John Nava

It’s interesting to me that there is something about making a picture by hand,
like a caveman, that continues.
(John Nava)

The Baptism of the Lord

Narrative Bio

John Nava: b. 1947

John Nava studied art at the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara and did his graduate work at the Villa Schifanoia Graduate School of Fine art in Florence, Italy. His work is found in numerous private, corporate and public collections throughout the United States, Europe and Japan.

Additionally, Nava has done large-scale public works including projects for the Tokyo Grain Exchange in Tokyo, Japan and for Benaroya Hall in Seattle.

In 1999 Nava was commissioned to create three major cycles of tapestries for the new cathedral of Los Angeles.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in the United States, opened in September of 2002.

In 2003 Nava’s tapestries for the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels won the National Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture (IFRAA) Design Honor Award for Visual Art.

Further projects include large-scale tapestries for the Ronald Tutor Campus Center at USC (2011) and the Firestone Library at Princeton University (2014) and painting for the new School of Music at Yale University (2016).

In 2017 Sacred Material, a book that covers the work done for the Los Angeles cathedral tapestry project, was published by Angel City Press of Santa Monica, California.

All Saints Day