Rarely are we able to find pottery sculptures by Elizabeth Abeyta, Navajo artist and daughter of acclaimed painter Narciso Abeyta, and sister of Navajo artist Tony Abeyta.   Her sculptures are rarely seen on the market since her untimely death in 2006.

This elegant piece depicts a seated Pueblo Koshare clown leaning back slightly with legs spread out, eyes closed, and arms outspread.  He holds a Mudhead Katsina doll in each hand, has one tied around his neck, wears a hieshe necklace and has leather straps on his ankles and wrists.  Around his neck is a leather strap that holds a water canteen.  On his head he wears the customary clown headdress, normally with horns of untanned sheepskin that are traditionally stuffed with heavy grass and tasseled at the tips with crinkled cornhusk strips.  His arms and legs are painted in black stripes as would be on a real Koshare. 

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It is most interesting to see a painting of this subject matter by Tony Abeyta, as much of his earlier work was devoted to Navajo religious or ceremonial subjects, particularly involving the Yei and Yeibichai Navajo supernatural beings.  This painting can be interpreted as representing the Virgin Mary - mother of Jesus.

Many paintings of the various representation of Mary-Our Lady of Guadalupe, Nuestra Senora de la Conception, and others-have Mary standing on a crescent moon, a symbol of Islam, a symbol that has been carried historically on the flags of many Muslim armies throughout history. That the moon beneath her feet has at times taken the shape of the crescent serves as a reminder of her intercessions against Islam.  She is connected to the Spanish Reconquista and their ultimate defeat of the centuries-long Islamic invasion of their homeland.  1P5-1Peter5 website

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The Cochiti Pueblo painting illustrates a farmer having opened the sluice gate so water flows to his fields.  A young boy kneels nearby, apparently playing rather than assisting.  The painting is quite detailed with hills in the background, foliage in the foreground, water in the Acequia, birds flying overhead and outlines of clouds.  Quite an accomplishment for a high school student.

The painting is signed in lower center Johnnie Quintana and dated 1957.  It has recently been framed with acid-free materials and placed back in the original frame which appears to be an Indian School handmade frame.

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Helen Hardin, from the very beginning of her career, was at the cutting edge of Indian-influenced art. Her art, though obviously drawing on her Indian heritage and tradition, was very much in the mainstream of modern aesthetics. This fine acrylic painting on artist board does not reflect a date. It is a simple drawing of a fish but a work exhibiting exceptional drafting skills and superlative technical rendering. It is quite exceptional and striking, as the work of Helen Hardin tends to be, with a true sense of the complexities and intricacies involved in the creation of such a work. 

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Yei are the Holy People of the Diné who are represented in sand paintings. They are both female and male and they are pictured with masks. Female Yei are represented with square or rectangular frontal masks and male are represented with a rounded mask that covers the whole head.

There has always been a strict rule that sand paintings be destroyed before sunset and never produced in permanent form. It is not surprising, then, that there was an uproar among the Diné when the first rugs were made depicting Yei Holy People. It is believed that the first ones were woven around 1880 although they were not generally seen until after 1900. By 1920, they were being woven throughout the Navajo Reservation.

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This San Juan Pueblo artist Ka-Tside Tahn is listed in The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters.  However, there is no other information concerning him except his Tewaname and that he was exhibited at the American Indian Exposition and Congress in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1932.  There is no English name, no birth or death dates or any educational or profession information.  

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Dolly Joe Navasie is best known by her name White Swann. She is a daughter of Eunice Navasie (Fawn) and granddaughter of Poli-Ini who were her mentors. She learned to work with clay from age six and learned to paint pottery by age seventeen. She uses traditional coil method and all natural pigments, polishes her pottery with river stones and fires outdoors using sheep dung for fuel.

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The members of the Yavapai-Apache Nation, a sovereign Native American tribe from the Verde Valley, Arizona, have two culturally distinct backgrounds and speak two indigenous languages. The Yavapai originate from Yuman-speaking peoples known as the Pai and the Apache descend from an Athapaskan background similar to other Apache groups to the East.

Originally, the Yavapai and Apache tribes were separate and distinct tribes who coexisted peacefully for several hundred years. They have existed as one tribal nation since 1934. The Yavapai-Apache Tribal reservation is located at Camp Verde, about 90 miles north of Phoenix and 50 miles south of Flagstaff, along Interstate 17.

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Acoma Pueblo clay, as well as that from most pueblos, requires a tempering agent to be mixed with the clay in preparation for forming pottery.  Acoma potters gather broken pottery fragments from the grounds of the pueblo and grind them up to a powdery substance and that is then added to the clay as a temper agent.  The result of doing this is a continuation of the life of a previous pot into the life of a new pot-resulting in an unbroken chain of continuity in the life of an Acoma pot. 

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This is an historic child-size water jar that has been determined to have originated at Laguna Pueblo, probably in the early 1900s.  It is an exceptional work of art.  The design field is separated into body design and neck design, which perfectly accentuates and compliments the form of the jar. The neck design is comprised of stacked and tilted parallelograms, each painted in dark red, outlined in black, and split in the center with a white line.  The parallelograms extend from the edge of the rim down to the framing line at the shoulder.

The body design is strong and bold black floral elements, each petal of which is split with a white line down its center.  These floral elements encircle the body and each is connected with a deep red parallelogram like those on the neck design.  Black droplets in pairs are suspended from the lower slim framing line, barely discernable because it is overpowered by the wide black framing line above it that also is split down its center with a white line. 

