The dominant culture tends to associate Native arts with bright colors and bold geometric shapes: circles, triangles, diamonds. Many such patterns are found in Navajo weaving patterns and the seemingly organic hoop shapes of the dreamcatcher and medicine wheel.
If y9u were to ask a random person on the street what motifs s/he associates with indigenous art, the first response would probably not be “Flowers.”
And yet, flowers play as much an integral role in many of our peoples’ art forms as they do in other aspects of our cultures, such as language and medicine.
In fact, it is the latter category that is probably best known. Our peoples, too, plant and grow flowers simply for their beauty, but we have also long known their medicinal power. This is true of flowers from plants that most of the rest of the world dismisses as weeds, and occasionally among those feared as toxic.
We use such plants as Indian paintbrush, shown at left, for purposes of healing. Dandelions, scorned by the outside world, are both food and medicine. The squash blossoms that herald the growth of the second among the plants we call the Three Sisters are likewise a food item, and they serve as inspiration for the eponymous heavy tasseled necklaces so ubiquitous in the Native silverwork of New Mexico and Arizona. We’ll get to the role of squash blossoms specifically later this month, as well as that of the First Sister, corn, and one other plant.
There are likely thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of wildflower species indigenous to various parts of Indian Country. Here, we find wild sunflowers (and now the more domesticated variety); blanketflower (sometimes called the firewheel); columbine; asters; a host of colorful daisy-like blooms and varieties of poppy; and the yellow and white blooms that dot the fields and wild lands in the form of cow and other parsleys, wild mustards, prairie and other clovers, and, of course, chamisa. Many of these do triple duty: as food sources; as forms of medicine; and as artistic inspiration.
Then there are the less soft flowers: the ones like those shown at the top, prickly pear and other cactus blossoms; and the ones that carry or accompany powerful toxins, like those that appear on the plant shown immediately below, peyote.
We’ll look at peyote’s symbolic role in Native arts in the week’s to come. For now, suffice to say that it is one more plant indigenous to this corner of the world that has highly toxic properties — and that, if used with skill and discretion, honor and respect, is a powerful agent of ceremony and healing.
For today, we’re going to focus on more classic blossoms, whether they appear on benign and even ordinary plants or on spiky species of cacti.
The use of flowers in our cultures, as food, as medicine, for healing and ceremony, and for art, is probably as old as time itself, at least in human terms. In our area, we are blessed to have the collective historical record of the work of ancient artists, in the form of numerous pictographs and petroglyphs. With the possible exception of those who can trace descent directly from the peoples who would have created these works of art (and also, perhaps, of language), and who likely are charged with holding such knowledge close anyway, it’s virtually impossible to say with any certainty what any given image means now. The two symbols in the photo above that Wings took a decade or so ago I have always assumed to be celestial symbols of one sort or another, But who’s to say that might not actually be representations of indigenous plant life — the one on the left perhaps a cactus blossom, its spines showing below the petals, and the one one the right something akin to a blanketflower or wild sunflower?
Speaking of ancient art forms, one of our peoples’ earliest also served a practical function: our traditional dress. In ancient times, of course, our clothing was made from hides, and we soon learned to adorn it with stone and bone beads and shells and eventually bits of metal in the form of bells and “jingles.” With advent of weaving came textile arts that included, clothing, blankets (and make no mistake, blankets are also clothing), and rugs, and clothing made of fabric was added to our wardrobes. Once it became possible, particularly in the 19th Century, to obtain cloth already woven, it became possible to by patterned fabrics such as calico that, especially for the women of many cultures but also for many of the men, included flower prints.
In addition, many tribal nations count in their collective imagery very old patterns used in the making of traditional dress that take the form of floral beadwork. Such motifs are especially popular among the northern nations, from New England to my own in the Upper Midwest to the Northern Plains tribes, where complex and elaborately beaded floral patterns are still a basic feature of traditional dress to this day. Such flower designs are found on women’s dresses and men’s shirts, on blankets and shawls, on medallions and beadwork jewelry, and, of course, on moccasins.
