Now that autumn is fully here, I wanted to use today’s post to feature Native art in the colors of the season. For that, there’s nothing better than Mark Swazo-Hinds’s orange alabaster medicine bear. It’ll also give me a chance to introduce you to a new stone, another set of symbols and styles, and yet another master carver.
From its description in our Other Artists: Sculpture Gallery here on the site:
This alabaster medicine bear by master carver Mark Swazo-Hinds (Tesuque Pueblo) is hewn in the classic vintage Southwest Indian style. The surface is smooth, silky, and touchable, in a brilliant clear orange with a translucent white marbled matrix. In Mark’s trademark style, the medicine bundle is made of macaw and turkey feathers, shells, pottery sherds, and bits of turquoise.
Orange alabaster; turkey feathers; macaw feathers; pottery sherds; turquoise; shells
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
First, the artist. Mark is from Tesuque Pueblo, the first pueblo north of Santa Fe. The son of famed Tesuque painter Patrick Swazo-Hinds, Mark was actually born in Berkeley, California, but like his father, he returned home to pursue his art. He graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe in the early 1980s, and has been pursuing his calling (with the occasional detour) ever since.
We’ve carried Mark’s work in our inventory seemingly forever; he and Wings have been art buddies for probably 30 years. He started out carving with small fetishes and figurative pieces, and expanded rapidly into full-size sculptures. He’s now known perhaps as much for his larger-than-life installations as he is for his table-sized sculptures. Mark’s studio is right off the highway north of Santa Fe, on the southwestern edge of Tesuque Pueblo, and at any given time, you can see the larger pieces he has in process from the highway as you drive past.
Over the years, he’s developed avery individualized style, one that seems simple. That impression is deceptive. It is spare, yes, but despite the clean and unadorned lines of the stone, there’s a complexity to it that makes it wholly his. Add to that his trademark style of ornamentation, which we’ll explore in some detail below, and his pieces are immediately recognizeable all over the world.
Mark’s also a tremendously funny guy. Big and imposing, he’s soft-spoken, but always ready with a fish story (both kinds). He’s currently engaged in one of his partial detours, working with some partners in a company that hosts tours of Northern New Mexico, while still carving regularly on the side. He comes up here to hunt and fish, and drops by for a visit every so often. The last time he was here was in May. He told Wings he’d seen the announcement in one of the local papers of Wings’s one-man show at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, dropped everything, and sped into town to check it out. He said that he happened to arrive on an evening when a public event was scheduled, and he got to meet cinema owner (and internationally-known author) George R.R. Martin while there, giving him the opportunity to mention that he was an old friend of the featured artist.
Mark works in multiple media, and his choice of stone varies, in part, with the size and purpose of the piece. He regularly carves in sandstone, both natural and a treated form that works well for industrial-sized outdoor installations that will be subject to the elements. We have some of his smaller carvings made of that material, as well as a large, heavy medicine bear. Some of his preferred motifs are spirit beings — Corn Maidens and various katsinam — and various animals that are regarded by area peoples as possessing inherent powers. Bears are a favorite.
The bear is a popular symbol among many indigenous peoples all over Indian Country. There is a common misconception among the dominant culture that they represent protection or security. [There’s an equally common misconception that there is any one definition or symbolism associated with any given animal or spirit being, just as there’s the false notion out there that there is any such thing as “Native American religion” or “Native American spirituality.” There isn’t. Period. There are commonalities in some ways among some peoples, especially those closely related in ethnic and regional terms. But for every discrete group, there are significant differences in spiritual practices and symbols — and sometimes even within groups, as traditions evolved over centuries and millennia at farther reaches of a people’s lands.] At any rate, for some, yes, Bear does represent safety and security and protection. But perhaps more commonly, he represents protection” in a very different sense: For many peoples, he’s a medicine symbol. The association comes from Bear’s own behavior in the natural world — his ability to know instinctively which plants and roots are healthy and necessary to his survival, and his practice of using his powerful paws and claws to dig them out of the ground.
In the Southwest, the humpbacked bear has become an icon of regional Indian art. Sometimes a heartline will wend its way across the bear’s body; sometimes not. Over the years, I’ve seen all sorts of explanations promulgated by [non-Indian] “experts” as to the origin of the humpback style, and not one of them sounds to me as though it bears any relationship to reality. I’ve always thought the explanation was much simpler than contorting false perceptions of Native spirituality into something that fetishizes (pun intended) a “humpback.”
Take a look at true vintage fetish carvings, those made before the advent of modern cutting and grinding tools. A century ago, when non-Indians first became fascinated with Indian culture in this part of the country, Zuni Pueblo’s carvers, in particular, were already famed for their skill, and tourists and colonizers began snapping up their work. The old tools perforce made following the lines of the stone itself necessary — and, of course, when a bear is on four legs, it’s higher and broader at the back end than near the front. And so it’s likely that carvers were simply following the evidence of their own eyes as to what a bear, down on all fours, actually looks like, within the constraints of the stone and the tools at hand. With some stones, that no doubt put the bulky “hump” a little farther forward than perhaps was realistic, but it got the job done as far as communicating the identity of the subject. Once the tourist trade got hold of it, it became a thing, and of course, then nothing else would do; nothing else would be considered “authentically Indian.” [Because, of course, what is “authentically Indian” in this society is to be determined by the norms and frames and mythologies and preferences of non-Indians. Fortunately, we are not circumscribed by the “definitions” of others.] Now, some Native artisans have reverted almost entirely to the vintage style of carving, using minimalist shaping, preferring to let the stone itself speak.
