Rufino Tamayo (1899- 1991) is considered to be the "fourth great" Mexican painter of the twentieth century.  While his contemporaries were utilizing their paintings and murals in the hopes of inspiring radical political change, Tamayo wanted to create an "art for art's sake."  He is known for innovating the technique of the mixograph, which combines relief painting with lithography to create a rich, three dimensional surface.

Charlene Sanchez Reano of San Felipe Pueblo is a fabulous mosaic jeweler who started making jewelry at age 18. She is the sister-in-law of Angie Reano Owen and Rose Reano and the daughter-in -law of Clara Lovato Reano, all from whom she initially learned jewelry making.

There is something truly entrancing about Jorge Lovato's miniature carvings. Done from a single piece of wood, they are simply carved but with so much expressiveness. His work is prized by collectors and includes animals such as horses, birds, dogs and buffalo as well as Native American figures and creche figures. Lovato holds a BFA from the University of New Mexico but his work seems even more influenced from his childhood near Taos. These are sculptural treasures you can hold in the palm of your hand yet they have a presence that's larger than life. Contact us for info on our large collection of his work.

The first Native Americans of the Southwest to learn silver smithing were the Navajo, whose knowledge of silver came initially from the Spanish during the 1500s. It was not until 1870, however, that silver work really took hold in the American Southwest. After basing their technique on original Spanish methods, the Navajo began to adapt designs to incorporate traditional cultural meanings and their own sense of artistry.

During the 1880’s, Navajo silver smiths began setting stones in their pieces, specifically turquoise and other tribes such as the Zuni followed with their inlay style. For them, turquoise symbolized the sky and water and was associated with healing and protection. The American Southwest is an ideal environment for turquoise, which is a mineral generally found at higher elevations in semiarid regions.

After being marginalized as a culture due to Western expansion, native artists were able to use these locally mined stones and their skilled craftsmanship for monetary survival. Despite constraints on Native culture, jewelry design and innovation flourished.

Regarded as one of the great masters of Pueblo ceramics, Margaret Tafoya (1904-2001) is known for her trademark large black polished ceramics, decorated with traditional imagery of rain clouds, water serpents, bear paws, and other symbols. An award-winning artist, she was recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, and a National Heritage Fellowship.

Four Winds Gallery is proud to be a part of this amazing book written by Charles King. The gallery's Tafoya collection is featured in the book with stunning photographs by Pittsburgh photographer Duane Rieder. This collection will go on exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History on October 3, 2008. Stay tuned for more detailed information. Visit our web site to purchase.

Perry shorty is a young Navajo jewelry maker who has found his niche in the classic period which began in the late 1920's and early 1930's. He's a stickler for quality and won't sacrifice it for quantity. He began making jewelry after working in a store in Gallup selling materials to artists and seeing what they were getting for their work. What started out as making a few extra dollars has become a career for this 43 year old Pentecostal preacher. He doesn't produce as much as he used to but spends more time preaching. See our web site for more of his work.

Navajo, Cody Sanderson, was awarded Best of Show at the 50th Annual Heard Museum Show for "Outside The Cube" which showcased his unique talent. This amazing piece is a working, silver smithed version of the Rubik's cube with different designs for each side of the cube.

Four Winds Gallery is pleased with the release of the book "Southwestern Contemporary Jewelry" by Diana F. Pardue. Carrying many of the artists featured in this amazing publication is an honor for us. For information on purchasing the book see our web site. The following is from the inside flap and perfectly describes the book.

Challenging the traditional look of Native American turquoise and polished silver, a group of contemporary Southwest artists are creating stunning jewelry using rough metals and stones of all kinds. Abstract configurations twist through wristbands, weave through necklaces, and transform the art of jewelry making. Beginning in the early 1950s, Hopi artist Charles Loloma, Navajo silversmith Kenneth Begay, Mexican/Mission jeweler Preston Monongye, and others emerged with a new style of Native American jewelry. Contemporary Southwestern Jewelry delves into their lives, allowing us to better understand their revolutionary motives, methods, and sources of inspiration. Native American jewelry of today, though carved, cast, and stamped much differently from its predecessors, still celebrates the freedom and beauty found in nature that have been interpreted by American Indians for thousands of years.