In our area, floral beadwork is no longer as common, but there was a time when women’s shawls and men’s wraps regularly featured such patterns. Still, it’s exceedingly popular for use in everyday moccasins, particularly those worn by little girls, such as those shown in the two photos above.
The topic of traditional dress brings up another, highly localized art form where the use of flower patterns makes an appearance: Katsinam (kachinas).
We’ve discussed these carved representations of the actual spirit beings at length here
on numerous occasions, but most of those discussions have revolved around their basic physical form and the role they play in a particular tradition’s cosmology. Their style of dress is, to some degree, secondary (although in the case of some katsinam, there are specific sartorial requirements that play their own role in the being’s conduct and tasks). The detail work found in the painted dress of kachina carvings varies with the experience and aesthetic preferences of the artists, but often feature common traditional geometric shapes, and, in some cases, celestial images, rain patterns, or the feathers of specific birds.
Sometimes, however, the katsinam embody beings whose own spirits are closely connected to the world of flowers: for example, the Hummingbird Kachina, the brilliant figure shown directly above at center; and the Butterfly Maiden, who is shown back at left and front at right. These were sold long ago, but both were carved by Josh Aragon, of Hopi and Laguna Pueblos, and in both instances, he chose to include among the imagery on their traditional dress a flower, which each kachina’s guiding wingéd spirit would have been tasked, in life, with pollinating. In both instances, the spirit beings’ garments similarly reflect the bright colors and patterns of the flowers among which they once spent their days.
Of course, flowers appear in the graphic arts, as well, including painting and photography, but in both instances, they tend more to be an incidental element than a focal point. That can change with other genres, including claywork.
At Taos Pueblo, traditional claywork, both pottery and sculpture, utilizes the indigenous micaceous clay. The red-gold earth itself is shot through with flecks of mica that catch and hold and refract the light, giving Taos Pueblo pottery a finish that resembles copper inlaid with tiny diamond chips. The mica clayware is so beautiful on its own that it needs no other adornment, and traditional potters mostly eschew ornamentation beyond the occasional etchwork or image sculpted in relief on the surface. In many of the Pueblos south and west of here, however, painting is not only common but an elaborate element of the work itself. Some clayware artists stick to the old black-on-white combination, while others use multiple hues, but the patterns include everything from symbolic motifs to spirit beings to animals to plans, and, yes, flowers.
And then there is the work of Wings’s niece, Camille Bernal.
Camille has worked in all sorts of styles over the years, but her preferred medium is another clay from the area
, a smooth red Tewa clay that contain
s no mica but has a silken finish. It gives her pots a warm, velvety texture, a perfect “canvas” for her delicate graphic artwork that she adds to the surface. Two of her favorite motifs come from the earth: insects and floral patterns, sometimes in combination.
The white pot in a classic shape shown above at center is a perfect example of her flower-themed artwork: The piece is entitled Flowers and Checkerboards, and features small blooms on long, elegant crosshatched stems. I rather suspect that she painted them as tulips, but they have always reminded of both the spring catkins and the pussy willows of my own people’s lands. That same tall, slender flower motif repeats on the two works sh
own above at left and right: on the left, a classic Art Deco-style vase with small petaled blooms reaching high up its sides; on the right, a smaller olla
of unusual design, with more catkin-like flowers tracing upward from its base on all sides.
Camille does smaller works, too, like the two more classically-shaped pots at immediate left and right. On the left is Poppies, a simple lipped bowl accented with long-stemmed flowers in a variety of bright desert shades moving in a round dance around its outer surface. On the right is Scarab, a miniature pot with an extended neck, with small scarabs arrayed at the Four Directions, the spaces between filled with delicate pale-blue blossoms.
There is, however, one area of Native art in which flower motifs are popular, and find an extraordinary range of expression: Native jewelry and silverwork. Wings uses flower and blossom motifs regularly, in a wide variety of ways — so regularly, in fact, that it would be impossible for me to include them all here. But I’ve tried here to incorporate a diverse selection of flower motifs as they appear in his work, whether express, symbolic, or in some other form.
