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overcast, but dry. Soon, it was rainy. Not just a little. But steady rain. At one point, given the amount of rain that had fallen in previous days and was falling this day, and the simultaneous flooding in Albuquerque, just an hour to the south, SWAIA officials were touring the booths preparing the artists to move their art up off the ground.While it dampened the setting, it did not dampen the enthusiasm of tens of thousands of art buyers who crowded the 800+ booths. Sunday came with even more rain, severely diminishing morning attendance. Then, shortly after noon, the clouds disappeared and gave art buyers a sunny environment for adding to their collections. We were happy to see old friends, many of whom have items on our web sites and new, soon-to-be friends whose work we have admired but who we have not had the pleasure to know personally. Among those we encountered – Amelia Joe-Chandler, seen here with the piece (lower right-hand) that earned her Artist of the Year for the Indian Arts & Crafts Association 2006-2007.Amelia is a fascinating jewelry designer and metalsmith. She works primairily in silver and copper, employing techniques of negative space, line, shape, color and texture. She observes, “These elements… will not be shown all together on one piece as it is not wise to say too much or show too much.” In addition to her accomplishments as a creator of fine art jewelery, Amelia has earned a BS in Art Education from the New Mexico State University and an MS in Art Education from Indiana University, and has held teaching positions that she describes as challenging “every aspect of my knowledge from a Westerner’s view of art.” We are told that Amelia is featured in the latest issue of Native Peoples Magazine.A new face for us was Shelden Nunez-Velarde (below), Jicarilla Apache, who is potting in micaceous clay.Shelden lives at Dulce on the Jicarilla Reservation. One of his pots will be finding its way to our Pottery Link web site shortly. It's body is bronze-colored micaceous clay. The lid is black micaceous clay cut in the shape of a turtle. A leather handle allows the lid to be lifted.Old faces were Lena Boone and daughter, Evalena Boone, who shared a booth with Ray Tsethlikia and his wife, Debra Gasper . All four of these Zuni fetish carvers are represented on our ZuniLink web site. In fact, three of the nicest shell fetish necklaces we have ever carried are the work of Debra. While in Santa Fe, we visited Keshi, gallery that offers a wide range of fetish carvings from Zuni and from our friends, Wilson Romero, Salvador Romero and Lionel Sanchez from Cochiti. We expect to be interviewing Bronwyn Fox, one of Keshi’s proprietors, to get insight about Indian Market weekend from the perspective of a Santa Fe gallery. We hope to have that story posted to the blog in the next few days. Tomorrow, we will post photos about additional First and Second Place winners in the Indian Market competition.Plan to revisit.
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Tribal Artery is the blog about tribal art offered periodically by Aboriginals: Art of the First Person and its allied web sites at Native-JewelryLink, with gorgeous, genuine American Indian necklaces, bracelets, pendants, pins and earrings; ZuniLink, for hundreds of authentic Native American fetish carvings by Zuni , Cochiti, Navajo and San Felipe artists; Tribal Works, offering a wide selection of tribal art from Africa, Aboriginal Australia, the Arctic and Native America, including Navajo folk art, and Native-PotteryLink, home to the finest in contemporary and historic Native American hand-created pottery, storytellers and nativity sets.
