Innovative New Silversmiths

S ON FIRE

NATIVE AMERICAN JEWELRY-MAKERS PUSHING CREATIVITY TO THE LIMIT

[THIS PAGE] Sterling-silver water-motif necklace by Debbie Silversmith (Navajo). [OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP TO BOTTOM] Silver, gold and agate pin or pendant by Myron Panteah (Zuni); silver and gold channel inlay bracelet of opal, sugalite, coral, turquoise and onyx by Fannie Bitsoi and Phil Russell (Navajo); hand-motif pin in coral and turquoise by Mary Lovato (Santa Domingo Pueblo).

In Native American jewelry, nothing mat-ters more than what happens at the point of creation-those moments and hours the artist spends hunched over a workbench, dripping sweat, maybe some blood and a few tears, to produce something beautiful.

That hasn't changed since the Spanish conquistadores brought silversmithing to the Southwest in the 16th century. But the jewelry itself has changed, the most profound transition coming in the last 30 years. "We're seeing a great number of new gemstones being used, and a lot more contemporary jewelry," says Bruce McGee, director of retail sales at the Heard Museum Shop and Bookstore in Phoenix. "By that I mean pieces you wouldn't recognize as Native American if you were seeing them for the first time. But they compare with any jewelry anywhere in the world in terms of quality."

Navajo silversmiths, traditionally known for stamped silver, often without stones, now do multistone inlay work similar to that long practiced by the Zuni people of New Mexico.

In addition to turquoise and coral, the old standbys, Navajos today add zip to their pieces with stones such as opals, sugalite, amber and lapis from Afghanistan.

Hopi smiths have also branched out from their traditional and still-popular technique called overlay, in which two pieces of silver are combined-the top one cut out and the bottom one oxidized, giving the piece a dimensional look. Classic Hopi work rarely involves stones, and the designs-water waves, cloud patterns and lightning-mimic those found on pots and baskets. But today's innovative Hopi artists adorn their silverwork with amazingly intricate designs, some fine enough to depict entire scenes, such as tiny kachinas dancing in villages with clouds overhead. Stonework is more common now, too, as is the use of gold. In short, the imaginations of Arizona's best Navajo and Hopi silversmiths are on fire, the surge of innovation driven primarily by customer demand.

A hundred years ago, Indian smiths made jewelry for other Indians. Today, they sell almost exclusively to non-Indians.

Some of the most celebrated artists now live off their reservations, in Flagstaff or Holbrook, or farther away in the Phoenix valley, putting them in closer contact with the shops and galleries that carry their work. This allows them to better tune in to the desires of buyers and ferret out new ideas. But with cellular phones and the Internet, paved roads and pickup trucks, even a A young smith working out of a tumbleweed shack in some remote corner of the Navajo Indian Reservation can stay linked to customers if so inclined. Some don't want to be found, preferring to live the old wayonly crafting and selling a piece when they need money, then returning to the silence of the reservation, untouched by the noise of modern life. As for today's jewelry buyers, they're better educated than those in the earlyand mid-1970s, when Indian jewelry enjoyed unprecedented popularity.

"That boom spawned a lot of new silversmiths and new techniques, and a lot of bad jewelry," explains Jeff Ogg, owner of Ogg's Hogan in Prescott. "Now we have smarter buyers, and there's not nearly as much junk out there."

Another change since the 1970s: Because it's a byproduct of copper mining, good domestic turquoise has become scarce. The big producers from years ago-the copper mines at Bisbee and at Clifton-Morenci, for example-have either shut down or now operate at greatly reduced capacities. Only one Arizona mine, the Sleeping Beauty Mine in Miami, still produces turquoise.

"But that's only one look, clear blue," says Chet Jones, owner of the Pueblo Trading Post in Zuni, New Mexico. "If you want a character stone, something that's blue-green, ultradark Bisbee blue, or say a Morenci stone with a pyrite fleck in it, forget it. In this country, it's gone."

