Another day at summer’s end, another pall of dirty yellow smoke veiling what should by rights be clear blue skies. We have not seen such skies all week, although the mercury has dropped and the foliage is now turning rapidly. The new moon has come and gone; the autumnal equinox is only days off now, and month’s end just over a week later.
There will be no feast day to mark it this year.
It’s sadly fitting, in a way; the pandemic has been far from our only danger this year. At an even more fundamental level, drought has been hard at work killing the land, and for us, at least, there is precious little harvest to celebrate anyway.
But there is a small one. And that is worth honoring.
Today’s featured works constitute a small collection of spirits of growth and harvest: Corn Maidens, traditionally feminine beings within whose purview such matters fall. These small sculptural figures, who sit at the heart of growth and life and renewal, are created by Tesuque carver Mark Swazo-Hinds, one of Wings’s oldest friends in this region’s Indigenous art world. All four are of a piece with each other, each crafted in Mark’s trademark style, all bold spare lines and starkly-limited detail, allowing the spirit in the stone to emerge beneath a headdress of brilliantly-hued macaw feathers. Their group description is found in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery:
Master carver Mark Swazo-Hinds (Tesuque Pueblo) coaxes stylized Corn Maidens from plain smooth blocks of stone. Each is hand-carved from very pale, very fine pink sandstone, almost a translucent peach in color. With surfaces so smooth you can hardly keep from touching them, they feel a bit like large worry stones. In lieu of the traditional tablita headdress, each wears Mark’s trademark bundle of brilliantly-hued macaw feathers. All dimensions are approximate: The two smaller ones are in the 3″-4″ high range; the largest is about 6″; the one in the back on the far right is about 5″ high, and is narrower — almost an inverted teardrop shape. Individual views shown below.
All made with treated sandstone; macaw feather bundles
Large Figure (center in top photo) : $425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
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The largest feels a bit like the elder sister of the group, watchful, yes, but a teacher too. She seems fully actualized, with the most elaborate regalia and the most colorful feathers in her headdress, her dress well-suited to her size.
The second is a bit smaller, a bit less forward — not, perhaps, out of shyness but rather out of the kind of calm and centered rootedness that is secure in its own path, with no need to seek outside affirmation.
Medium Figure (right background in top photo): $325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
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This one is perhaps my favorite, partly for the blues and greens of her headdress, but also for her determination to show only so much of herself as she wishes the world to see. It’s a reminder, in a consumption-mad colonial world, that we need not give up our whole selves to it.
The third of the group is smaller, one perhaps still growing. Like the largest of the group, she wears a spectacularly colorful headdress, if one that is more modest in size.
Small Figure 1 (at left in top photo): $275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
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They may be more diminutive, but these smaller spirits are in no way lesser. Their physical stature is deceptive; hold each in your hand, and you feel their weight, their mass, their sheer substance.
It’s true of the smallest, simplest one, too, no adorning regalia and all the feathers of her headdress only one shade:
Small Figure 2 (at right foreground in top photo): $275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
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This one makes me think of fire: less of the flames now racing across much of the country than of that of the skies of dawn and dusk, of the new robes of the heart-shaped aspen leaves already turning, of the jeweled shades of the Indian corn not quite yet ready for harvest.
And they remind me of the need for a fire of the spirit, and in the heart, especially now: for it is this which sustains resistance, which ensures existence, at the heart of growth and life and renewal. And the world needs it from us now.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
