Secrets of the Soul

One golden day long ago, an early Native American stood in silence gazing at the world around him. Across the valley an eagle soared, stirring emotions within the quiet observer that he yearned to reveal. Means of artistic expression were few, but patiently he inscribed a simple petroglyph of a bird in flight-and the voice of his soul was released through his primitive art.

It is the privilege and province of the artist to search for ways to convey the thoughts that cannot be uttered. When he or she is successful, silent poetry is created, and secrets of the soul are shared.

Yet not so long ago such expression by American Indian artists and craftsmen tended to flow within the rather strict confines of traditional forms. Artisans carved dramatic, but predictable, static kachinas; potters shaped vessels nearly identical to those made by their predecessors; jewelers primarily worked with the familiar qualities of silver and turquoise; painters limited themselves to a stylized realism using "Indian" themes and colors; and the warp and woof of woven art was readily identifiable by its colors and designs.

As this issue of Arizona Highways dramatically demon strates, all that is changing. Today much Native American art celebrates the individual. Scores of vastly talented artists are producing work that expresses personal emotions, thoughts, dreams, and yearnings. It has become art created by individuals who are Indian, rather than traditional tribal "Indian art."

Nowhere, perhaps, is this individuality more apparent than in Native American sculpture. The intensity of the artist's feelings often seems to permeate the piece itself.

Meanwhile, contemporary wood-carvers have carried the craft of kachina making into the realm of fine art. Born of the secret religious ceremonies of the Hopi, the kachina doll has evolved into what in many cases is finely wrought sculpture. Some of the most innovative examples resemble traditional kachinas in mask features, coloration, and use of religious symbols, but otherwise diverge remarkably from convention. The body may become, instead of stocky and cylindrical, more elongated, curvilinear, flowing with the natural shape of the human body and taking on an ethereal quality. And it may be further embellished with dreamlike images of pueblo or tribal symbols, expressing far more of the artist's individual creativity than does a traditional kachina.

Similar trends are visible in other media. Jewelers feel free to develop sleek, classic designs in gold enhanced by diamonds, black jade, charoite, opals, and other exotic stones from around the world. Native American painters, no longer locked to literal portrayals, create exciting impressionistic canvases with vivid splashes of color and light as abstract as any produced in New York or Paris.

Just as all artists to some degree reflect their own cultures, environments, and experiences, so Native American artists tend to show the influence of Indian life and memory. Handed down through generations, stories of creation, of deities, of clan migrations are given new expression in contemporary art. But now, as increasingly the artists assert the freedom to innovate, their work becomes highly individualistic.

In this excerpt from "Lorenzo's Song," Santo Domingo Laguna potter Harold Littlebird provides an insight into the ongoing inspiration of "the new individualists": It is from legends and stories and songs listened to and lived by That messengers in the night will tell you in your dreaming. You will carry, learn, and share. And it is from this and more that you are growing, More than I can say with words. It is the likeness of breaths on corn pollen And silent prayer to holy things on the fourth morning..... -Lois Essary Jacka Shown from two angles: Mother and Child, alabaster sculpture, thirty-four inches high, by Tim Nicola, Penabscot.

Hollow, free-form buffed clay figurines (BELOW, LEFT): Mother and Daughter, thirteen inches high, and Cradled in the Sun, nine-teen inches, both by Luke Simon, Micmac. (RIGHT) Purple Clouds and Dancing Ribbons, pastel, thirty-nine by thirty and one-half inches, by Clifford Beck, Navajo. (BOTTOM) Kachina Poetry, acrylic on canvas, twenty by thirty-one inches, by Michael Kabotie, Hopi.

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Hopi potter Tom Polacca (LEFT) has developed a unique style of pottery art. Photographed in multiple exposure, Eagle Boy (BELOW) stands seven and one-quarter inches high. The vessel is built up by the coil method, then scraped smooth, and figures are carved into its surface. The scene here depicts the Hopi legend of a boy transformed into an eagle. The self-taught Polacca is the grandson of Nampeyo, who is credited with reviving ancient Sikyatki polychrome pottery styles.

Dextra Quotskuyva is the great-granddaughter of Nampeyo (photograph on wall in background) and a second cousin of Tom Polacca. Another of the products of her hands appears on page 28.

Reminiscent of early incised pottery from the Rio Grande area, this smoked clay vessel by Jacquie Stevens, Winnebago, was coiled and handshaped. Stevens strives for a “richness of pure form using the clay’s natural colors and subtle natural earth-tone stains adding to the smokey cloud effects caused by pit firing.” (BELOW) Inspired by old ledger drawings, Randy Lee White, Brule Sioux-French, created this painting, Saying Goodbye, mixed media on canvas, forty-two by forty-eight inches. ◆ Michael Naranjo, from Santa Clara Pueblo, sculptured The Secret, a twentyeight-inch-high bronze of an old man who raised a crow that lives in a nearby tree. When the old man goes for a walk in the cool of the morning or evening, the crow flies to his shoulder and whispers secrets in his ear. Naranjo (BELOW), who was blinded by a grenade in Vietnam, began modeling with clay while still in an overseas hospital. Within two years he finished his first major bronze.

(RIGHT) Portrait of a Navajo, pastel, twenty-five and one-half inches by nineteen and one-half inches, by David Johns, Navajo. The painter and printmaker excels in abstracts. Also shown is an untitled monotype that won first prize at the Museum of Northern Arizona Navajo Show in 1985.

Necklace of gold and lavulite; choker set of gold with charoite and one diamond (RIGHT). Both are by Larry Golsh, Pala Mission-Cherokee. “Much of Golsh’s jewelry has an architectural flavor,” says one writer, “an element he feels is part of all art.” (BELOW, CENTER) Farewell to Father, alabaster sculpture, thirty inches high, by Alvin Marshall, twenty-six, Navajo. (BELOW, FAR LEFT) Sending Blessings, alabaster sculpture, thirteen inches high, by Richard Tsosie, Navajo.

(LEFT) Oreland Joe, twenty-seven, Navajo-Ute sculptor, has inspired several young Navajo artists, including Alvin Marshall, whose work appears on this page. “Joe’s style,” says writer April Quick, “is traditional Native American imagery flowing into abstract forms.... A perfect marriage of impeccable workmanship and lyric designs.” (LEFT) Eagle Medicine, by Oreland Joe, Utah alabaster, nineteen and one-half inches high. (BELOW) Intricate inlay and channel lapidary work by Carolyn Bobelu, Zuñi.