More snow this morning; more rain, too. It’s unseasonably cold now for May, but it’s temporary — the forecast insists on more rain for tomorrow, but also projects that the mercury will begin to rise again.
And despite the heavy wet snow of yesterday, and the snow and roughly-freezing temps of last night, the green thrives, tall and strong and bold. It will be different, of course, a few miles up the mountain, but here, winter’s momentary return has done nothing but ready the earth for planting.
And we shall have to plant before month’s end. We held off last year, and were proven right to do so, since we were granted neither runoff nor rain over the course of the warm seasons. Now, though, we shall need to make up for a year lost, irrigating the hayfields, planting food crops, flowers, herbs, medicine.
And planting corn.
Corn is, of course, a staple of our peoples. Here, it is more than just food: It is medicine, the paraphernalia of prayer and ceremony; it has its own spirits, its keepers and protectors. But corn requires water to survive, and so the Corn Maidens are associated, among other links and tasks, with the arrival of the rains.
They seem to be early this year.
Early or late, we welcome them whenever they choose to arrive. And today, we have four of their personifiers, maidens in miniature, crafted by one of Wings’s oldest friends in the world of Indigenous Pueblo art. They are shown collectively above, although one, the tall, slender one wearing the beautiful blues and greens of summer, is nearly hidden behind the tiny orange-feathered one on the right. You can just see the slender one’s headdress fanning out above the small orange feathers, although she appears independently below.
All four of the maidens share a description in the Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site, but we begin with the image of the first of the maidens, the largest and most colorful one:
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.
Pink sandstone; macaw feather bundles
Far left: $275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Middle: $425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Far right: $275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Back: $325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Weight requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
This one is perhaps the most striking, due simply to her relative size. She projects a solidity, a substance, a sense of stability and longevity by virtue of that size, and because of the four, she is the most detailed, with the largest and brightest headdress. But among the maidens, each has her role to play.
The second, the one mostly hidden in the image at the top, is my personal favorite:
Part of it is that she wears my favorite colors, deep blues and greens; her headdress evokes the beauty and intensity of the stormy season. Part of it is that she shows herself only in semi-profile, keeping hidden that which she deems is only hers to know. And part of it, admittedly, stems from the top image itself, her near-erasure from the picture. In her case, it was accidental, caused by the slope of the wall on which they all sat, but I have too much personal experience with the same phenomenon, accidental and intentional, not to find commonality with it.
The last two are nearly identical in size, although the one in the multi-colored headdress is slightly larger. She is also more detailed, with a little adornment to her dress and a greater selection of colors in her feathers:
She seems, in some ways, to be a miniaturized version of the largest of their group, but as with their actual spirit-world counterparts, each is unique, possessed of her own identity and role.
The last, fractionally the smallest, is also the simplest in design:
She wears no jewels; her dress is simple and unadorned. The feathers of her headdress are all the same shade: brilliant orange, tipped with a warm golden brown. And in her case, the uniformity of hues in her headdress picks up all the better the shades of the stone from which she is wrought — pale golden browns edged around the features with an orange as bright and as warm as the sun.
These four are peculiarly well-suited to represent their kind: emerging from the very sand and stone of the high-desert earth, yet flowering and feathering into brilliant hues, like the Indian corn that is their charge.
I have always regarded ears of Indian corn as collections of colorful beads, small gems that are a gift of the spirits. Like those spirits who protect and nurture them, they are jewels of the rains, valuable beyond price.
And soon, it will be time to plant — the kernels, the seeds, the beads.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
