NEWS
RELEASE

Museum Showcases America’s First Artists

Date of Release: February 2 , 2006

(Tucson, AZ) Every February for the past 12 years, Arizona State Museum has showcased the art of America's first artists in an ever-increasingly popular art fair. The Southwest Indian Art Fair is Feb. 25-26 this year and boasts more than 200 Native artists showing and selling their wares.

Cultural authenticity is a standard of quality well known to craftspeople. In the search for roots, it is no surprise that deep traditions and high standards of craftsmanship are being perpetuated among the nation’s earliest artists and craftspeople; our Native Americans. The Southwest Indian Art Fair held annually at Arizona State Museum on the University of Arizona campus is a leading example in the practice of these longstanding traditions. The ancestry of this work is often centuries old.

In northeast Arizona lie three flat-topped mesas, home to the Hopi Nation. For close to a thousand years, villages have practiced traditions, rooted in cultural history, mirroring the deepest values of life. Here in Hopi villages, cottonwood root - valued for its inherent
spirit of katsina (living spirit) qualities - is shaped into the many faces and aspects of the katsina world. Rich with encoded mnemonic designs, katsina dolls continue to be made for traditional use as teaching tools as gifts to young Hopi girls during the start and close of the ceremonial cycle. Its marriage of form and function has evolved over centuries into sculptures rivaling the finest contemporary wood carving custom in America.

Basket arts in Hopi knit the community together in the practice of exchanging ‘paybacks’ - woven plaques that acknowledge ceremonial favors received from one another. Still made today, this craft has precedents in artifacts dating to 800 C.E., reflecting a millennium of craft continuity!

Other historic traditions, such as the Navajo traditional basket, continue to be used today in cultural practices whose origins pre-date the 17th century. Here, Navajo cosmology is faithfully symbolized in craft that also incorporates a subtle ‘Braille’ clue for the Medicine Man, a historic component of its ongoing ceremonial use.

Zuni stone fetishes are still carved from traditions reflecting origin beliefs. As oral tradition has it, each animal offers something to the world. Zuni carvers release these attributes so that their intrinsic character may be invoked for the benefit of the community. Here, too, carvers have taken liberty with ancient tradition to evoke powerful sculptural presences in contemporary fetish-style stones.

Among 170 Southwest Native American artists assembled to compete for coveted positions in the Arizona State Museum’s invitational Southwest Indian Art Fair, the presence of the artist’s hand is frequently, and ironically, the lesser part of the object. Native American crafts are better defined by the larger issues of cultural content. Yet, as evidenced in the eye-catching award winners, attracting $12,000 in community-sponsored awards, it is ultimately the artist’s hands that lend competitive quality to the work. This is one of the rich complexities of contemporary Native American craft - that neither culture nor artist is compromised in the final balance of content and craft.

It has been observed that humanity is “more than one man deep,” that each generation rises up by standing upon the shoulders of previous ones. As we make our way through the twenty-first century, Native American craft leads American craft in the honor of this tradition.