Our way recognizes the inspiriting of our whole world. While colonial traditions teach a taxonomy of immanent hierarchy: that only humans have souls — that spark of the divine, as the Romantics would have it, even as their culture’s religion denominated such characterizations blasphemy — and thus, humans are inherently superior to all other forms of life (and, as they see it, non-life).
It’s the perfect structure for the colonial mindset; it permits all manner of violence to go unremarked and unaddressed under the twinned rubrics of “right” and “just the way it is.”
But the way it is is so much more complex than that. We inhabit worlds within worlds, cosmologies that that regularly force us to face our limitations. It keeps us humble.
It also keeps us realistic, clear-eyed about what is possible in the short term, and what must be overcome in the long run.
It’s also one of the reasons we look to the animal spirits for guidance. They see the world from a broader vantage point than we, and a narrower one, too: ones that, in these times of accelerating upheaval, perhaps would serve us better than our own human-centric tendencies. The ancestors knew this, and called upon their powers as a matter of daily life.
Today’s featured work embodies just such an animal and animating spirit: Bear, who for some represents protection, for others, medicine, for still others, both. This one, summoned into being by one of Wings’s oldest friends in the regional Native arts community, is wrought from pale sandstone, earthy but nearly white — but scratch the surface only slightly and the material becomes the bright red-orange of flame, hidden fires beneath a deceptively cool and pale exterior. From its description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
This enormous medicine bear by master carver Mark Swazo-Hinds (Tesuque Pueblo) is substantial enough to be displayed on a large coffee table. A museum-quality showpiece carved of very pale sandstone in a subtle version of the traditional Southwest hump-backed style, he’s more than a foot long and extremely heavy. He carries a complex medicine bundle crafted in Mark’s own inimitable style, of macaw and turkey feathers, pieces of turquoise, old pottery sherds, and shells, tied on with fabric to keep it secure.
Sandstone; turkey feathers; macaw feathers; pottery sherds; turquoise; shells; fabric
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Weight and fragility require special handling; extra shipping charges apply
Mark’s hallmark is found in clean, spare lines that evoke less the shape than the spirit of any given being, adorned with the most complex of medicine bundles made of offerings of stone and shell, weaving and wood, sherds of ancient pottery and profusion of feathers in browns and blues and greens and reds. In this instance, they nearly blanket Bear, despite his remarkable size and substance and solidity.
As our world rushes headlong toward winter, and even faster toward more perilous geopolitical events, we can do with a little extra protection, and the whole world with extra medicine. The earth is growing cold now, part of its natural turning, but its spirit has grown cold in other, more dangerous ways, too.
But there are hidden fires in our spirits, and the spirits of those found in our cosmologies.
Perhaps it’s time we summoned them to the surface.
~ Aji
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