MNA Navajo Show features emphasis on textiles
Artists put new twist on color -- and American icons

S.J. Wilson/Observer
Ryan SingerÕs playful Navajo interpretation of famous American icons includes this yearÕs 2nd place winner in the Fine Art category ÑÓSalt Clan.Ó Singer has modified the famous MortonÕs Salt girl to depict an elderly woman in traditional dress, headscarf and umbrella Ñ and the Navajo love for salt.

S.J. Wilson/Observer Ryan SingerÕs playful Navajo interpretation of famous American icons includes this yearÕs 2nd place winner in the Fine Art category ÑÓSalt Clan.Ó Singer has modified the famous MortonÕs Salt girl to depict an elderly woman in traditional dress, headscarf and umbrella Ñ and the Navajo love for salt.

FLAGSTAFF -- The 57th Annual Navajo Festival of Arts and Culture brought collectors and admirers from around the world on July 29 and 30. According to Michelle Mountain, Museum of Northern Arizona marketing manager, this year's show emphasized the textile arts of the Navajo.

Close to 100 weavers, jewelers, potters, sculptors, basket makers and painters demonstrated the versatility and range of Navajo art.

Textiles artists

Typically, Navajo weavers are female, but Morris Musket of Church Rock, N. M., has weaving in his blood.

As he is self-taught in the art, Musket said he believes he is free from the restrictions of style and color that many might try to impose. He not only weaves in the Navajo tradition, but has studied Peruvian, Hopi and other cultural techniques.

Describing his work as "contemporary and eclectic," Musket explained that the belief that a Navajo man should not weave is a stereotype.

"My grandfather used to weave, but he did it in secret," Musket said. "My clans are Puebloan. I believe that I was chosen to weave because it did not come hard for me. People do ask me why I chose to weave, but I think it's the other way around. I think it's the weaving that chose me."

Musket uses natural dyes to obtain his bright luminous colors, and continues to educate himself on weaving and dyeing techniques through reading, research and experimentation.

Musket holds a civil engineering degree and another in fine art. His portfolio includes stylized rams, corn, thunderbirds and other geometric designs featured in areas throughout New Mexico. Gallup will soon view some of his designs at two locations--one at NM State Road 118 intersecting with I-40.

He has also been honored with various fellowships, including one from the Southwest American Indian Art Institute and the National Museum of the American Indian-Smithsonian.

D.Y. Begay demonstrated her luminous weaving style in MNA's gift shop. Surrounded by other weavers, she pounded weft tightly in place with a steel-toothed weaving comb.

"I enjoy working and interacting with other weavers," Begay said. "We all learn from each other."

Her work is organic, bright and unusual. She describes her work as "interpretive landscapes" reflective of her appreciation of the terrain and ever-changing colors of her reservation home of TsŽlani (located between the communities of Pinyon and Chinle).

"I am a very visual person," Begay said. "My work is the result of things I see in the environment. I grew up on the land, and I have a different appreciation of the shapes and color there -- the plateaus, mesas, canyons, the sunset and the lighting at any given moment. Even a barren hillside has colors. I can't understand how people don't see the natural beauty in a flat stone."

Begay began hanging around the loom when she was 6 years old.

"That's when I began helping out," Begay said with a smile. "At that age, they don't want you weaving. You mostly get in the way, so you are told to go get this or that."

Nonetheless, even at this young age, Begay knew that she had a special affinity to weaving.

"I've always liked weaving," Begay said. "I was always envious of my aunties that they could produce weavings at a young age."

By high school, she was producing one or two rugs a year. Fifteen years ago, Begay became a full-time weaver.

In response to an observation that Navajo rugs have begun to fetch the price warranted by the amount of work that goes into weaving, Begay stated that she believes she is entitled to fair compensation for her work.

"I understand the process -- from the feeding of and care for the sheep, the shearing and the gathering of the plants and the dyeing of the wool and the weaving itself," Begay said.

She has witnessed family members and friends being haggled about prices -- selling their beautiful pieces go for $100.

"I don't know how buyers can not feel guilty about bartering with a grandmother over the price of her rug. I told myself I was not going to sell my work that way," Begay said. "I did research and talked to people about how to market myself. I work on commission, and that's how I can fairly compensate myself."

Begay does not believe that everyone who tries to lower the price of Native American artwork such as rugs is aware of how much work actually goes into each piece. She advises fellow artisans to educate the consumer by sharing the process of how their work is done and who they are as artists.

Melissa S. Cody also demonstrated her weaving technique with museum visitors. Her work is featured on the banners for the event in downtown Flagstaff, as well as on the sign outside the museum.

She too sees public demonstrations as a way of educating the public on the value of weaving and other art forms.

"I think people gain a better understanding of the time our work takes when they have the opportunity to sit down and watch," Cody said. "I can hear people talking while I work, and often I hear them say 'So that's why they cost so much.' I tell people that you can be self-sufficient at what you are passionate about.

History in reflection and humor

Al Bahe from Shonto has been painting since he was si6. Despite the large, bright movie-poster style painting of Spiderman and the Green Goblin, Bahe's work lives more in the past.

"I especially enjoy painting traditional figures -- people who go way back to the 1800s and their ways of life," Bahe said. "I was more interested in painting the Green Goblin than Spiderman. It was a challenge for me."

He is careful in his detail -- one figure wears a 1920 Phase Two Chief Blanket.