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This very large Southwest Indian Pottery seed jar, from Hopi Pueblo, with an extreme flexure and an amazing design is not signed with the name of a potter.  The shape is reminiscent of Sikyatki seed jars and is certainly a contemporary creation meant to respect the work of the Sikyatki potters.  The design is comprised of triangles, rectangles, squares and lines executed in yellow, black and red pigments.  The seed jar balances beautifully on a base the diameter of a U. S. quarter coin.

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This Zuni Pueblo jar has the design layout described by Harlow and Lanmon as that used between 1870 and 1880.  The design layout has two vertical panels on opposing sides of the vessel and two horizontal panels with capped spirals in mirror reflective designs, also on opposing sides of the vessel.   Lastly, the neck design contains elements from the body design.  There is a slight puki depression on the underside.  The capped spiral designs are the major design elements on the body, without heartline deer, medallions or small birds. 

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Virginia Garcia descends from a lineage of Santa Clara and Ohkay Owingeh potters.  She is the youngest sister of Greg and Tina Garcia, the niece of Angela Baca, and the granddaughter of Severa Tafoya. Like others in her family, she is an accomplished artist, as this elegant redware jar suggests.    

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Louis and Virginia Naranjo were standard bearers for the proud figurative pottery tradition of Cochiti Pueblo. They crafted their figurines at the kitchen table in their comfortable adobe home at the pueblo. They worked almost every day crafting their art with great care, joking and exchanging the gossip of the day as they went along, accompanied by television, children and grandchildren. Their art provided a good life for them and it provided a legacy that will be with us for another century or more.

Louis was very creative in making items that differed from what other potters were making at the time.  He and Virginia made large figurines of male and female tourists in bikinis, sunglasses, and with a camera hanging around their neck.  He also dreamed up the black bear storyteller figurine as well as the Santa Claus figurine.  Together they made mermaids and animals.

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This is a small oil painting by Carl Von Hassler that was painted as a gift "To my dear friends Mr. & Mrs. G. Henderson."  The artist drew a frame around the painting, in pencil, and wrote the dedication to the Hendersons below the lower edge of the painting.  As currently seen, the mat covers the artist's hand-drawn frame and the dedication remarks.  The mat could be enlarged should someone wish to display the hand-drawn frame and dedication line.

On the back of the painting, the artist wrote the following: "Cottonwoods in Autumn" by Von Hassler - 1952. Region - Velarde Valley near Taos Junction. 

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I doubt there is anyone who is not aware of just how talented Russell Sanchez is as an artist.  He has been compared to other potters of earlier periods but his work is not like any others.  He combines designs and vessel shapes of traditional Tewa Pueblos and enhances those shapes with slips and designs not traditionally used. This Southwest Indian Pottery jar is a vessel shape seen in works by other San Ildefonso Pueblo potters such as Maria Martinez and Rose Gonzales, but the comparison to these famous matriarch potters ends there. 

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Heart-line deer first appeared on Kiapkwa Polychrome pottery in the 1840s but became more frequently seen in Zuni Polychrome jars of the 1880s and later.  Often the animals represent elk or antelope. The animals are enclosed in houses with feather motifs decorating the exterior of the house.  Most often, there is a red line extending from the mouth of the animal into the interior, a line referred to as the "breath of life" of the animal.  The feet of the animal have one hoof above the other and often have a white area on the rump.

The animals on this jar follow the expected style seen on most Zuni Polychrome jars with the exception of the following: most animals face to the right but these face to the left and most animals face forward but these face to the rear.  Is there any reason for these two changes?  Probably it was only the desire of the potter to do something different from others being painted. 

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Acoma Pueblo potters have claimed the inherited right to use designs of the earlier Puebloan groups that lived in the early Southwest. The designs of particular striking beauty are those appropriated by 20th-century Acoma potters and referred to as Tularosa Black-on-white. The Tularosa vessels date from A.D.1100 to 1250.

Acoma potters have been particularly involved with the use of these designs since the late 19th century.

The Tularosa Basin is located in the area east of the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, mostly in Otero County. It lies between the Sacramento Mountains to the east and the San Andres and Oscura Mountains to the west. Notable features of the Tularosa Basin are White Sands National Monument, Trinity Site, and the Carrizozo lava flows.

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A polychrome olla of Laguna Pueblo origin, dating to circa 1900-1910. This piece is a superb example of pottery made solely for use within the Pueblo as a truly utilitarian vessel. This work was in fact purchased at Laguna, where it had been in the same family for at least three generations, seeing daily use as a vessel for storing water.

A fine visual statement, this vessel's design field is broken into three sections: mid-body, shoulder, and neck. The underbody and neck interior are slipped the typical orange-red, with a white, rag-wiped slip on the mid-body. The upper field is worked in black mineral pigments on white, with a lovely arrangement of white ellipses, split with an interior motif of bilaterally paired triangular elements, with white tear-drop motifs defining the space between each elliptical motif. The shoulder is worked with two bold, unbroken framing lines; the interior space activated by running split rectangles. The field at mid-body is defined with a series of ellipses, again with interior split curvilinear motifs, adjacent to block geometric and fine-line detailing.

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The Hopi Pueblo women of Second Mesa villages have been making coiled basketry for over a thousand years using the same materials and same techniques.  None of the materials are from domesticated sources.  They all are from wild plants.  The leaf of the yucca plant is used for the weft design and grasses are bundled together for the warp foundation.  The colors are limited to white, yellow, green, red and black.  The first three colors are derived from the yucca leaves, the difference being in the time of year the material is collected.  The rust and black colors are dyed yucca leaves. 

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