Dreams and Visions: Getting It All Together

No one, least of all myself, could have suspected the stories, dreams, and visions that these Indian artists in jewelry would volunteer. Who would have thought I'd be wrestling with Charles Loloma's three-speed jeep (I didn't know it didn't have a fourth gear), coming perilously close to ramming his studio/home in my frenzy to find first gear one dark Friday night? Who could have predicted that the sometimes solemn, usually quietly reserved young men would open up ordinary looking cases and pull out the most extraordinary objects? Or that I'd be sipping Perrier with lime with an intense, slim Hopi whose hair hangs past his waist discussing - not his art - but running?

Who could have described that almost fragile shyness of a Navajo artist during my initial interview with him? Listening to his halting English, I'd hung carefully on every word. But as the months wore on, I found his grinning, affectionate greeting becoming easy and relaxed.

Recalling the months of conversations, trips, and telephone discussions, images scramble over each other in glittering profusion. I see Jimmy King Jr's cherubic face incredibly, he had once been an alcoholic in the gutters of Gallup-proudly wreathed in a ready grin. Asked why he inlays the inside of his bracelets, he had chuckled, “If your husband was wearing fur-lined shorts, only he'd know what he was smiling about.” I remember speeding along a nearly deserted highway, following Larry Golsh's golden dot of a Porsche disappearing into the distance on the way to Monument Valley. I recall the vivid stillness of an ancient Hopi mesa. And the swirls and dips of Loloma's plane as the Grand Innovator patted my knee and spoke of flight and creativity. But always the images of jewelry float to the surface of my consciousness a golden, superbly shaped ring studded with a single, sparkling diamond; a silver bracelet with an inlaid interior; a gold and lapis bracelet that looks like it spilled out of the cache of King Tut's tomb.

I can easily see the smile in Charles Loloma's eyes as he adjusted a lapis necklace of his design to fit my neck. “Wear it for fun while you're here in Hotevilla,” he suggested in his generous way. Scrutinizing the effect, he quickly smoothed the collar of my blouse to better accommodate the strands of lapis. “Watch it Charles,” I had joked. “Don't mess up my $6 shirt.” As the jewelry to be photographed by Jerry Jacka for this issue arrived from artists and dealers, infinite varieties of styles, techniques, and designs emerged. Jerry would phone excitedly, sometimes twice a day, to say, “You've got to come see what just came in!” I could mentally visualize him shaking his head in wonder. “I don't know where these guys come up with all these ideas,” he'd always add.

(IJ-153) “I hope to be one of the people who can dictate what is fashion,” Larry Golsh says. “I don’t want to be dictated to.” In this collection, he cast his designs in gold and silver and studded them with turquoise and malachite. The gold bracelet and pendant are set with Lander blue turquoise, and the impression in the sand reflects the design on the reverse of the pendant. Courtesy Santa Fe East, Austin, Texas.

It was my job to find out.

"Where did this idea come from?" I'd ask in interviews with the Indian artists, forgetting to be clever in my admiration for the artist's work.

"I had this dream," the artist would generally begin.

At first my journalistic sense of justice was offended by such fairy tales, but once the story unfolded, I'd sit breathlessly on the edge of my chair waiting while the tale was spun. Certain themes, even those that came in dreams, would often reappear. The four directions, the earth, sun, fire, and wind were interpreted in infinite ways.

But one artist, Del Adams, blazed a totally different trail. He built his wife the house she'd always wanted - on a bracelet. It was complete with a broken window (pueblo houses always have one, he'd explained) and a lump of turquoise for a swimming pool (with lots of brownish matrix because the pool was always dirty). The house is Del's dream, if not his wife's, come true.

But if not a dream, sometimes the most seemingly mundane things would serve as impetus for a fantastic design. A simple hogan and hearthfire interpreted in gold and coral became a sophisticated statement of interpretive art. A fascination with moving parts evolved into shiny elliptical discs which catch the light in infinite patterns. And nature, too, serves as inspiration: lightning, shooting stars, and mountains are translated into gold and gems and silver by creative hands.

Not everyone I interviewed fit the mold of the quiet craftsman. During one conversation, I sensed an undercurrent of social anger. Following a hunch, I turned to face the young Navajo and surmised aloud, "You must be hell to live with."

He looked surprised, regrouped, then finally laughed, his tale of social activism spilling out. It was a story studded with his sense of emerging self. At the end, he concluded simply, "Now I say what I have to through my jewelry."