Diana Pardue is author of Shared Images: The Innovative Jewelry of Yazzie Johnson and Gail Bird (2007) and The Cutting Edge: Southwest Jewelry and Metalwork (1997). She has written articles about jewelry for Ornament, American Indian Art, and Frontdoors magazines. She is curator of collections at the Heard Museum, where she has worked since 1978.

We are pleased to announce the addition of jewelry by Keri Ataumbi to our gallery. Keri's says of her work that it "is in the unique category of wearable art. In creating this type of jewelry the artist develops a concept and design, addresses the relationship between object and the body and thus engages in and deepens the discussion of fine art. My jewelry falls into the category of ‘wearable art’ as it has a conceptual narrative exploration at its core. This enquiry happens through an exploration of imagery and materials to create a small sculpture complete upon its own, as well as worn on the body. Informed by current visual culture, the history and theory of modern art and my personal aesthetic, my goal is to create work that strives to embrace contemporary jewelry making strategies by applying artistic methodologies that are different from traditional design processes. Different in that their dynamic comes from a content-based enquiry rather than ‘tried and true’ design, marketability or a traditional form."

Edward Sheriff Curtis was born in 1868 in Wisconsin, and at the age of 19 moved to the Puget Sound. After constructing his own camera he began photographing the Native Americans of the Washington state waterfront. He went on to photograph on a major expedition with naturalist John Muir and ornithologist John Burroughs. On this trip he photographed his first major series of Native Americans. George Bird Grinell, the editor of Forest & Stream magazine, had Curtis spend a season with the Piegan and Blackfoot tribes of northern Montana, and Curtis began to realize he was viewing the passing of a great race and set himself to the task of preserving it through photographic documentation, and ethnological notes.

This process began in 1897 with his first exhibit in 1904. The first nine years of his work were self-financed until he met President Theodore Roosevelt who introduced him to J.P. Morgan. All told Morgan and his estate contributed half of the total $1,500,000 cost of Curtis' life work. Curtis focused on the Native Americans west of the Mississippi beginning in the southwest with the Apache, Jicarilla, and Navajo. He tried to participate in the daily life of the tribes he photographed, and in 1922 he became a Snake Priest in the Hopi Snake Ceremony.

Curtis and his assistant W.E. Myers documented over 10,000 native songs as well as biographical studies such as Crow Bull Chief's tracing Crow history through ten chiefs. He studied the Little Big Horn Battlefield with three Crow scouts who guided Custer's command and interviewed Sioux participants about their memories of the battle. What became a thirty year project and included the study of over eighty tribes, yielded 40,000 photographs, a twenty volume set of books with 500 editions entitled "The North American Indian" each with 300 pages and a total of 1500 photogravure prints. Each volume also had an accompanying portfolio of 36 or more copperplate photogravures totaling 722 plates.

Curtis died in 1952 at the age of 84 with little acclaim and nearly penniless, but he succeeded in capturing images of a way of life drastically changing by the time he completed his work in the 1930's.

Four Winds Gallery is lucky to still have in it's collection two goldtones, over 60 signed original platinum prints, over 100 portfolio gravures and over 100 volume gravures. Please see our web site for information or contact us.

We wanted to take a moment to explain a term that appears quite a bit on our web site for those of you who aren't jewelry makers or sellers. The term is repousse, (pronounced rupoosay). It is the process or the product of ornamenting metal with designs in relief pushed or hammered out from the back. The metal is pushed but, its thickness remains the same. The process is of ancient origin, having been employed by most early civilizations. Above is repousse work done by Cody Sanderson. Cody often stamps the outline of the raised area and darkens it as well. Visit our web site for more examples by artists such as Thomas Curtis, Alex Sanchez and Harry Begay.