Sculpture
Southwestern
TANGO
This piece is based on the escaramuza cowgirls of Mexico. In English escarmuza means "skirmish" and is an all-female sport within the charria, the Mexican equivalent of rodeo. It consists of highly choreographed equestrian excercises and is inspired by the las adelitas of the Mexican revolution. These female soldiers rode with the men, acting as decoys on the battlefield. They performed intricate drills while riding sidesaddle on horseback. Today, teams of eight women wearing traditional dress pay homage to the women who took up arms against oppression more than a century ago. Their dangerous crosses and fast turns require great skill and appear to be almost a dance on horseback
Dimensions: 18"h x15 "w x9 "d
KIDDIE POOL
This piece began with a beautiful hollowed out slab of junper wood. The more I studied it's shape I became convinced that it should hold "water" in some way. The final design includes four Shorthorn calves enjoying a cool dip on a hot summer day.
Dimensions: "h x "w x "d
LAKOTA EFFIGY VESSEL
The Native American tribes of the Great Plains believed that invisible presences exist which could be contacted to bring harmony into their lives. Through vision quests, they sought to bring the supernatural and natural worlds into close contact. During a vision quest, the individual experienced a higher level of consciousness and might be visited by an animal spirit who then became his spirit guide throughout life.
Among the Lakota Sioux, the raven was a potent spirit guide - mummified birds were wrapped in ceremonial red flannel strips and placed with other meaningful symbols in a personal medicine bag.
Dimensions: 20"h x 12"w x 7"d
DOG AND PONY SHOW
This piece is a joint effort with my daughter, Lesley. She sculpted the pony and dachshund and I came up with the idea of combining our work by adding a ball under the dachshund, a ring for all to rest on and a bulldog riding a unicycle.
Dimensions: 17"h x 11"w x 8"d
SONGS OF ANCIENT WISDOM
This piece is loosely based on the ancient nine day Navajo healing ceremony undertaken to relieve stricken people, and in a larger sense, to reharmonize and reorder the natural world. The songs that comprise the ceremony number mnay hundreds.
Women, throughout history, have often been the receptacles of oral history and folklore. In many cases, the vehicle for sharing these stories is through song.
Dimensions: 15"h x 8"w x 7"d
COWGIRL COFFEE POT
This piece is a bit of whimsy on my part. I know that many people collect teapots and I began to wonder why coffee pots don't seem to get the
same attention.
I gave this some thought, remembering images I have seen
of cowboys out on the range, hunkering around a coffee pot simmering over a campfire. Where
are the girls in this scene?
I went about creating a bronze
coffee pot with a cowgirl for a lid, a
open mouthed horse for a spout
and a lariat for a handle.
Dimensions: 20" x 10" x 6"
POSTCARDS FROM THE PAST
I have always been fascinated by the petroglyphs that are etched into stone walls all over the Southwest - in fact, throughout the world.
In this piece I chose a few images that I found in travels through Utah and Arizona. I created each one in wax which was then cast directly into bronze without the middle step of mold making. Thus, this is a one-of-a-kind piece.
Dimensions: 27"h x 17"w x 6"d SOLD
MESA RELIQUARY
Pueblo cultures such as the Hopi, Zuni and Acoma believe
that the first peoples of this world entered through the sipapu, the hole from which they stepped into the Fourth, or present world from three previous worlds, It is then that they changed from lizard-like beings into human form. From this point the "First Peoples" of the Earth began to divide and separate, becoming tribes. The original sipapu is said in Hopi and some other Puebloan belief systems,
to be located in the Grand Canyon.
In this piece I combined a beautiful juniper treasure box with a grouping of Hopi katsina figures. They have just emerged from darkness into the light of a new world. One can only imagine the elation of breathing in the air of new beginnings and the joy of feeling the warmth of sunlight.
I have seeded the drawers of the reliquary with various fetishes and pottery sherds, inviting the additionof personal treasures.
Dimensions: 13.5"h x 17"w x 13"d SOLD
RAIN DANCE
"Through our dances we celebrate the renewal of our life pattern, ancient migrations, and a spiritual connection with our ancestral sites. This, together with our farming tradition, ties us both physically and ceremonially to our ancestral land, the sun and the cycle of the seasons". Hopi quote.
The Puebloan Hopi Tribe believes that snakes are like their brothers and so they rely on them to carry messages down to the underworld where the rain gods live, the immortal beings that bring rain, control other aspects of the natural world and society, and act as messengers between humans and the spirit world. These religious dances are closed to the public, but in this piece I have combined some of the katsinas from celebrations that are open to outsiders which include kochari clowns. With a deep respect for tradition, I created this piece as art - in no way expressing the rites or beliefs of others. In attending some Pueblo dances, I have been made to feel as a guest at the table of open hearted people who are kind enough to share those traditions that are not closed to the public. The sculpture includes six katsina figures and a kiva ladder mounted on a juniper bowl.
Dimensions: 8.5"h x 11"w x 11"d SOLD
SO...IT'S NOT FLAT!
This wonderful piece of wood, a found object that had once been half of a shipyard pully, became the impetus for a new sculpture. It is whimsically based on the Hopi emergence legend where humans came into the current world through a sipapu, an opening in the earth in the Grand Canyon. In this case, mankind has arrived into the current world to find that it is not flat, but round.
Dimensions: 20" x 10" x 6"
