Mpls.St.Paul Magazine: All My Relations Arts Opens New Exhibition by Frank Buffalo Hyde

If you were to tell a young Frank Buffalo Hyde that he’d one day become a successful artist, it wouldn’t be that surprising. After all, creativity runs in the family.

Born in New Mexico and raised in New York on his mother’s Onondaga reservation, with yearly summer trips back to Santa Fe to see his father, Hyde got a well-rounded view of the arts from a young age. His family was already engrossed in the art world, with a modern dancer mother, stone sculptor father, and painter uncles to boot. And while Hyde did initially follow in the artistic footsteps of his precursors, he found that his true passion lay on a stage, not a canvas.

At the time, music was Hyde’s life plan, not painting. He started a rock band in Syracuse called “No Good Reason” with his friends, and from the ages of 14 to 18 the group chased stardom, going from open mic nights at bars to headlining iconic music venues across the country, including the Northrop. The band even landed a spot on a music CD next to the likes of Bonnie Raitt and the Indigo Girls for an Honor The Earth Campaign in the late ‘90s.

When life as a Syracusan local celebrity got old, Hyde made the decision to leave the music world behind, enrolling in college at the Institute of American Indian Arts for what he thought would be a creative writing degree. It wasn’t until he took his first arts elective, a run-of-the-mill studio class, when inspiration truly hit.

“That’s really where the bug took hold,” Hyde said. “Like, I was slowly not turning in my writing assignments on time because I was spending so much time in the painting studios. When I started, I knew I was going to make a commitment to live this life for the long haul, and I’m very fortunate that people have come along with me on the journey and that I’m still interested in what I do.”