Juror’s Comments:

Anthony Lovato: This basket is done in an older style that was almost a lost art before recently being revived in the northern pueblos. There is a lot of work in gathering and peeling the wood, before you even start making the basket.

Pam Lujan-Hauer: The basket is a traditional northern New Mexico grain gathering and winnowing basket. The materials are exceptional. Red willow is almost never seen peeled, with the bark removed. All the materials had to be gathered at just the right time, as the sap was retreating in preparation for dormancy or in spring as the sap is rising, in this case both, I believe.

Juror’s Comments:

Bruce Bernstein: I selected this canteen because it’s a wonderful combination of an old idea and a new idea, and the culture-bound use of clay to create a continuity between outside and inside cultures. She’s put a metal back on the piece and glued it to the clay; it’s very complicated to glue two very different surfaces. She’s used a mica-flecked clay throughout. It’s polished, and uses Santa Clara paint all the way through it. It’s a big idea and balanced really well. It’s a play on the ideas of Native canteens and prospector canteens. Canteens have been in the Southwest for thousands of years, and then Anglos show up and they have new types of canteens, so it’s appropriating Anglo canteens into Pueblo life.

Juror’s Comments:

Pam Lujan-Hauer: I like the concept; it’s well executed. It’s a different take on doing traditional sgraffito. The burnishing is very well done. This pot was polished first and then carved, so any mistake is immediately visible, and there are very few mistakes That takes a lot of control. The pattern of the design accentuates the shape of the pot.

Juror’s Comments:

Anthony Lovato: I’m more partial to the Hopi pottery because of the tradition. This particular piece has an older design, which was probably taken from the Sikyatki Ruins, or east of Polacca. I like the style and the low dome shape of it. All the pigments are natural, using yucca to do the designing. The shape is like a low Sikyatki shape—the older designs. If I made this I would have put a corn design on the inside, but that’s me. I like the thinness of it, the shape of it. I really love the firing effect, the redness where the heat was higher, compared to the lighter areas, which really tells that it was traditionally fired.

Jurors’ Comments:

Bruce Bernstein: How much life it has, it really capured the idea of “frog;” it’s squatting down ready to jump. There’s something about its emotion, almost a sadness, not just iin the face, but in the body language as well. It has a certain balance in its makeup that’s quite wonderful and probably goes with the conception of frogs in the Hopi world.

Anthony Lovato: I like the piece because it’s a story character among the Hopi tribe. It relates to the water. The colors are real traditional colors. There’s great detail, even down to the fingers and toes. And I believe it’s all one piece of cottonwood, which helps make it an exceptional piece.

Pam Lujan-Hauer: I like how whimsical it is, and the lack of motion expressed by the piece. He’s frozen!

Jurors’ Comments:

Pam Lujan-Hauer: The motion, and it’s all carved from one piece. It’s beautifully done, and very traditional; my first katsina was a Badger Katsina—protection.

Anthony Lovato: I picked this piece because it has a lot of detail in the carving. It’s out of one piece of cottonwood. The Badger is a traditional Hopi katsina, which, as Pam just said, is of strength and protection. It’s also got tobacco, (Pam Lujan: Mm-hmm, he’s a medicine man) to bring on the clouds for the rain. So it represents quite a lot of things in just one piece.

Bruce Bernstein: You get the feeling that this was exactly something that the carver saw one day. It’s like a photograph, in that he has seen something and through his mind’s eye, recreated it, and shared it with us.

Jurors’ Comments:

Bruce Bernstein: The thing about sculpture is that the stone speaks. Every sculptor will talk about how the stone “got” your work. You really can’t override who the stone is. We felt that with the white lines of the calcite and the luminous quality of the upper portion vs. the less translucent aspect of the bottom, the sculptor really paid attention, and heard what the stone was saying as he was carving it.

Anthony Lovato: The rest of the sculptures on the table we’ve seen before. This stands out as something different. There’s good use of color. The shape is, I’m guessing, close to the shape of the natural stone, and it looks like he already saw what he was going to carve.

Pam Lujan-Hauer: I love the luminous properties and that it’s carved crystal. The veins are really pretty. He utilized the stone itself in determining what shape to make it. It’s really nice.

Juror’s Comments:

Anthony Lovato: It’s a different technique and different material used. I like the natural colors of the earth pigments used. It’s put together well. It’s pretty uniform; it doesn’t really need a frame. I like the difference in each maiden. It shows the different styles that the maiden can come in. I’m sure each one has its own meaning. There’s a lot of corn designs and a lot of rain designs and that’s what most spirits are about, rain and growth. And the sides show the prayer feathers. So i’ts really like an altar.

Pam Lujan-Hauer: I’m Pueblo Indian, so anything that’s geometric and balanced draws me right away. That’s just typical of us. I like the randomness of the butterflies; it’s like they’re visiting.

Jurors’ Comments:

Pam Lujan-Hauer: It’s an intriguing, unusual view of Monument Valley, and it’s very well done. The focus is incredible.

Anthony Lovato: You have to climb pretty high to take this picture. I like the space around the photo; it gives a sense of space, of being there at the actual place where the picture was taken. I really don’t like the frame.

Bruce Bernstein: There’s always a debate whether photography is art or not. This photograph makes a firm case for photography as art, in terms of its clarity of vision. It is a moment caputred in time, and just the focus and the length of view. It couldn’t be but a brief moment when the sun’s at a certain spot in the sky and you look across the landscape there’s almost no shadow. There’s so much to it; it’s just unique. I think the frame is fantastic.

