There is a inherent tension between artist’s vision and the viewer’s perception — any artist, any viewer. We are all creatures of our own contexts, and this colors both what we create (and how, and with what), and what we see (or otherwise experience) in what someone else creates. No matter how much we might like to think that we can perform either act in some sort of vacuum, one that hews “true” to the “spirit” of the piece, the fact of the matter that is that we can’t, don’t, won’t.
When the art in question is created by someone of a very specific culture, particularly one now marginalized, and when it is viewed not only by members of that culture but of many others, including (perhaps especially) the dominant one, that tension is magnified exponentially.
For artists whose work is their livelihood, another layer of complexity is necessarily imposed: How does one remain true to one’s own cultural expression, yet manage to do so in such a way that those entirely outside of the culture find beauty and value in the work?
For indigenous artists, there is one aspect to our cultures that helps alleviate this tension in very important and significant ways: the role of symbol.
The nature of our traditions, our histories, our belief systems, our daily practices, all are examples of what self-appointed outside “experts” call animism, a concept about which I’ve written here before. I’m not going to use that term, except by way of this introduction, because I find it shallow and reductive. What I will say here at the outset is that much of our peoples’ beliefs and lifeways do indeed encompass and incorporate a worldview that allows for a natural world in which nearly everything is animated by spirit, given its own immanent identity and life. And this aspect of our cultures leads to a natural corollary: Our means of expression tend to be symbolic — art, in part, as representation.
It’s why symbolism plays such a significant role in the works of our artists: For those of a given culture, and thus conversant with its people’s histories and stories and lessons and language, art becomes a way to embody the culture itself, to immanentize the traditions, to tell the stories. And it’s possible, in our way, to tell deeply complex stories — sometimes several different stories — in a single piece.
But it’s not the stories upon which I want to focus today, but rather, the way in which they are told: not the what, but the how. And in so doing, our exploration today will be of a very specific subset of such storytelling: the kind that lets the spirits speak.
In this case, I’m not even referring to the spirits that a given piece might represent, such as a katsina. Rather, I’m referring to spirit of a given medium — stone, metal, wood — and how that raw materials from which a finished piece of art is summoned also sees its own spirit summoned to speak through the final work.
Here in the Southwest, there is one Native art tradition that exemplifies what I mean in clear and obvious fashion: carving. Today, the media from which works are carved vary widely; some contemporary artisans are even using synthetic materials to produce extremely traditional imagery (and there are layers upon layers of meaning to be deconstructed there). But in ancient times, the technology of the day necessarily limited carvers to a very few different types of media. Two of the earliest were wood and dried gourds, both available in abundance, and both susceptible to reformation by stone tools.
It is of these two materials that early figurative works were made. Even today, traditional katsina carvers still coaxtheir small spirits from a single piece of cottonwood root, although over the last century, it has become more common to create versions that are straighter, more proportional, more human-like in form and shape. But it’s still possible to find carvers who seek out roots with sharp arcs and twisted curves, and who follow the line of the root itself to midwife a representative being that looks like those carved by their ancestors. [Just last week, I came across a photo of just such a katsina, from our inventory of about four years ago. It was formed of cottonwood root manifesting in one long center piece flowing upward on either side into two antler-like prongs, and the carver had turned each prong” into a separate head of a dual-spirited Corn Maiden. Alas, I cannot find the image now, so the description will have to do.] There was a time, twenty to thirty years or so ago, when there was a resurgence of outside interest among collectors in katsinam and other carved spirit beings that hewed in form and flow to these more ancient lines, and magazines from this part of the country were filled with advertisements for various spirit beings, particularly Corn Maidens, carved from sharply curved and bent dried gourds or wood (whether full-sized sculptures or fetishes). It led to a revival of some iconic imagery from the old days: spirit beings with domed heads rising organically from the material from which they were summoned, listing sharply to one side 
or sometimes bent sideways, as though from the waist, at an angle that sometimes reached a full ninety degrees. Such pieces were (and are), to eyes that were unfamiliar with the imagery and what it represents, spectacularly phallic in appearance, and I’ve heard plenty of tourists joke over the years about what they think the shape of such works resembles.
Ironically, there is perhaps a kernel of truth to such imaginings, although not in the literal sense. To connect all of the links in the chain, one would have to understand the role of some of the beings in their various peoples’ cosmology. Corn Maidens provide an example: They are spirits that represent, in part, ideas of abundance and sustenance, embodying as they do the first of the Three Sisters who have fed the people since the time before time. What this means, logically, is that they are images connected closely to ideas of fertility: of rich fecund earth ready to receive the dried kernels, thence to gestate, to sprout, to grow tall and strong and fully alive. The very concept of planting, and of agricultural fertility, raises obvious parallels to its human counterpart — and, truth be told, ears of corn, once grown, look more than a little phallic themselves. None of the analogies is perfect, and in truth, may have had little to do, at least overtly, with how this particular art form arose, but that is the way with symbolism, after all. It’s rarely possible to pin down all of the contextual pieces that go into any given representation, no matter the cultural source or medium of expression. [The cedar-wood sculpture depicted here, which is available for purchase in our Other Artists: Sculpture gallery, is an outstanding example of following the wood’s natural lines, both overall form and cleavage within the wood itself.]
