cover image The People Speak: Navajo Folk Art

The People Speak: Navajo Folk Art

Chuck Rosenak. Northland Publishing, $40 (176pp) ISBN 978-0-87358-565-1

The 42 contemporary Navajo folk artists surveyed here reinterpret communal traditions and capture the joys and hard times of reservation life in works of sophistication, beauty and charm. The Rosenaks, collectors of American folk art, retrace their grass-roots pilgrimage by car across Navajo Nation, extending over New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, where they met and interviewed the artists profiled. Highlights among the 90 color plates include Mamie Deschille's wry mixed-media group portraits, Charlie Willeto's carvings of animal spirits, Dan Hot's potent sculpture Red Bull and White Bull and Delbert Buck's flamboyantly colorful painted-wood Motorcycle Rider . Other artists reconceptualize Navajo myths in paintings, sculpture, pictorial weavings, pottery and assemblages reflecting the Navajo belief in the universe as an orderly system of interrelated elements. The volume catalogues a traveling exhibit. (Apr.)