Honoring artistic traditions

Southwestern Association for Indian Arts puts ancient and modern artwork in spotlight

Tom Sharpe | The New Mexican

6/5/2008 - 6/6/08

The broad range of American Indian art in the 21st century was apparent Thursday at the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts' awards reception.

Award winners spanned from Mary Holiday Black, who has helped to revive the Navajo tradition of basket-weaving, to Pat Pruitt, a Laguna Pueblo jeweler who makes modern art with an industrial bent.

Before the banquet at La Fonda, Black, 72, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award, and Pruitt, 35, who got a Fellowship Award, talked about their work.

Black, who lives in the tiny Navajo village of Halchita, near Mexican Hat, Utah, spoke Navajo translated by her daughter, Agnes Gray.

Black said few Navajos knew how to weave baskets when, at age 12, she began learning the craft from one of her grandfather's wives who was half Paiute.

"During the time she was herding sheep, she took out yucca and started splitting them out there, and then she started learning how to start from the bottom (of the basket)," explained Gray. "After she learned to start it, her grandpa's wife taught her how to use the sumac. ... It's a brush that grows along the river."

Black, dressed in a flower-print skirt with turquoise jewelry and her still-dark hair tied back, spoke softly but her strong hands became animated when the subject turned to basketry. She said baskets, used in traditional Navajo wedding and healing ceremonies, are designed to hold water, but ground corn must be smeared inside the baskets to prevent leaks.

Black said her own work was first noticed by people from outside the Navajo reservation when SWAIA members Susan McGreevy and Barbara Mauldin saw her baskets during a visit to her village and asked her to participate in SWAIA's annual Santa Fe Indian Market. She said her three daughters began taking her baskets to market in 1984, but she doesn't come because she can't speak English.

Asked if she is enjoying this rare visit to Santa Fe, Black and Gray spoke quietly for several minutes, then Gray explained, "She likes it and doesn't have anything against it. The only problem she has now is her feet are getting old, and they hurt sometimes when she walks."

Pruitt, who speaks English eloquently but says his life's goal is learning to speak Keresian, the native language of Laguna Pueblo, says that is the idea behind his latest artwork.

Lost in Translation consists of two lexicons of Indian languages (Western Apache and Creek/Muskogee) between two panels of glass held by an aluminum frame. The piece can be slid inside an incised-aluminum carrying case that has heavy-duty locking mechanisms and is lined with deerskin.

"The thought process behind this piece — it was really a conceptual art piece — is to illustrate that if you're going to have such a robust case ... what is so important that's going to be contained in such a case?" Pruitt asked.

"For a lot of native peoples, the most important thing they have is their language and this, for me, is preservation," he continued. "Fortunately, there are lexicons that are out there that contain these translations between English and Native languages, but one of the things that is really lost is that oral verbiage that gets carried down to where, sure, you can translate, but word for word, it's very stiff; it's very lost."

Pruitt said he began apprenticing to well-known silversmiths at Laguna as a young man, but became interested in modern materials and design while studying mechanical engineering at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Later, when he was struck with the urge to return to "personal adornment and objects of desire," he said, he began making stainless steel jewelry for body piercing. That led to his new career in modern art. He began participating in Indian Market last year.

"Contemporary work for Indian Market, yes, it's a little more difficult to get in, but Indian Market and SWAIA, the organization, does have a very open eye and a very open policy for acceptance of a lot of the newer work that's coming out," Pruitt said. "I think it's good because it's challenging the, quote, establishment, unquote, because SWAIA is one of the leading authorities on Native American artwork. ... They're the ones who can validate artists."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.