We have spent this month exploring the symbolism of color in Native art: the primary colors, the compounding of all colors, and (next week) color’s absence. In this particular weekly space, in which we feature items by other Native artists whose work we carry in our gallery inventory, and we have used this month to highlight colorful small paintings. Today, we combine the color themes and schemes of this week and next, white and black, in one tiny work awash in the brighter shades of the spectrum.
It’s a small woodcut tinted with natural paints, one that displays the image of Crow Mother, one of the Hopi katsinam. The work is by Josh Aragon, one of our local artists who specializes in the carving of the traditional katsinam of his people. This piece is a bit of a departure from his more usual figurative works, but it still summons the image of one of these ancient spirits, in a more modest (and more modestly priced) form. From its description in the Other Artists: Wall Art gallery here on the site.
Josh Aragon (Hopi/Laguna) is best known for his katsinam, figures carved in the traditional fashion out of a single piece of cottonwood root. Sometimes he puts his carving skills to work in other media, creating carved paintings on wood instead of canvas. In this one, Crow Mother stands within her traditional case mask, wrapped in a blanket accented with ancient symbols. The paints used include natural dyes; the piece stands 7.25″ high by 6.25″ across (dimensions approximate).
Wood; paint
crow$125 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Crow Mother is said to be the mother of all the katsinam, hence her name. She has her own name in the Hopi language, of course, one with its own layers of meaning beyond the most obvious. Josh has reproduced her image here in bright blues and greens and reds and browns on golden yellow wood, the colors outlined in brilliant white, the raven feathers of her headdress and her robe jet black. She fits well within the week’s thematic color symbolism, carrying a basket of corn and embodying birth and life.
As the mother of the spirits, Crow Mother’s existence is a tribute to clarity and illumination: It is she who makes life possible.
It is up to her children to realize that possibility, to inhabit the roles they are to play for the good of all. Like Crow Mother’s own children, realizing life’s possibility is our own task as we journey around the hoop.
~ Aji
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