Juror’s Comments:

Pam Lujan-Hauer: The quality of the coral and the evenness of the design struck me.

Bruce Bernstein: The belt is a beautiful assembly of many different techniques. Each concho is hand-built, and there’s amazing consistency over the eight pieces.The coral selection is gorgeous. There’s such precision in the way the bezels for the coral are cut. It’s amazing that it’s handmade.

Juror’s Comments:

Bruce Bernstein: The workmanship: with silver, you’re layering metal, moving metal, keeping the stampwork even all the way around. It’s complex, and it’s just got to be right in every dimension. It makes a very pleasing, balanced piece.

Pam Lujan-Hauer: I agree, it’s a technique that’s very hard to do, and it’s pretty!

Juror’s Comments:

Pam Lujan-Hauer: I love the way it’s assembled. The beauty of each piece, and how they’re interlinked with a vine that’s wrapped around, and secures everything in place too. It’s just beautifully done.

Bruce Bernstein: There’s a lyrical quality to it. It’s slightly whimsical, and the use of the vines as a means of attachment creates the illusion of the butterflies floating above the bracelet.

Jurors’ Comments:

Anthony Lovato: I liked the more intense weaving that was put into this, with the diamond shapes. The pale color tells me that she used more natural colors. There’s more character and more work in the weaving.

Pam Lujan-Hauer: The crispness of the design, how well articulated it is, and the opposing colors.

Bruce Bernstein: This piece represented more complexity in terms of the amount of design on each line.

Jurors’ Comments:

Diane Dittemore: The $3000 annual Hartman Lomawaima Memorial Purchase Award is funded by the Friends of the ASM Collections to enable the museum to enhance its ethnographic collections with especially fine examples of contemporary works by artists who attend SWIAF. A bola tie was selected in part as a nod to our state’s centennial; bolas are after all Arizona’s official neckware. This particular bola by award-winning Navajo artist Julius Keyonnie of Winslow has exquisite etched designs.  A portion of the design references traditional Navajo wedding baskets, also fitting given the Museum’s new basketry preservation and access initiative.

Jean Nerenberg: I especially like that Julius’s bola is in the shape of a pot, something associated with the Southwest and with ASM.

Jurors’ Comments:

Diane Dittemore: It’s just incredibly well painted. I love the fact that she seems to have taken her designs from a particular manta. She’s drawing upon the rich Hopi textile tradition in her designs. I love the splattering in the background and just really precision painting, and it’s a nice substantial size tile, so I think it would make a great addition to our pottery collection. We don’t have any pieces, to my knowledge, from the artist.( Dr. Lyons: We have in the memorabilia collections tiles that she made to mark excavated and backfilled ruins at Homol’ovi—functional things.) Right, which is another reason to have her more aesthetic product.

Patrick Lyons: What I really like about this piece is the fact that it has these designs that come from traditional Hopi textiles, designs that you see on mantas, and some of these motifs you also see on men’s dance kilts. It also shows something that we see for the first time in the late 1800s and early 1900s—that stylized use of Hopi rain clouds whuch has become a really important symbol in Hopi art, and a nice depiction of what I’m interpreting as a Sun Forehead Katsina—just real classic late 1800s or early 1900s Hopi motifs, done faithfully, and even the technological aspects of the spattering that go back to the 1300s and 1400s. Also the use of engraving is nice, in this piece we see the full complement of traditional Hopi decorative techniques that go back to the 1300s. Also the fact that we have done a lot of things to focus on tiles in the past and that is a medium that we’re trying to build on in our collections.

Andrew Higgins: I like it because of all the iconography. There are so many elements that it could be a really great teaching tool to show students and kids the meaning of different designs. It’s a flat tile so it’s easy to show the whole work. It adds to our Hopi collection.

Jurors’ Comments:

Diane Dittemore: The brilliant contrast between the red and the green popped out immediately, and the stitching is pretty consistent, and it’s an overall nice presentation. We want to have some good examples of contemporary basketweaving for our new basketry project initiative, so it seemed like a win-win on both of those counts.

Patrick Lyons: Classic Hopi technique, classic Hopi form, classic design, great example, as Diane said, to be incorporated into our programming and exhibits related to the basketry visible storage project. As she said, the color combination is very, very striking.

Andrew Higgins: The red really pops out at you, and it’s a natural dye. (We need to find out what dye that is, exactly.) It’s a pretty fascinating basket.

Juror’s Comments:

Dawn Cromwell: This is an excellent example of the traditional carving techniques this youth has been taught. Besides the good work in carving, the accuracy in color, design, and handling of materials dazzles the eye of the beholder.

Juror’s Comments:

Dawn Cromwell: The design, color, and handling of clay by this youth artist are excellent.

Juror’s Comments:

Dawn Cromwell: This basket reflects the quality teaching this young artist has experienced. Every aspect of the work is excellent.

Jurors’ Comments:

Patrick Lyons: The execution is terrific, especially for a youth artist. And while it clearly incorporates a lot of traditional Hopi motifs that we see among the masters of previous generations, it has its own style.

Andrew Higgins: I agree the execution is very impressive for a youth.

Diane Dittemore: The thing that impressed me is that it clearly has a very Hopi-like image, but a contemporary look, something that’s distinct from the older generation of Hopi artists. This definitely has a youthfulness and beauty; the colors are wondeful and the layout is terrific. It’s a very appealing piece.