Taos Pueblo’s most iconic, most instantly recognizable feature is its ancient multi-story architecture, particularly as embodied in Hlauuma, or North House. Now more than one thousand years old, it exists essentially in its original form, a vast series of interconnected homes made of the local red earth mixed with straw. In most cases, the homes’ original architecture remains; the exteriors are simply resurfaced regularly and interior walls and joins and roofs shored up as needed.
Hlaukwima, South House, is the other multi-story building, on the other side of the river that bisects the old village. A few lower-level interconnected homes dot the area around the plaza; the very newest among them are still many hundreds of years old. And they are alive: still lived in daily, through the extreme heat of June and the sub-zeroes of January, the old way, without electricity or running water. The adobe is some of the best insulation you’ll find anywhere, and the “kiva” fireplaces use it to great effect.
It’s understandable why outsiders, visitors and tourists, are so taken with the imagery of the architecture. It’s familiar, in the sense that most people are accustomed to seeing modern buildings that incorporate a sort of communal living, apartments and condos and barracks and dorms. And yet it’s something so singular, so very different — so ancient — that to outsiders, it’s not merely unknown but virtually unbelievable.
For the people themselves, however, there’s nothing remotely unbelievable about it: It’s simply “life.” And it’s such an integral part of life that it informs and shapes everything. It’s what Wings sought to portray in his recent one-man show, Taos Pueblo: Ancestral Places, Sacred Spaces. And the people are, of course, wholly aware of its uniqueness compared to the outside world, and of how its perceived (and misperceived) b the dominant culture.
Taken together, all of these things make it not merely an existential component of tradition, culture, and identity; it also looms large in the people’s own consciousness as a source of artistic inspiration. Pueblo architecture makes appearances in the people’s own art (and some of Wings’s own will be covered here over the next few days), whether it’s photography or painting or Indian jewelry or pottery or sculpture.
If you’ve spent time perusing the section of this site devoted to Wings’s recent exhibition, you already know the centrality of the Pueblo’s very earth and walls and vigas to Wings’s own work. Over the weekend and into Monday, we’ll be covering that topic here in more depth. But he’s far from the only Pueblo artist for whom it serves as inspiration. For that, we need look no further than members of his own family.
Meet Wings’s Aunt Jeri:
This photo was taken in 2008, when Aunt Jeri was 90 or 91, which would make her 96 or 97 now. She’s an amazing woman. She called us one day that fall, to let her nephew know that she had some new art for him to sell at the gallery if he was interested.
When a woman like Aunt Jeri has art to sell, you bet he’s interested.
So we went to visit her, and she had three pieces waiting for us — the three shown above. She’s an artist of many talents and abilities. She was also an educator and inspiration to young people all over Indian Country; the year prior, in 2007, she had traveled to make presentations to at-risk Indian youth about the importance of their identities and cultures and traditions and about how they could use art to explore and reinforce that.
But her specialty, her trademark, were her miniature Pueblo houses. The photo gives you an idea of the scale, but the detail was astonishing. Made of the same local micaceous clay Taos Pueblo’s potters use, she formed and shaped and molded each by hand, then painstakingly added the detail that only one of the people would think to include: not merely the little hand-made wooden arbors and ladders and vigas emerging from the upper walls, but the red-chile ristras hung from those vigas. And, yes, they were made of tiny strips of actual dried red chile, just like the full-sized ones that adorn homes and doorways all over the Pueblo in autumn.
But the magic of Aunt Jeri’s Pueblo homes is in their people. She told me that she always felt, making them, that they were inhabited by their own very real people in their own very real world, a Taos Pueblo in its own miniature dimension of clay and cedar and chile and cloth. They had lives, and they went about them just as people do in our world. She told me that she talked with them as she formed them and their homes, and after they were finished — and she told her clients to talk to them, too. She always insisted that if you had a problem or needed help with something, you should talk to the little people in the little homes and ask them for help. Your answer or solution might not come right then, or in the way you expected it, but it would come in due time, nonetheless. As, I suspect, with most things, her clients reported that Aunt Jeri was right.
Of course, her pieces were masterworks, and they all sold long ago. We’re grateful to have the photos of some her latter work. I’m also grateful for having had the opportunity to take this photo:
The October afternoon sunlight backlighting them made for a terribly dim shot, but it’s one that’s important to us: Wings with his beloved Aunt Jeri and the artwork with which she entrusted us.
Today, we have only one three-dimensional Pueblo in miniature left in inventory, this one by Wings’s cousin, Martin Romero. Like Aunt Jeri, Martin created these in a series of three, each roughly the same size, each with its own unique character and attention to detail. Martin’s are smaller pieces, not merely dried but fired, and do not include people. The viewer is left to imagine the occupants on his or her own. But they include the same markers of authenticity and first-hand knowledge: The adobe chimney, the step at the front door, the platform in front of the horno, the individual “latillas” to create the arbor roof, the posts of the pine ladder in two different lengths.
From its description in the Other Artists: Sculpture Gallery here on the site:
Taos Pueblo sculptor/potter Martin Romero has created a miniature Pueblo house with horno (oven), in the shape of the Pueblo’s iconic multi-story architecture. House and horno are the people’s own local micaceous clay, glowing with warm metallic flecks of sunlight. The arbor and ladders are real wood, pieces cut and meticulously stripped by hand, then fashioned into reproductions of the traditional arbors and pine ladders found at the actual village homes. Measures just over 5.5″ long by 3″ high by 3.75″ deep (dimensions approximate).
Micaceous clay; wood
$175 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
It’s a beautiful little piece, perfect for a bookshelf or mantel. it’s also a perfect little facsimile of a thousand-year-old Pueblo house, a chance to bring a little of the Pueblo itself home with the viewer, made of its own materials in its own iconic shape.
It’s a home in search of its own home.
Tomorrow: Another view of North House, this time rendered in silver.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
