At dawn this morning, the mercury was at zero. Winter is back, and if it finally holds, we’ll be entering the season’s depths now: increasing light at the end of the day, yes, but air that’s cold and bleak.
Here, the people will soon be entering the winter ceremonial season, as well. The Pueblo will be closed entirely to outsiders — according to this years’ schedule, for two full months. Meanwhile, its members are readying for what’s to come; those participating have specific duties and obligations, and much of what’s to come requires extensive preparation by entire families. At this moment, a primary focus will be on practical things: food, wood, other resources needed to carry the people through the long winter weeks ahead.
It’s the time of year for which a piece like this was made: of regional materials and local colors, birthed into a shape that embodies the season.
It’s a piece by Wings’s cousin, Paul Dancebow — an old one. It sat in Wings’s private collection for years before he decided that it was, indeed, not meant to be his, but to find a permanent home. And it’s done in a very old, very traditional style, one that respects and honors the spirit of the wood itself, allowing it to dictate shape and form and flow of line.
It’s made of cedar, a tree that forms one of the bases of spiritual (to say nothing of practical) existence for our peoples all over the continent. We dry it and burn small amounts of it, for purification and prayers; we use it as Medicine in a variety of ways. We make boxes of its wood to hold sacred objects. Our artisans use it for sculpture, for inlay, for everything from woodworking to traditional weaponry.
Here, Paul has honored the wood’s spirit, carving in the traditional Pueblo fashion: the shape of the wood itself dictates the shape of the finished sculpture, and each gentle stroke of a carving blade coaxes the piece to follow its own instincts, its own line and grain. If you look closely on the right-hand side of the photo above, you’ll see a deep score in the wood that forms the elder’s blanket. Rather than try to excise it as a flaw, he simply followed the natural line as an inherent element of the piece. So, too, with the slight mottling of the wood itself where burrs have been smoothed: What the human eye regards as “perfection” is usually forced and managed artifice, and instead of being tempted to “fix” Nature, Paul allowed the wood’s own spare and simple beauty, with all of its natural variation, to claim its identity here.
From its description in Other Artists: Sculpture gallery:
This traditional sculpture by carver Paul Dancebow (Taos Pueblo) is done in classic Pueblo style. Carved of cedar, his upturned face is finely detailed, as is his long hair, tied back in traditional style. He’s wrapped in a blanket, and his body curves gently, following the natural line of the wood. He stands atop an alabaster base, golden in color with silver-white matrices throughout. Another view shown above.
Cedar on alabaster base
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About that base: We’ve talked about alabaster many times here; several of the artists whose work we carry specialize in its use. This slab, however, seems to me to be especially fitting for this sculpture. It’s a pale yellow shade, almost ivory, but with quartz inclusions throughout that render it metallic in effect. It looks like nothing so much as the snow outside the window, several inches deep and newly crusted into ice, glimmering in the early morning light. This elder, this singer, balances on its surface so naturally that he evokes the very trunk of a cedar tree itself, arising out of the depths of a winter’s snow on a Pueblo dawn.
~ Aji
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