Gesturing to a work he entitled "Distant Riders," Bahe pointed out that the subject of the painting wears a blanket over bare shoulders and chest. Mounted on a horse, a Navajo man peers intently into a distance the viewer can only imagine. Navajos in this world paid strict attention to moving figures in the distance.

"In the past, Navajo men went shirtless," Bahe said. "My subjects are strong men."

The paintings that surround the artist feature powerful warriors and traditional practitioners. The musculature of his Ye'ii -- masked figures emerging during the Ye'iibichei ceremony -- is detailed, pronounced.

Brando Wilhelm is also interested in history -- but his is a grim view. His work "The Fat Man Cometh" is an example.

"I began this painting two days after September 11. I was tired of hearing Americans say 'what did we do to deserve this,'" Wilhelm said.

He points to massacres at Sand Creek, the Little Bighorn and other events in American/Native American history. Wilhelm also envisions images of nuclear holocaust in the streets of Nagasaki.

"I read a book called "The Bells of Nagasaki," which is the journal of a doctor in Nagasaki who went into the morgue and saw the carnage in the aftermath of the dropping of the bomb "Fat Man." He later led people up the mountain to areas with lower radiation levels."

The painting is horrific. Skeletal figures missing various body pieces, eyes wide in crazed horror stagger through the streets. Some suffer severe dysentery; all are bleeding. Among the crowd, huddled in a wild-haired haze, is a geisha.

"The author wrote of seeing a geisha sitting among the victims, and it was very symbolic to him considering what the geisha represented to the Japanese people," Wilhelm said.

There are facts about Nagasaki that trouble Wilhelm. One is the fact that the device was detonated above a residential area 10 miles from the port Americans are led to believe was the target.

"It was detonated above a university a hospital and a church," Wilhelm said. "The church was considered a gift from the western culture--when the bomb was detonated there, many felt that the gift was taken back. The doctor wrote of these things, and also his frustration in walking around after the event. He couldn't help, he didn't know how."

People have a strong reaction to his painting, Wilhelm said.

"They want to test me. They ask me why I painted this. I tell them, 'because I can," Wilhelm said. "I have both hands and both eyes."

Prints of another work show a strangely ghost-like view from Little Big Horn. The world is gray, white and navy blue -- infinitely detailed cavalry soldiers on horseback and on foot approach the viewer. This painting too reminds America of the darker side of its history.

"Veterans and historians take offense at my work. I tell them that this is American history, world history. Why are you ignoring this part of our history?"

Museum Director Robert Bruenig stopped in to chat with Wilhelm.

"I appreciate the challenge that Wilhelm's work represents," Bruenig said. "I've visited Nagasaki. You'd never know there was a bomb there, except for the one building that survived the bombing. This is the site of Peace Park. There is a mound there where the remains of the victims were buried. This is a place where people can go to say prayers or to ring the beautiful bell there."

Bruenig described Nagasaki as a very moving place, some place that all Americans should consider visiting in his opinion.

"I felt I needed to go there. It's a place where we need to understand that we have troubling episodes in our history. We need to deal with that," Bruenig said. "This is a place where I am told no American president has visited."

Ryan Singer also deals with American icons -- but his is a brighter, more humorous view. Influenced by the work of Andy Warhol -- paintings of Campbell Soup cans and Pepsi for example -- Singer liked the strong, bold images and wanted to create those symbols in a uniquely Navajo way.

One of his images, "Wagon Burner," came to him in his sleep. A covered wagon ablaze, like the cautionary cutout images seen on traffic warning signs -- bright yellow background -- is a result of having been called this racial slur himself.

Other paintings are reminiscent of cartoons from Hot Rod Magazine, nostalgia for old-time video games like Donkey Kong and Centipede, while visions of UFO abducted-sheep and Lakota warrior Long Soldier (a signer of the Laramie Treaty) catch the viewers' eye. A popular Singer image is a Campbell Soup-like can advertising mutton stew.

Singer received second place in the Fine Art category for his painting "Salt Clan," which transforms the Morton Salt girl into a Navajo elder beneath a bright umbrella.

Another painting is mind boggling to a non-mathematical mind. A figure in a Lakota war bonnet sits before a television showing the number four made famous by the "Fantastic Four."

In popular culture, superheroes help people," Singer said. "At the top is a logarithm invented in the south to capture serial killers. This man made up whole equations involving distances from the murder site and other facts. This chief is looking at television, trying to use the equation. It's kind of X-File-ish," Singer admitted.

Sally Black took this year's Best of Show award with her basket featuring a squash blossom design with black and white figures.

The Judge's Choice award went to Alfred Yazzie for his set of 12 paintings.

In Basketry, Sally Black took first and second place.

The Best Youth Artist Category featured Samantha Bedonie as first place winner, Alicia Nequatewa in second place; and Shandiin White took third place.

Tahnibaa Naataanii took first place in Textile Weaving. Mona Laughing took second.

Michelle Tsosie Sisneros and Ryan Singer took first and second place in Fine Art.

Rose Williams and Alice Cling took first and second place in Pottery.

Fidel Bahe and Leo Yazzie took first and second place in Jewelry.

Terry Alan Wilson and Patrick Scott took first and second place in Folk Art/Cultural Items.

Baje Whitethorne Sr. and Alvin John took first and second place in sculpture.

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