A week from today, the Pueblo will hold its annual public feast day: The Feast of San Geronimo. It will be a day of food and song and drum and, yes, dance, a day to celebrate family and community, to honor elders and tradition — and a day to mark the turn of the people’s collective attention from the casual comfort of summer to the work of harvest and preparation for winter.
As is usually the case at this time of year, we are solidly in the throes of Indian Summer. Indeed, this year, it has been warmer in recent days than in much of the last month, despite the new and unusual precipitation patterns that have given us two nights of heavy rains. Today, though, the winds are driving the clouds hard before them, sending them eastward over the peaks and on to the plains of neighboring states. Even so, more rain is predicted for tonight, and for a day or two next week, but by the day of the feast, if the forecast holds, it will be sixty-nine degrees and perfectly clear.
In other words, it will be perfect weather for those in attendance, a blessing for the elders who wish to participate.
Today’s featured work evokes the image of such elders: dressed in their finest traditional dress, eagle feathers tied in their hair and blankets wrapped about their shoulders. From its description in our Other Artists: Sculpture gallery here on the site:
This representation of a Pueblo elder in traditional dress, complete with blanket, jewelry, and eagle feather, is the work of master carver Ned Archuleta (Taos Pueblo). This one really shows Ned’s ability to coax spirit from stone by following its immanent form, and features great attention to detail: the lines of the blanket, the strands of beads, the markings on the eagle feather in the hair. Formed out of a pink alabaster, it sits atop a pine wood base. Stands 12.25″ high including base (sculpture, 11.25″; base 1″). The sculpture is 6.25″ wide by 1.75″ deep; the base, 6.5″ wide by 3″ deep (all dimensions approximate).
Pink alabaster on pine base
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Weight requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
This piece is one of those figurative works that speaks to different people in different ways. Some see simply a Native man of indeterminate age; a few others have seen a more feminine form, perhaps owing to the presence of the necklace. Some have asked whether it is an image of a medicine man or spiritual leader. The honest answer that it represents whatever the carver intended, private thoughts to which we have no particular access. But I have always seen it as a male figure (as has Wings): an elder, a man of social status, yes, but more importantly, possessed of the status that accompanies spiritual leadership. And his body, leaned slightly forward, arms held outward beneath his blanket, has always spoken to me of the act of dancing. He has always seemed to me to be an elder with long decades of experience in his people’s most traditional ways of celebration and ceremony, one who perhaps moves more gently now with age, but who nonetheless insists on joining in the dance.
He is a fitting figure for this season, all soft lines and gentle curves and forward motion, wrapped in spirit as thoroughly as he is in his blanket.
~ Aji
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