Sometimes, the flower is both express and implied, as in the ring shown above. Its name was Flowering Earth, a reference both to its stone, which looked like a topographical map of our lands, either mountains arrayed against green earth or the land itself emerging from emerald seas, and to its setting, which Wings hand-cut in the shape of small petals. It was an example of the motif being both literal and representational.
Wings used a similar technique in the cuff shown below:
Its name was Night Blossoms, an embodiment of the sacred medicinal plants of this desert land that bloom only in the moonlight. In this instance he chose the round onyx stone to evoke the imagery of night, and set it into a bezel formed of hand-cut flower petals, each stamped with a radiant crescent moon symbol.
Then there is the cuff shown below, in which the motif functions in similar but not identical fashion:
This is one of his biggest, boldest cuffs, one built around the extraordinary cabochon of red flower jasper at the center. The name of the work is Red Flower Rain, a reference both to the central stone’s colloquial name and to the thunderhead symbols that chase down either side of the band in repeating patterns.
There are works in which the flower imagery emerges by way of stampwork to assume clear and obvious form:
The name of this miniature collector’s spoon is A Flowering Vision, a name that derives, first, from the central floral pattern in the middle of the spoon’s bowl, and second, from the Eyes of Spirit, givers of visions and dreams, that trace the length of the handle.
Some works make the flower motif express in the detail, rather than the focal point. An example appears immediately above, in a pair of classic turquoise drop earrings that are suspended from small repoussé conchas molded in the shape of a pair of blossoms.
Another example is shown below, where the floral accent is not a three-dimensional element of the work, but is nevertheless obvious: In the pendants of the earrings below, Wings stamped a single blossom design at the lower center of each, beneath a cascading row of four drops, creating an image of a flower awakening beneath the rain.
Then there are those works that put me in mind of the katsinam — pieces that embody other spirits.
In one notable instance, it was a special commission by a good friend, a gift for his wife based on a hummingbird pendant that Wings had created and sold previously to someone else. He liked the hummingbird image, but wanted earrings to coordinate with the necklace. They did not need to be birds, merely something that would complement the pendant’s fiercely delicate spirit. Wings adapted the necklace design, and the earrings, in an unusual way.
First, he created the pendant in the hummingbird’s shape, stamping it with “feathers” in delicate floral and celestial patterns, and setting a small garnet cabochon at the base of the wings. Ordinarily, he would have placed the bail, atop or behind the head, but this one required a different approach. Before fashioning the bails, he took a single sterling silver squash blossom and gently spread its petals, then inserted the hummingbird’s long beak into it and gently soldered the pieces together. he then angled it for balance and placed a bail at either end: one at the wingtip and one at the end of the squash blossom.
He then took two additional squash blossoms, spread their petals into a gentle flare, and soldered a saw-toothed bezel onto the edges of the petals to form a rim. He then set matching round garnet cabochons into the bezels, turning plain squash blossoms into beautiful red flowers. Once the earring wires were attached, the set was complete.
Sometimes, the floral motif is less obvious, the spirit being more so.
Such was the case with the commissioned work shown directly above, one in Wings’s signature series, The Mona Lisa on the Rio Grande. This master series of necklaces is a tribute to the Maidens, particularly the Corn Maidens, with the center stone serving as the feminine spirit’s head and face, the setting as her elaborate tablita headdress. Each Mona Lisa is given her own name, the word Spirit prefaced by an appropriate descriptor to bring her identity to light. This one was entitled Flowering Spirit, a nod to the blossoms that edge her headdress, and to the bloodstone jasper that forms her head, an earthy green so deep as to hold shades of teal and midnight, traced with blood-red matrix like the earth of this place.
There is another design that Wings uses to great effect to embody both shape and spirit of the flower, one that assumes the form of a central stigma and style ringed by small individual petals.
Both the center of the flower and the petals are formed on bezel-set gemstones, most often turquoise or turquoise paired with a contrasting stone. It’s an old traditional style, one that has been a part of the collective repertoire of Southwestern Native silverwork probably as long as there have been Native smiths in this area.
