We’ve spent this week looking at founding fathers and familial spirits, and their myriad manners of manifestation. Our traditions rely on senses and worlds beyond those immediately perceptible in the ordinary way, and the spirits who inhabit them are similarly unconstrained by this world’s laws of physics.
The whys and ways of these spirits’ existence, and how they choose to reveal themselves, of course varies widely among all our many peoples. For some, they are no doubt represented largely in origin stories and traditional lessons; for others, they are very real parts of everyday life — as seen, for example, in the role of the katsinam in the peoples of this region. But their methods of manifestation are just as mysterious, equally complex, despite having been reduced by Hillerman-esque imagery and Twilight tropes to pop-culture objects of minstrelsy and mockery in the dominant culture’s consciousness.
For purposes of what the outside world sees, nowhere is this evidence of congress with the spirit world perhaps more evident than in Native art: It serves as subject and object, as expression and comprehension, as inspiration and execution. Today’s featured piece is one such example, one that embodies all of the above, and more. From its description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
In his trademark style, master carver Ned Archuleta (Taos Pueblo) melds together the spirits of a traditional elder and an animal into one mystical piece. Here, it’s the elder and a bear, traditional symbol of medicine and power, rendered in smooth, flowing, silken lines of clay-colored alabaster shot with bits of warm golden-hued streaks in the stone. About six inches in overall length, it sits on a wooden base.
Alabaster on wooden base
$225 + shipping, handling, and insurance
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The name of the sculpture is BearHawk — and as the name implies, it is a complex being: two spirits in one, or perhaps two facets of the same spirit.
Or three.
Bear is obvious; so is the human in the form of an elder. But where does Hawk arise?
Perhaps it’s the name — or one of the names — of the elder himself. Perhaps it’s a third aspect entirely, one that shows only a bit of its form and shape by way of the long flowing lines of the blanket around the elders held, which look for all the world like the great raptor’s draping wings. Perhaps it’s both, or neither, or some compound of the two combined with something yet more.
The one thing that we may know with confidence is that we do not know the workings of the spirit world, at least for the most part. Oh, we may glean hints here and there, and the spirits may choose to show themselves to us in one form . . . or many. But what some peoples call The Great Mystery is just that, and well it behooves us to understand as best we can, it also behooves us, at times, simply to accept what is but cannot be explained in the terms of our own limited human language and experience.
For this particular spirit being (beings?), we cannot say with confidence who or what he is; to try to do so is to guarantee failure. Perhaps the sculptor knows . . . or perhaps not. He may have been led by a dream and a vision to coax this form from the stone, or it may have been as ordinary a task as combining the essential spirits of someone he once knew into a small memorial.
What we can say is that he has succeeded in creating something that hints at greater mysteries, that evokes the forms and invokes the powers of multiple spirits. Perhaps it is a more effective way for them to speak to us, to hold our attention long enough to hear.
~ Aji
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