by personal experiences.

The exhibition, Stories of Water: An International Print Exchange and programs are made possible by the Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, the County of Hawaiʻi Waiwai Grant, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Hiroaki Elaine & Lawrence Kono Foundation, Hōlualoa Inn, and our community of individual donors.