Today, that curving line, originally so organically elemental to the imagery, is sought for
all sorts of art forms — and when it is not present, some artists will create it. It’s not uncommon to find instances in which sculptors and fetish carvers choose a particular piece of stone (or wood, or shell, or other material) precisely because it has formed naturally into such a shape, or because the inclusions and/or other lines inherent in the material, lines that are often cleavages — what will, once cut, become lines of fracture — will necessarily take the carving in a particular flowing direction. I don’t have photos of some of our old Zuni fetish carvings, sold seven or eight years ago, but among them were Corn Maidens summoned from substantial pieces of jet. It was clear from their size that the carver could have created them in perfectly straight lines, had he chosen to do so; instead, he excised portions of the base material to given them a slight curvature. it imparted not only the old traditional look and feel to each small piece, but a sense of motion, as well, a feeling that the little spirits were in the very act of dancing.
When it comes to larger sculptural pieces, carvers generally have more discretion, d
epending on how much stone they are willing to excise, or the degree to which they prefer to allow the stone to speak the symbolism of the work. One of the Pueblo’s master carvers whose work we carry is an expert at this sort of creative process, a genius at finding the spirit embedded deep within the stone and then carving just enough to allow that spirit entrée to this world to speak for itself. Ned Archuleta has been carving in such a manner for decades, and his work shows the respect he holds for the stone, and for what lives within it. Sometimes, that proves to be more than one spirit: at left, his Tiwa Messengers, Eagle, Elder, and Bear (now sold); at right, his Bearhawk, consisting of Bear and Elder in one being (still available, and a piece we explored in depth last Friday). The two elders in the paragraph above, both coaxed out of pink alabaster, are also Ned’s work, as is Spirit Wind, the striking sculpture featured at the top of this post, and a perfect embodiment of the concepts explored here today.
It is not, of course, only the figurative arts that are susceptible to this sort of work. Even gemwork is susceptible to such artistry, and Wings regularly produces works that remain true to the spirit of the stones used:
An example is the necklace above, with a pendant of fossilized dinosaur bone, a work that was a part of last week’s entry in this very series. This particular bit of natural beauty, what once helped to animate the body of a great living being, came to him in this form — already cut, cabbed, and lightly polished, yes, but in this unusual free-form shape, with uneven doming on the surface and an irregular outline not susceptible to setting in ordinary bezels. With a material of this nature, one that is not only animated by spirit (as we regard stones to be) in what the rest of the world regards as purely a symbolic sense, but was once animated by a living, breathing creature of spectacular size and substance, it would seem almost sacrilege to alter it too much. And so, rather than impose artifice upon it, he chose to leave it in its current form and shape, and build a bezel by hand around it.
But it’s not merely gemstones; other materials find their way into such pieces, too. An example from Wings’s own repertoire is pottery sherds: For many years, he has used ancient bits of pottery found here on his land to create beautiful wor
ks 
of wearable art. But because they are sherds, they are necessarily irregular in shape. Some might be tempted to cut them into perfectly-shaped cabochons, circles and squares and rectangles and teardrops. Wings prefers to leave them in the form in which they choose to appear after centuries, even millennia, spent beneath the safe cover of the earth. He will every so slightly shave an edge here or there so that a sherd will stay seated securely in its bezel, but the shape? If such an ancient piece of art, one created by his own ancestors, chooses to show itself after all this time, presumably it bears some message. Better to leave it intact, the better to speak its piece, than to stifle it by imposing a whole new form upon it.
Of course, there are also pieces that fall within Wings’s chosen medium that sort neatly into none of these categories. One is the example shown above, another work we featured here last week, in which his silverwork shares the focus, in evenly balanced proportion, with an element wholly natural in origin: elk antler. It’s an example of a work that, without the latter component, simply would not exist. The silver that forms head and shoulders could easily have been used to create an entirely different sort of piece, perhaps one that did not even personify a spirit being, as this one does. That portion of it, after all, was created in the same manner as he creates his miniature tobacco flasks, and could have been turned into one with no difficulty whatsoever.
But the piece, Kachina, is a spirit being, a figure of roughly human, if miniature, form, personified by precious materials. As it has manifested in this form, it possesses not merely spirit, but motion, life — it is engaged, eternally, in the dance.
And none of that would be possible without the element that forms the small spirit’s body. It is the antlers, prongs turned upside down, that create torso, legs, feet . . . and that very sense of movement, of the breath of spirit. It would have been a desecration to alter this bit of antler in any other way.
Then, of course, there is art that exists, superficially, at least, in two dimensions.
The subject of yesterday’s photo meditation was the coming of the full moon, by way of an image of another full and wintry moon rising over the Spoonbowl at twilight. We looked at the moon’s identity in our way: some of her names, her familial aspect, her role and function in our cosmologies.
But when it comes down to it?
All that’s really needed to tell her stories is the image of Grandmother Moon herself.
For art as representation, there’s little more to ask of it than simply letting the spirits speak.
~ Aji
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