Many silversmiths know someone with a private stash of turquoise. An artist searching for a particular look will often drive hundreds of miles to meet with an underground stone salesman, and price is negotiable. But a pound of good Morenci that might have cost $100 in 1975 can run $800 and higher today.

The artist knows he has something special when he holds the turquoise in his hands. It's not only the look that excites him but also the sound the stones make when he rubs them together. Most turquoise is too soft to drill or reshape for use in jewelry unless it is first stabilized, says Jones, considered one of the Southwest's leading experts on stones of all kinds. "But if the stones are really dense and don't have any voids, they'll transmit a solid clicking sound," he says. "That means they're hard and will have a real polished glint right off the saw."

As these private stashes play out-and they're going fast-craftsmen will have to adjust, as some already have, by switching to, say, turquoise from China. Coral is even scarcer and more expensive-it may costwell over $1,000 per pound, depending on the richness of the color.

But switching stones isn't a simple matter. If a Navajo smith has always used a particular kind of turquoise, it becomes part of him-by habit, by spirit and, if his father used it, by blood as well. As much as things have changed in Indian silversmithing, tradition still exerts a mighty tug.

Ask any artist today, Navajo or Hopi, how he got started, and the answer rarely changes-silversmithing was in the family.

Ruben Monroe Saufkie Sr., a young Hopi smith from Second Mesa, comes from a long line of artists. His grandfather, Paul Saufkie, helped pioneer the overlay technique in the 1940s. "I basically do what I do because of him," says Ruben.

Vernon Haskie, a Navajo, remembers

seeing his father, Leonard, pound silver with a hammer. "What're you doing, Dad?" the 6-year-old asked.

"Don't bother me," his father replied. "I'm making money."

The youngster reacted with wonder, unaware that someone could make money pounding metal. With that idea in his head, Vernon took a Tonka truck he'd gotten for Christmas and pounded it flat with a hammer. His mother asked what he was doing.

"I'm making money," little Vernon answered.

In Leonard Haskie's day, silversmithing was a means of survival in a reservation economy where jobs were scarce, and it's still true. The pace of the market and the pace of reservation life still don't mix.

"As soon as someone gets popular, shops and galleries demand more of their work," says Steve Beiser of Puchteca, an Indian arts shop in downtown Flagstaff. "But native artists don't work that way. They're more connected to the pace of nature than the pace of our neurotic American lifestyle."

The tension often creates a collision of ideals.

The Heard Museum's Bruce McGee wears a watchband that illustrates the point. Crafted by Navajos Phil and Fannie Russell of Chinle, the band has onyx on the side and Australian opals inlaid in gold down the center. The striking piece drew the attention of a major watchmaking company in New York, whose representatives asked the couple to produce 500 of them.

"The Russells said no, although they probably would've made a ton of money,"

NATIVE AMERICAN ARTIST PERRY SHORTY

The movie business is famous for stories about young video clerks who go on to become celebrated directors and screenwriters. Now silversmithing has a similar tale to tell.

When in his early 20s, Navajo silversmith Perry Shorty worked the counter at Thunderbird Supply Co. in Gallup, New Mexico, selling silver and stones to mostly Indian craftsmen. Over four years, he peppered his customers with questions and wrangled advice that proved instrumental in launching his own career.

Today, the 38-year-old Pentecostal preacher produces some of the most soughtafter jewelry in Indian country. "People line up at his booth at the Indian Market in Santa Fe," says Steve Pickle, retail manager at the museum store at Flagstaff's Museum of Northern Arizona. "His work is gone as soon as he makes it."

Shorty's technique mimics that of turn-ofthe-century Navajo silversmiths. He melts old coins and pours the liquid into a tufa mold shaped like an ingot bar. While still hot, he removes the silver strip and places it on an anvil, pounding it with a hammer until it is forged to the desired thickness.