I soon realized, too, that it would be impossible to match the craftsmen with their jewelry. Large, blunt fingers are capable of the most delicate designs, and the more unworldly can imagine the most contemporary concepts. Some of the artists are fiercely proud of their commitment, others are just emerging into the artform, and some swing between the worlds of jewelry and sculpture.

The final interview, I clearly recall, was slated for a Saturday afternoon. My family was firmly entrenched watching a football game, and I pulled myself away reluctantly. I'd already seen so much jewelry and my ideas on how to tell the story were already rather firm. Given my druthers, I'd have gladly skipped this final meeting. But I drove to the motel, parked, and knocked on the door of Richard and Sharon Chavez.

A smiling Richard greeted me and thanked me sincerely for coming. Immediately, I felt ashamed of my fleeting lazy urges, sat down, and casually glanced at the objects on the table. Like a firehorse smelling smoke, my eyes lit up at the pieces he placed in front of me. I was charmed by the stark simplicity of a silver necklace, superbly crafted and colored. I fingered a pair of long, delicate earrings, silver slivers piped by a multistoned stripe. "Your work is gorgeous!" I bubbled, examining the items. Richard beamed at my reaction and we settled in for a lengthy chat.

Conversations with the various artists in Jerry Jacka's home covered lots of territory. Many afternoons stretched into evenings as Jerry worked with the jewelry, preparing photographic displays, and I sat speaking with the artists while Lois, Jerry's wife, served endless cups of coffee and sandwiches by the mile. Often reticent at first, the artists were eager to gauge our response to their work, and as the hours wore on, they relaxed and we found common ground.

Sometimes that common ground was accidentally discovered - like one long, delicious afternoon on Second Mesa in Hopiland. I sat chatting with some Hopi women who had volunteered to model. We made polite smalltalk. But once they borrowed my nail polish, and wore the blouses that I'd brought, the barriers broke down. It's difficult to remain aloof when you're wearing the other's clothes, they quickly discovered.

Other times the common ground was felt immediately. A noon meeting with Larry Golsh wandered on as we discussed art, architecture, and the Indian commitment - just for openers. Occasionally, I glanced at my watch since I'd promised my children to return by 3 p.m. to let them into the house. But as the magic hour came and went, I rationalized that although I'd missed one child, I'd make it home by 4. We quickly became embroiled in other topics and again, I looked at my watch only to see it was already 4:15. I quickly made excuses and rushed home, my head filled with new knowledge about the Indians use of tufa stone, ancient stamps and file marks, contemporary pure designs and both my children locked out. But my daughter, her arm in a bulky cast, had crawled in through the dog door, and my son had sought refuge at a neighbor's home, both thinking, correctly, their mother was on assignment again. Were they worried? No, only anxious to meet the artist I had found so interesting.

Yet it is difficult to call this assignment "work." A commitment, yes, even a way of life. But work? The dedication of the craftsmen was a continual source of inspiration. Concerned about their heritage, they consciously choose to remember the Indian ways in their creations. Some of them know no other life than the reservation, but even

the most urban and urbane listens intently to the echoes of the ancient warriors.

Ted Charveze, for instance, far removed in the Kansas cornfields, walked away from a $100,000 foreign-car business to take up the tools of the jewelry craftsman. Determined to immerse himself in his Isletta Pueblo heritage, although he was raised in Kansas, he journeys to the New Mexican pueblo regularly and plans to live with the Islettas for a year or two. He admits that he felt instinctively that something was missing in his life, a vital Indian link which would bridge his art and his culture and give him a sense of fulfillment.

Fulfillment, as both artist and Indian, came up repeatedly during conversations with these craftsmen. The concept was rarely separated, and even those artists who had conventional Anglo upbringings confessed they felt most comfortable interpreting their own, Indian heritage.

I found this philosophy comforting, because in the beginning, I'll admit, I had felt that perhaps this new look in Indian jewelry was but a way-station on the road toward complete assimilation. After all, I had reasoned, the world is so much bigger now. Indian craftsmen don't have to wait for the traders to come in and tell them what's happening out there. Common opportunities for higher education and advanced communication had taken care of all that. Didn't it stand to reason that the Scandinavian school of design, the Egyptian tour of King Tutankhamun's treasure, and the influence of chinese art not to mention chic, European fashions would ultimately dominate the contemporary Indian jewelry scene?