Mark doesn’t do “vintage-style” carving per se. He does let the stone speak for itself. His lines are simple and spare, clean and free of distracting detail. The featured piece above is done in the “humpbacked” style, but if you look at it closely, it really doesn’t have a hump: It’s a smooth, clean line, rounded perfectly on either side and just begging to be stroked. Mark reserves his ornamentation for the bundles.
The bundles. Another hallmark of Pueblo carving. You may hear people refer to them interchangeably as “medicine bundles” or “offering bundles.” It’s mostly a difference of letters strung together; they tend to mean the same thing. It’s a concept that is a little hard to translate for outsiders. In explaining it to customers, I use the Christian concept of tithing as an example: Stripped to its basics, the Christian offers 10% of her income to God, and in turn, God will protect her and hers, bringing her within the safety of his blessings. [Yes, I know that’s oversimplifying, but that’s the underlying dynamic in one sentence. I’m about to oversimplify the bundles, too, because that’s really the only way to do it in this medium.]
For many traditional peoples, “offerings” are a way of life. We make an offering to Spirit (or to a particular spirit being), because it is our way, because it is a spiritual duty, because we give thanks for what we are given, but also because we wish to ask for something. That something could be protection, good health, help with a specific problem or task, or something else entirely. It’s probably a universal impulse: to promise something to forces more powerful than oneself in exchange for something desperately needed, or at least wanted. Fetishes are carvings that are thought by some to embody the spirit of the animal or other being evoked from the stone (or shell, in some cases). Different peoples have different explanations for and methods of “inspiriting” such carvings, but the concept — and the duties that attach thereto — are taken seriously. For example, some people set aside a special place for certain carvings, where they “feed” them with offerings of cornmeal and water. Those who create such carvings often add tiny things of value — offerings — such as bits of turquoise or coral or shell, perhaps some small feathers, tied on with sinew. These are a gift to the spirit that the carving represents, and the reasons for doing it might include an expression of thanksgiving, a prayer for assistance, a hope that the special traits and powers that belong to that entity will accrue to the carver or the holder. This is where the “medicine” connection comes in, since we define spiritual interactions and interrelationships, as well as physical treatments and remedies, as “medicine.”
Mark’s medicine bundles are one-of-a-kind — both in terms of each individual bundle and his style of making them. They’re valuable in their own right. Complex, full of vibrant colors and textures, they include multiple elements, but some are virtually always present. He stabilizes them with a couple of stalks of dried fibrous plant, and attaches feathers, usually a combination of traditional-looking turkey feathers and brilliant macaw feathers. He’s told me that he gets the macaw feathers specially, from an Oklahoma supplier who maintains a stock specifically for Native artists to use. Beneath the feathers, he attaches small gifts of substantial value: large pieces of natural turquoise; individual shells; good-sized ancient pottery sherds, usually black-on-white. The effect is breathtaking.
Finally, about that stone: We have a number of Mark’s pieces in inventory, all of treated sandstone. They’re all beautiful, but none of them speaks to me the way this stone does. It’s orange alabaster, and this particular piece is truly spectacular. There’s nothing understated about it; it’s a true orange, the color of the fruit or of brightest flame, with shadowy whorls of white and sharp silvery lightning-light bits of matrix throughout. It’s the kind of stone you want to touch, to hold, to stroke, to absorb its beauty and raw power.
I’ve written about alabaster as a carving medium here before. It’s a form of gypsum, and it comes in a variety of shades, from nearly pure white to ivory and beige; from a soft pastel pink to a deep rose to a putty color shot with brick red; from palest peach to the fiery shade you see here. There are other colors, too, depending on the region where it’s found and the other minerals present, but these are the ones I see most commonly used by Native artists in this part of the country. Both Colorado and Utah are reliable sources of alabaster, but I’m told that this shade and quality of the orange form is best found in Utah.
It’s a soft stone, and an absorbent one, making it easy to work with but also delicate. It’s one reason why it’s useful to do as Mark does and limit the actual carving as much as possible, letting the stone itself speak. It’s sturdy and stable enough to survive in sculptural form, but of course, it needs a safe and stable place to reside. Like most sculpture (and pottery), its fragility is an inherent part of a piece’s value, hence the need for special shipping arrangements.
This little guy guy embodies the brilliance of this season — the fires of Father Sun as he dances across the sky, the radiant regalia of the leaves as the trees perform their own dance in place. He’ll warm and brighten your days through the winter cold and gloom and snows. And he carries on his back all the blessings, the medicine, of a thousand years of tradition.
~ Aji
