Supaya Gray Wolfe

Supaya Gray Wolfe is a Native American artist of Cherokee heritage who decided to simplify her life many years ago and returned to the Navajo Nation to live in a hogan. Supaya’s heart-family is Navajo and her daughter is married to a Navajo Native American and she has two wonderful granddaughters who enjoy artwork and dancing. Simplifying her life includes hauling water to her hogan, tending her sheep, and when time permits, riding her horses. This year Supaya took up weaving using the wool from her sheep. She shears the sheep, cleans the wool, and spins the yarn to be use on her looms. Supaya is starting with Navajo rugs, but plans on learning how to weave her own horse blankets Her artwork comes from the deepest part of her heart. Supaya spent years on several different reservations learning, sharing, listening to stories, and gathering old bead patterns. She discovered the Native Americans wished to keep the stories, the bead patterns, and the history alive for the future generations. Through her artwork, Supaya has found a way to accomplish this. All of her artwork is hand sewn with sinew. All the beads are glass; she rolls all the cones by hand, all the fringe is hand cut and rolled, and she painstakingly ages each piece to capture the authenticity and make it appear as if you are looking at the original piece from the past. Each piece that Supaya makes is truly one-of-a-kind and based mostly on the Northern Plains Tribes. One of her favorite motivations to create a piece is when she meets someone who is moved spiritually by a favorite painting or picture of a piece. As long as the designs are historically accurate—whether there is bead work on it or not—she enjoys reproducing that image into a 3-D form, like a headdress, rifleman’s coat, or a dress worn by a particular person in history. The buffalo hides she uses have an interesting story. Supaya buys her buffalo hides from a friend that owns a ranch and raises them for meat. She goes to the ranch once a year to feed the buffalo; spend time with them and in her own way speak to them. This ritual forms a closer bond between herself, the hides and her artwork. Many years ago when Supaya’s daughter was small they lived in the Black Hills in South Dakota. They would go and pickup porcupines from the side of road and use the quills to make porcupine earrings to sell to the trading post and tourists for $1.50 each set. She started dreaming of making nice outfits—fully beaded dresses, full headdresses and the like. When her daughter was older Supaya took a chance and made time to work on bigger and better pieces. This lead to what she does today. Supaya found the Western Design Conference Show in Cody, Wyoming. The very first year she went she felt humbled. 2005 will be her 6th year attending this show and Supaya says every year when you see the hard work and creativity everyone has put into their pieces there is no other word for the feelings you get other than being “humbled”. Supaya loves her simple life now, feels very blessed, and that her life is good. She loves her sheep, horses, dogs, cats and any other animals that show up, and working on her artwork. She has recently taken a computer course so that she can try to keep up with the world.