We are deeply saddened to recently lose our friend, Tony Jojola. Tony first attended Pilchuck in 1978 and was hired as a driver and continued to attend Pilchuck as a student and assistant in subsequent years. Tony passed away December 28, 2022, and is survived by his mother; his son, Domingo, his daughter, Mia; and his partner, Bernadette. 

Tony Jojola was born in 1958 on the Isleta Pueblo, located just south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was influenced at an early age by his family of artists: his maternal grandfather was a jeweler who predominantly worked with turquoise and gold; his paternal grandfather was a woodworker; and his paternal grandmother was a skilled potter who worked in traditional hand-coiled clay pottery. As a young child, Jojola was intrigued by his family’s rich artistic lineage and helped his grandmother gather clay for her to coil. Jojola felt destined to work with his hands; he wanted to work with materials from the earth, just as his grandparents had before him. Thus, in 1975, Jojola enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to study ceramics. Just a year before, in 1974, Dale Chihuly had been hired by Lloyd Kiva New, the first Director of IAIA, to establish a glass program. One of Dale’s students at IAIA, Carl Ponca, who was Tony’s instructor, provided Tony with the elementary tools and knowledge of working with glass that he had learned from Dale. The medium immediately fascinated Tony. “The fluidity of the material really excited me. The idea that material would last forever not only attracted me but also intrigued me.”

Tony then received a scholarship to attend Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. While glass had caught his attention at IAIA, it was Tony’s further study of the materials with his Haystack Instructor, Bruce Chow, that caused him to decide that glass would be his chosen medium. Tony returned to Santa Fe where he earned a BFA from the College of Santa Fe in 1983, and soon returned to Seattle where he joined Dale’s team.

While at Pilchuck, Tony met Preston Singletary and energized Preston to create work inspired by his Tlingit ancestry. “I met Tony at Pilchuck in 1984, two years after I started blowing glass,” noted Singletary. “It just so happened that it was Tony, me, and Larry Ahvakana. We were three Native people on the campus learning about working with glass. It was this that planted the seed for me, to reflect on my cultural background with my work in glass, the same way that they were.”

In 1994, Tony went on to teach at Hilltop Artists in Tacoma when Dale and Kathy Kaperick opened the school. Subsequently, later in the 1990s, Tony started Taos Glass Arts and Education with Kathy Kaperick and with financial support from Chihuly, where Tony taught and was administrator of the program for more than a decade. Modeled after Hilltop Artists, the program was created for at-risk middle and high school indigenous students. “Tony was a generous teacher and connected with kids he taught at Hilltop and anywhere he went. Tony had an infectious laugh and brought a lot of joy to every team he was part of. To my knowledge, he was the first Native American glass blower who took the material to heart and interpreted his culture with this medium," said Singletary.

Certainly, Tony’s influence on indigenous artists working with glass was profound. Other artists such as Robert “Spooner” Marcus and Ira Lujan, both worked with Tony at Taos Glass Arts. Tony also influenced Pilchuck’s Deputy Director, Donna Davies, to pursue her path in indigenous artists working with the material. “I discovered Tony’s work while I was graduate student in the late 90s pursuing my MA in art history. I came across one of his olla forms and was struck by the color and the translucence, but mostly the organic nature of the form. I immediately tracked down Tony, we chatted on the phone about why he was working with glass, and I was hooked. I immediately changed the focus of my graduate work and wrote my thesis on Native artists who were working with glass. Tony introduced me to Preston, Marvin Oliver, and a few other Native artists working at that time. He essentially helped me find my path. I’m doing what I’m doing now thanks to Tony and his generous spirit. I will forever be grateful to him.”

We extend our sincere condolences to Tony’s family.