It sounded reasonable until I began to meet the artists. The new young craftsmen, I soon discovered, speak from a culture that they proudly cherish. With almost a single voice, they look to their past to form their future. They take delight in the legends and the basic truths which they've been taught to live by and, most importantly, they believe in what they're doing.

I recall a conversation with Phil Sekaquaptewa, an artist whose work is his own catharsis.

It was a cool bright afternoon high on the Hopi Reservation. Clear and quiet, not even the chirping of a bird broke the stillness. I knew that Phil was combining the traditional Hopi overlay process which leans on cut-out designs and oxidation with unusual materials like coco bolo wood from South America. The promise of this traditional artform combined with a contemporary approach would, I thought, be the basis of our discussion.

I should have known better.

Tall and lean, his maternal Oriental background curiously working in conjunction with his Hopi features, Phil was pleasant and polite if not expansive. Hands thrust deep into his Levis, the young artist gazed pensively at the scene spread-out below the mesa, the remains of peachdrying huts, the plump hills which contain nuggets of unexplored ruins. I remember asking him brightly why he chose to combine the traditional Hopi overlay in his technique a question I thought would get at least three sentences in response. But he was somewhere else.

His sharp features melted, and he answered softly, "You see, my mother was not Hopi. That makes me clanless. I have no one to assume me to take responsibility for educating me. That's who did those things for you your mother's aunts and uncles. I don't have this strong sense of self. I want to find that. And here..." he looked out across the cliffs which poured down into the valley below, "here there is all the time in the world."

He gestured toward the chiseled horizon. "The desert life is all out there, but you have to be quiet to hear it. The Hopis are kind of like that... they are trying to make the best of their world without being seen. The Hopi life-style is parallel to the land."

I had sat there, on a hard rock, afraid to move for fear I'd break the spell. He had continued softly, "It's too late for me." Then he had smiled and added, "That's why I'm glad to be living here with my wife, Rosa's family. They are very involved in the life of their village, and I want to make certain that our daughter is brought up in the Hopi way. When you come to something later in life, I think you have more appreciation for it."

The Hopi way, Navajo traditions, Isleta, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne... I found that the tribal difference faded when the artists began speaking of their philosophies. The essence of their Indianism, in spite of tribal teachings, emerged as the single, cohesive strand that linked the many styles of their jewelry.

Not that the Indian way of life is all romance and fables. I realize, of course, that jewelry provides a legitimate path for "making it" in the Anglo world. Creating superb jewelry, I know, is a way to assure the good life in Gallup, Scottsdale, La Jolla, Sante Fe, or Phoenix for a young Indian who otherwise might be operating heavy equipment in a coal mine. It's a way to broaden horizons without having to get a college diploma, a way out of the crowded hogan life. Artistic success can mean a shiny, well-equipped pickup instead of a beat up, secondhand van. Jewelry making can provide a respected position in both the Anglo and Indian world, a chance to ultimately emulate the lifestyle of the famous Hopi artist Charles Loloma, to even acquire some of his tangible-type status statements. Jewelry can mean a chance to follow in a famous father's footsteps, to create a name both admired and respected, to carve out a creative niche.

It can and does mean all these things to many of the artists I was fortunate to meet. What person doesn't crave artistic success during his own lifetime? What young craftsman doesn't yearn to do all that he can for himself and his family? But there's more to the Indian artists' dedication than a drive for recognition.

In a time of increasing mechanization, these artists prefer to take the long, hard way. In an era when they could double and triple their income by duplicating previously successful pieces, they prefer to explore their talents, stretch their minds, test their imaginations. Slowly, precisely, they carve negative molds in tufa stone, or tediously hand polish metals until they gleam. They improvise and experiment, cutting stones and setting them in intricate mind-boggling patterns, choosing to create in a time when they could just as well manufacturè.

Creativity cannot be taken lightly. Look at what results. An ex-rodeo rider discovers he can light up a display with his showy silver. An appealing ex-engineer fools around with moveable parts and invents a hauntingly beautiful bracelet. And the stories go on and on.

How do they do it? How do any of the numbers of "self-taught" craftsmen develop their styles and ideas? After hours of conversations, I'll confess I still don't know. The mystery of creativity is still a puzzle. But what's obvious is that these Indian artists represent some of the best talent in the world today. Incredibly creative, they are also some of the most delightful people I've ever met.