Navajo Weaver Peggy Black
After spending over 40 years in and around silversmiths, carvers, painters and weavers, living and working with art is as natural to me as breathing. The home in which I was raised included Navajo rugs, Hispanic santos and early Santa Fe paintings. Since my family has been trading in the Southwest for over 100 years, baskets, rugs, katsina dolls and pottery have been a part of my viewshed from the moment I was born. Trips to the northern New Mexico enclaves of early Spanish settlers introduced me to the simple cottonwood carvings mirroring their devotion to Christ, the Virgin Mary and a myriad of saints. My grandfather, a surgeon, moved to Santa Fe in the 1930's for his health. During the height of the depression, it was not uncommon for him to be paid with artwork or some other form of barter.
It is becoming more and more rare for us to see, touch, smell and experience the processes and products of those individuals creating handcrafted items. Immediate gratification, cloaked in packaged foods, television remotes, instant text messaging and manufactured everything is making patience and the rites of apprenticeship obsolete.
Throughout my years in the art business, I have turned away many catalog companies demanding 1,000 pots by next Tuesday for inclusion in their publications. While politely declining their requests, I have often wondered, "Where do you wish me to find the 'Start Creating' button on artists? Into which outlet shall I plug them so they may reproduce multiple pieces in mind-numbing uniformity?"
On one occasion I acquiesced. A large resort in Sedona wanted a unique corporate gift and after several suggestions, we settled upon large seed pots by Acoma artist, Simon Vallo. Upon the initiation of our discussions, I stressed the importance of giving us plenty of lead time to complete the project. The drop dead date was three months away, then two months. Finally, six weeks before the gifts were needed, the company gave me the order.
A majority of artists at the Acoma village have moved toward selling pottery which is painted on precast greenware which allows for pieces to be sold more quickly and cheaply. Simon, however, was from the old school; he gathered his own clay and volcanic ash. Each pot was started in a puki, a form for holding the initial shape, then built with hand rolled coils of clay. Acoma clay has a particularly plastic quality, not in the Made in China sense, but rather its ability to be pulled and shaped into beautiful, thin-walled pottery. Because of the seed pot style, a mostly enclosed piece of pottery with a small opening at the top, these nine-inch diameter pots required two separately shaped pieces that are joined together. The seam is then sealed with clay.
I like to joke that the Acoma people are the obsessive-compulsives of the Indian art world, because they are able to paint the most intricate designs on pottery with nothing fancier than a yucca fiber brush. Simon favored polychrome designs inspired by Ancestral Puebloan pottery from the Chaco Canyon area and figures from the Mimbres culture. For this order, a particularly nice geometric design was selected and he commenced creating 36 large seed pots in about half the time ordinarily needed.
Simon was a reliable artist so I knew if anyone could accomplish the goal, he would. He started bringing in five to eight pieces at a time. With one week left until our final ship date, Simon had brought in 34 of the 36 pots needed. Simon was a large man and quietly proud of his work as an artist. On his next to last visit, he had this brief story to share. "I would have had them all done, but a wind came up while the bowls were cooling. Two of them fell off the table, rolled down the hill, and crashed into the basketball standard".
While demonstrating the stoic acceptance of so many pottery artists who are accustomed to numerous problems arising throughout the artistic process, I was racked with guilt over his loss. Preparing to leave that day, he set down the original seed pot upon which all of the remaining pots had been based. When I asked him if he needed the design to complete the last two pots, he looked at me with his usual hang-dog expression and said, "Oh, trust me, I have the design in my head". As I shipped the last two pots, I wondered if any of the recipients would have the slightest inkling of the blood, sweat and tears which carried a shapeless, gray mass of clay into 36 beautiful expressions of Acoma tradition.
Recently, I spoke to Teri Paul at the Edge of the Cedars Museum about building an exhibit around this idea of process. The exhibit is an introduction to the beauty of detail and the virtuosity of skill, hopefully giving people a glimpse into the many baby steps which must be accomplished to bring a bracelet, a basket, a pot or a katsina doll from the artist's imagination to its complete, if you will, adult form. While photographing the various artists for this exhibit, I was struck by the ease of process acquired by each of them after many decades of practice in their chosen art form. Images of a man digging clay, a woman splitting sumac, a man hammering silver, a woman burnishing pottery, and a man carving wood encapsulate hundreds of years of experience and tradition. Some were self-taught while others spent time at the side of a mother, a grandmother, an uncle, or some other mentor steadily progressing toward their own artistic mastery.
As the pace of our lives quicken, may we slow for a few moments and savor the thoughts and actions of the artist. Hopefully with a more deliberate pace, instead of rushing toward the finished product, we can capture and experience the spark of creation as well as the beautiful in-between.
On May 7th, the exhibit, "Processes..." officially opens at the Edge of the Cedars Museum in Blanding, Utah.
Sincerely,
Georgiana Simpson
Copyright 2005 Twin Rocks Trading Post
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