To Shorty, a bracelet made from massproduced silver, the modern method, feels hollow and flat.

"Customers say my bracelets feel right on their wrists, and I think that's because of all the hammering, sanding and filing I do," he says. "And I like the way light bounces off coin silver."

Shorty works with as few tools as possible and prefers natural, untreated turquoise. His coins have to meet his exacting specifica-tions, too-he melts only Charles Barber-designed coins, in circulation between 1890 in 1915.

"I used to make buttons with them and they sort of grew on me," says Shorty.

Friends in Los Angeles hunt down Barber coins for him and send them to Tuba City, on the northeast corner of the Navajo reser-vation. He lives there with his wife, Carol, and three children.

"When I was at Thunderbird, I didn't set out to be the smith I am today," he says. "I just wanted to make old jewelry. I like doing it. But I don't work as hard as I used to."

He also serves as pastor at Potter's House Pentecostal Church. He preaches to the faithful three times a week. His style? "Fire and brimstone," says Shorty, smiling.

Hopi silversmith Jason Takala attended high school in Woodstock, Vermont, but the walls of his dorm room were bare. To spice things up, he painted a mural depicting a landscape cut by a waterfall. Then he attached a frame around it. When school officials saw the work, they were floored by its beauty and promptly added art classes to Takala's schedule. With the exception of a few crude efforts, this was his first attempt at painting. "The picture was in my head already," Takala says. "All I did was use the paintbrush." That humble way of thinking arises often

NATIVE AMERICAN ARTIST JASON TAKALA

In conversation with Takala. He portrays himself as almost a passive participant in the creation of his popular pieces.

"I take my direction from the silver," says the 47-year-old Holbrook resident and father of five. "In a sense, it talks to me."

Takala studied design in Phoenix for five years under the famous French jeweler Pierre Touraine. The master constantly urged his protege to "let the jewelry represent itself."

Takala was born in the village of Shungopavi, on the Hopi reservation. When he wanted to get married, he learned he had no birth certificate. He got one, and a marriage license, at the same time. He was 23. In the mid-1980s, after 10 years of trying to find his way as an artist in Phoenix, he moved to Old Oraibi on the Hopi reservation, where his wife, Margie, had grown up. "After that I really started creating," he says. "Everything is so calm there, your mind goes to a different level. It all came to me then."

Takala is known for his man-in-the-maze design, which represents man emerging from the center of the Earth and migrating to the four directions. He is particularly popular among Japanese buyers, who come to his house to watch him work, sometimes with magnifying glasses. Only then do his skeptical visitors believe that his intricate cutting is really done by hand.

"The Internet has made Jason's jewelry popular with Japanese movie stars," says Bruce McGee's brother, Ron McGee, of McGee's Indian Art Gallery in Keams Canyon. "He's quite the fad with them."

Because the Japanese have no "L" sound in their language, they pronounce Takala with an "R." In their dictionary, takara means "precious," or "treasured thing." How fitting.

NATIVE AMERICAN ARTIST VERMA NEQUATEWA

Herma Nequatewa is in a rare class— a female gold and silversmith. She learned from her uncle, Charles Loloma, the legendary Hopi smith who died in 1991. She started working with him in his studio, near the village of Hotevilla, when she was 16.

"He never talked about me being a woman, so I didn't think about it," says the 54-year-old Nequatewa. "He told me Hopis are born artists, and I was just proud to be able to do something that's good art."

She crafts her jewelry in a contemporary style, using colorful lapis, coral and turquoise stones set in designs of gold and silver. Her work departs from traditional Hopi overlay, which joins two sheets of silver and rarely involves gold or stones.

Innovation was part of Loloma's instruction. He also taught her to relish the excitement of creation.

"I like to find an interesting stone and design around it," says Nequatewa. "The stones give me ideas, then I don't want sleep. I want to make more."

Bill Foust, of the Foust Gallery in Scottsdale, describes her art as a refinement of Loloma's.

