Alternate Views 
“Spirit of the Deer”
by Louis David Valenzuela, Yaqui
Description: Hand carved Yaqui deer dancer. Cottonwood and horsehair. Paper flowers represent nature.
About this Award: Awarded for carving that adheres most to cultural content, other than a Katsina doll.
Jurors’ Comments:
Martin Kim: I understand that the root of it, with the paper-mâché flowers that represent blessings, that these represent the flower world: the point of origin for Yaqui culture, and also a goal of spiritually reuniting with that world. The Pakola dancer and Pakola mask and the deer dancer above and the deer with the flowers in his head are all very accurate in detail to traditional forms of these objects and their images as used in ritual. I am concerned about the back of the piece lacking some kind of detail. Sculpture generally means to me that it’s three-dimensional and should work from all directions. I would be excited to see something like this address its back side as well.
Susan Folwell: This piece is vibrant. It’s clearly Yaqui; it’s clearly of Southern Arizona. It’s an intriguing piece. It’s a good scale: a very interesting size, a workable size. I’d like to see, on the back side, more attention paid to the all-around sculptural aspect of it.
(About the Runner-up, Mark’s choice, “Walking in the Clouds”) That was something that I was considering. They are beautifully carved folk art pieces. But in terms of, if this is for cultural context, this piece could be from anywhere: from South America through Mexico. So, in that regard, as beautiful as they are, it was just a little more too generalized to me.
Mark Bahti: (About the Runner-up, his choice, “Walking in the Clouds”) I was very taken with the two-part saguaro picker until I saw this one. I wound up choosing it because a lot of things go on about the saguaro harvest that this embodies. A lot of it’s sort of buried in there. Someone traditional from out at the Tohono O’odham Reservation would immediately pick up all of the context. For example, you’ll see imagery of people using the saguaro fruit pickers to bring down the clouds. The saguaro fruit ripens just about the time the rainy season begins. The rainy season is the beginning of the New Year and in fact when the first red fruit lands on the ground you’re supposed to pick it up, hold it over your heart and breathe a silent prayer of thanksgiving on the intake for having made it to the beginning of a new year. So clouds, the fruits, the act of picking fruit, and the rains are all tied together. This also has Boboquiviri Peak on it. The whole story is in this one piece.
Photo by Marnie Sharp