It’s the start of the winter ceremonial season; the Pueblo is closed to outsiders now. For the next two months, some families will have specific added responsibilities related to the season. The outside world will continue to turn, but here, a part of life withdraws, insulated, take those steps required by tradition since time immemorial.
Steps. Footsteps. Earthen steps. Ritual steps.
All are part and parcel of this tradition and time, all path and prints alike in the sacred hoop, in the dusty roads of past and future that connect those alive today directly with the ancestors and with the children not yet born, with the spirits that have always been, and those that will become.
It’s a motif that finds expression in the art of this ancient place, a pattern directly named: “kiva steps.” Potters and smiths have used it longer than memory to evoke the spirit of this place and their people. It’s a combining of the sacred with substance, giving quite literally earth-bound tangible form to a central symbol whose deepest layers of meaning will forever remain closely held.
The literal expression of the phrase can be found in pottery by Wings’s aunt, Juanita Suazo DuBray, a self-taught master who has created her own trademark style with the corn-ear motif. She has been known to design pieces that omit the corn ear, but only rarely; it is manifest in most of her work, a distinctive personal style. She occasionally combines it with other symbolic imagery, as she has done in this piece, one of her most beautiful (and most weighted with meaning). From its description in the Other Artists: Pottery gallery:
This stunning little pot melds a variety of ancient traditional patterns into a striking new whole. By Juanita Suazo DuBray, Wings’s aunt and one of Taos Pueblo’s master potters, it’s another in her trademark “corn pot” series. Here, she’s molded the Pueblo’s traditional micaceous clay into a beautiful little pot featuring the ancient “kiva steps” pattern carved out of the front. Twin ears of corn have been coaxed from the pot’s surface and stand out in stark relief beneath the steps; at their base, a small free-form cabochon of brilliant turquoise is embedded in the clay itself. This beautiful collector’s piece stands about five inches high by about five inches across at its widest point.
Micaceous clay; turquoise
$450 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
Juanita’s work is especially suited to any discussion of tradition, of steps: every piece is its own legacy, each made in the service of a larger legacy of artistic, cultural, and spiritual tradition. We’ve looked at her work, and the context in which it is made, here. As I said then:
And this is the genius of Juanita’s signature pattern: It melds earth and sky, sun and soil, water and light, all brought together and fused within an object that exists only because of the joint efforts of all such elements, working together. An ear of corn, brought forth from the same earth that provides the micaceous clay that forms the pots for cooking and eating and storage; fed, watered, and nurtured by the sky and its sun’s light and the rain it visits upon the soil. And all of them, combined in a way that honors each separately and together, in perhaps the most important way of all: in an object of daily use, or survival, for The People.
It’s the heart and soul of life here, just as the kiva steps to which her design pays tribute lead to the earthen heart and soul of this place and its people. It’s the embodiment of the ritual steps of honor, of respect, of prayer to the spirits and the ancestors and the old ways that have always sustained the people; of the physical structure and the act of entering the sacred space to continue that tradition; of the making of steps, moccasin prints, that trace life’s hoop and leave the legacy of a clearly-marked path for future generations to follow.
It’s beauty and harmony, and the steps that lead to them, given corporeal form.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
