From the time that Wings opened his first gallery, he’s used the space, in part, to showcase the work of fellow Native artists who don’t have brick-and-mortar selling space of their own. It’s especially gratifying to be able to do that for the up-and-coming generation of younger artists.
It’s all the more meaningful when the artist in question is extremely talented, and is the nephew of a distant cousin who walked on seven years or so ago, a man who was one of his closest friends. The late cousin is Emerson Gomez, a master carver who specialized in traditional-style carving, evoking animal spirits from local stone. We still have a couple of Emerson’s pieces in inventory (and more in Wings’s private collection that he won’t sell). One of these days, I’ll feature his work, and include a retrospective of some of his sold pieces, if I can find photos of them.
But now, Emerson’s nephew, Jeremy Gomez, has picked up the mantle of the family’s artistic tradition, and carves beautiful pieces much as his uncle did, but with his own unique style. Most of our work by Jeremy consists of fetish carvings: bears and other powerful animal spirits. Those will be featured in a future post. But in the last two or three years, he’s begun to branch out jewelry carving — pendants and earrings rendered in the same stone from which he creates his animal fetishes, usually alabaster or local Pilar slate, occasionally simple “found rock,” like that from which he crafted some uniquely beautiful drop earrings a couple of years ago.
Today, I want to show you a couple of Jeremy’s pendants, those in the photo above. They’re nearly identical in execution, the primary difference being that one is slightly longer than the other (just under 2.75″ compared to just under 2.5″), and has an extra dot of turquoise chip inlay along the shaft. Their descriptions are nearly identical, too, so I’ll post only one here:
Carver Jeremy Gomez (Taos Pueblo) has coaxed an “eagle feather” from stone. An adjustable white deerhide thong holds the hand-carved pendant, fashioned of pale orange alabaster with a swirling matrix. Turquoise chip inlay accents the feather’s “shaft.”
Orange alabaster; blue turquoise; white deerhide
$195 + shipping, handling, and insurance
But I wanted you to see them in the photo at the top of this post, rather than those at their respective links, because it was taken in different light, and shows off the natural beauty of the stone itself. A lot of our carvers use alabaster, both for its beauty and its workability, but the best of them let the stone’s own qualities shine through. That’s what Jeremy does here, allowing the flowing inclusions to take center stage, adding only the subtlest carving and the understated turquoise accents. And the colors — the earthy orange of the alabaster trimmed with bits of brilliant sky blue — evoke the very colors of Taos Pueblo itself, of the earthen walls and painted wooden sills, of the soil underfoot and the sky overhead.
The turquoise itself is impressive: It was known as “micro-chip inlay,” until “microchips” came to mean something entirely different, and now you’ll usually see sellers refer to it simply as “micro-inlay” or “chip inlay.” It’s close precision work, requiring a good eye and a steady hand, and Jeremy has both. It’s also a good example of how to use materials without waste: As I’ve noted elsewhere, cutting and cabbing of gemstones creates detritus that is often simply thrown away — tiny chips, chalk, fine dust. Some artisans save all of it, and combine it for delicate inlay work such as this.
We have a few more of Jeremy’s jewelry pieces, as well — earrings that need to be photographed and uploaded to the site. We’ll get to those in the days and weeks to come. For now, though, simple, elegant carved jewelry in a shape that virtually all of our peoples hold sacred seems like a good way to introduce you to a young talent.
~ Aji
