Move 'em up, move 'em out, keep the parfleche rollin'

If Hernán Cortés were out looking for El Dorado's fabled glories today, he could do worse than take in the 2008 Eldorado Studio Tour. Instead of ingots, he would find plenty of creative gold shaped into a wide range of art forms.

The 17th annual tour takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, May 17 and 18, and features the work of no fewer than 105 artists. One of them, Robert Blanchet, is a Santa Fe and Eldorado tour newcomer; he is showing his parfleche work at Stop 65, sharing the venue with micaceous potter Tom Nowak.

Parfleche, which Blanchet explained originated with Native American Great Plains tribes, is rawhide formed into storage containers, shields, tepees, screens, drums, and so on, and painted in patterns. The word derives from a descriptive expression used by French trappers and traders — "pare une flèche," or roughly, "stops an arrow."

Blanchet confirmed that rawhide, which technically is halfway between untreated, raw animal skin and fully tanned leather, is light but tough and durable. "The early Spanish explorers called it 'Mexican armor' for that reason," he said. "It was widely used for horse gear and even to wrap wagon wheels." As a storage medium, it was ideal for food (especially dried meat) and clothing.

"Why it worked so well, rather than pottery or basketry, is that it was lightweight and durable and protected the contents," Blanchet said. It could be easily transported by horse or travois or wagon, and the natural animal gelatin remaining in the hide provided additional protection for the contents.

Original parfleche designs were painted directly onto the damp, stretched hide using mineral pigments mixed with water; they were applied with a bone stylus or brushes. "After it was painted and dried, the artist would paint sizing over the hide, glue made from the hide scrapings, or prickly pear cactus juice," Blanchet said. That added another layer of durability.

An Iowa native, Blanchet became interested in tanning when he was a young hunter, and he got his first information from the early Foxfire folklore and folkways books. He later became a participant in historical re-enactments and began to learn more about Native and frontier customs, crafts, and cultures. He and his family moved to Eldorado recently, after years of living in the Wind River area of Wyoming. He still obtains many of his green, or untreated, hides from the region.

Blanchet produced his first parfleche piece in 1987. "It was attractive to me from a number of standpoints. I was painting with watercolors, doing landscapes and things, and so I've adapted this same methodology. I use prepared artist watercolor pigments, which are mineral pigments."

The tour preview gallery is in El Dorado Elementary School, at the corner of Avenida Torreón and Avenida Vista Grande. All the tour artists have a piece on display from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days, and maps and brochures are available. You may then plan your own mini-tour or full-day ramble, depending on what art catches your eye.

For more information and driving directions, visit www.eldoradoarts.org.

— Craig Smith