It’s also a pattern that is lazily mislabeled by the outside world of the Native jewelry market.
Most dealers call it a “cluster” pattern, and I suppose that’s true, as far as it goes. It does, undeniably, assume the form of a cluster of
stones. But a cluster can also be entirely random, with no visible geometry to it, no rhyme or reason, no symbol or substance. This particular arrangement of stones is better called a “blossom” pattern. Wings sometimes uses it to refer to ordinary wildflowers, sometimes to cactus blossoms.
In Wings’s hands, its a pattern that finds expression in all sorts of jewelry forms, including belt buckles and rings, but he uses it most frequently in earrings. Several years ago, he created a small collection of blossom earring sets, all of whic
h were built around a turquoise center, with
petals of a variety of stones. Only a few are shown here: at upper left, Bisbee turquoise ringed with moonstones; at upper right, green Kingman turquoise with jade “petals”; and at lower left, my own personal favorite, a pair of chartreuse and emerald Orvil Jack turquoise cabochons ringed with brilliant old blood-red coral “petals.”
And then there were the rings, such as the one at right: a central stone ringed by “petal” stones that were in some instances similar in size and shape, in others, widely variable. This one was one of his older pieces, big and bold and bright, the nine teardrop-shaped turquoise “petals” separated by smaller petals of sterling silver ingot stamped in a floral design.
Once in a while, however, Wings will have occasion to create a work that is Flower as archetype, expressly floral in body and spirit.
His most spectacular was the one shown immediately above, a work commissioned last Christmas by a very dear friend as a very special gift for her mother. She wanted to memorialize both her maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather in the piece, and so she sent Wings her grandmother’s gold wedding ring, along with the information that one of her grandfather’s most beloved avocations was the growing and care of his roses. She wanted a pin in the form of a rose, one that could somehow incorporate the slender wedding band.
Wings first sketched the general shape of the rose, drawing it to scale. He then cut out the stem and leaves as one piece, which he texturized with stampwork; he cut out the petals as a separate piece to be overlaid atop the stem. He then cut thin strips of sterling silver and hand-coiled them into the center to create depth and the nested inner petals of the rose. Finally, he melted the wedding ring down into solid gold ingot, which he stamped with its own floral starburst pattern, and then overlaid it into the center of the rose. It turned out to be one of his most beautiful (and most meaningful) works.
But at this time of year, no discussion of flowers in Native art would be complete, especially not here, without a look at eour archetypal Indian Summer bloom: the sunflower.
Here, sunflowers grow wild upon the land. They are smaller than the domesticated sunflowers, and thrive in hedge-like stands. They also attract both small birds and bees in significant numbers. This year, the cold has arrived early, and most of our sunflowers are gone, as are most of our bees, but a few remain.
And earlier this year, Wings memorialized the wild sunflowers with a pair of earrings that positively glowed with the sun’s own light.
Their name was, quite simply, SunFlowers, and they combined the imagery of the blossoms with the colors of the light to create something wholly unique.
He began with round discs of sterling silver, what he normally would have continued to shape in repoussé fashion to form the classic domed concha shape. In this instance, he left them flat, and ringed each one with hand-stamped blossom symbols conjoined in a hoop. He then took a pair of pieces of brass and cut them into shapes reminiscent of a scythe blade, a bit of a cross between an hourglass and a pendulum, narrow in the center and flared at either end. He repeated the stamped floral pattern at either flared end of the pieces of brass, then soldered them in an overlay onto the surface of the silver discs, placed so that the edges of the upper flared end arced across the center to meet at the center of either side of the blossom hoop. He then set a round citrine cabochon in the center of each brass section, a stone that seemed to glow with the light of the sun itself.
They were a perfect tribute to the wild sunflowers of this place, even in a season such as ours now, when the heads bow and the petals begin to droop.
As the days grow shorter and colder, the sunflowers will go dormant, taking refuge in slumber during the snowy winter months. But they always return, the perfect manifestation of a flowering indigeneity in this place.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