"Verma's pieces are smaller and more wearable," Foust says. "Her design sense appeals more to the feminine side. When people unfamiliar with her work see it for the first time, they're blown away."

Her studio sits on the edge of Third Mesa. The view from her windows is all light and rock and emptiness, a hard beauty. As she works, she sometimes listens to tapes of country great Waylon Jennings or the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.

Nequatewa treats silversmithing with the utmost professionalism. She is a good businesswoman, not quite the bashful artist of years ago.

"When I was young I went to shows with my uncle, but I was so shy," says Nequatewa. "But then you sell a piece, it opens you up." She laughs. "Now I don't stop talking."

She sometimes hosts tour groups at her studio. She tells them to watch for the red Jaguar parked outside. No one gets lost. Red Jaguars aren't exactly common on the Hopi reservation.

Nequatewa also owns a sixpassenger private plane that she and husband Bob Rhodes, an administrator at the University of Phoenix, park on a paved strip at nearby Polacca.

Flying to shows lets her look down on the beauty everywhere. It is her hallmark. Every piece she makes is inscribed with the Hopi word sonwai, which means "beautiful."

[ABOVE] Navajo Victor Beck shows off his son, Victor Jr., and his jewelry. The ring, earrings and bracelet (right) and necklace (far right) showcase Beck's work with 14karat yellow gold decorated with turquoise and coral.

NATIVE AMERICAN ARTIST VICTOR BECK

Victor Beck found his special calling through a dream. He'd worked as a legal aide counselor, a bank teller, a car repo man and a wholesaler of Indian jewelry. Then one night in 1972, while staying with his parents in Pinon, the Navajo community where he grew up, he dreamed that all the jewelry he was selling from his truck was lost. His father, feeling a foreboding, advised his son to see a medicine man for a Blessingway ceremony, a ritual to restore life's balance.

Everything in Beck's life changed after that. He found the right path. Today, the 61-year-old father of two grown daughters and a 2-year-old boy, is one of Arizona's most respected silversmiths.

"It took years for me to realize how important that dream was," says Beck. "But it was my destiny."

His jewelry style is contemporary-simple, elegant, innovative. One of his signature pieces is a raised ring with a stone inlaid on the side.

"Victor's work is very refined," says Andrea Robinson, a buyer at the Heard Museum Shop and Bookstore in Phoenix. "Everything he does is perfect. Never a rough edge or misplaced stone."

In 1994, Beck traveled to Italy in search of the best coral he could find. His description of the trip sounds like something from a Robert Ludlum novel.

He stepped off the train holding a note with a man's name on it. This led to a smalltown police station. No one spoke English.

"They didn't know what I was talking about until I said Grand Canyon," says Beck, of Phoenix, whose late brother was the renowned painter Clifford Beck. "They went, 'Aha, yes! Arizona!'"

A cop took him to a large warehouse. After knocking, a door panel slid open and two eyes appeared on the other side. Once inside, Beck bought $23,000 worth of coral, fresh out of the sea.

"I watched ladies sitting at long tables, cutting and drilling the coral," he says. "I wanted to see how it was done."

Beck's distinctions include making a rosary for Pope Paul VI, which included stones signifying the Navajos' four sacred mountains, and he has represented Pinon on the Navajo Tribal Council.

He returns home often to visit relatives and attend sweat lodge. Every four years he goes to a Blessingway ceremony. "It rejuvenates me," says Beck, of the ritual. "You can't just receive and receive. You have to say thanks for the good things that happen. That's why I pray over every piece of jewelry I make."

[LEFT AND FAR LEFT] Stampwork in heavygauge silver trademarks the work of Navajo silversmith Thomas Curtis, who taught the craft to his daughter, Jennifer Curtis-Skeets (both above). Most present-day silversmiths lack the patience for the meticulous and tedious detail required to produce Curtis-type designs, and consider the effort cost-ineffective.