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Lesson 6

 

This week we were ask to make our own web page and research a topic. Those of us repeating this class were asked by Nikki to start the topic research with an artist of our choice. From there we were asked to include the history and influences of what might be going on in the world in relation to this artist. From there, we were asked to complete the assignment with research on expanding subjects stemming off each other in a non-linear fashion.

Joe Ben Sandpainting

Joe Ben is a modern day Navajo sandpainting artist from the Shiprock, New Mexico. He is actually a world traveler and a teacher and uses stones from all over the world in his paintings. There are many wonderful modern day Navaho sandpainters. I have chosen Ben because I like his Yei and Corn painting and because you can go see it on the internet. Sandpainting is very important to the survival of the knowledge of the sacred, ancient Navaho Indian Medicine as you will find out if you read below about sandpaintings of the Navaho. Joe's work is typical in that it perserves some of the sacred symbols in a permanent art form as opposed to the original impermanent sandpaintings of his ancesters that were swept away at the end of the cermonies.

To view Yei and Corn visit http://www.spirit-of-oconee.com/j_ben_bio.htm

Perhaps you might wish to know a little more about Navaho sandpainting?

Sandpaintings of
the Navaho

"a place where the gods
come and go"

 

The sandpaintings of the Navaho Indians are said to be a temporary resting place for the Holy Ones and are used in rituals that a medicine man or singer/chanter called a “hataali” conduct and the myths of the Holy Ones are kept alive by his songs. There are few medicine men left to perform these sacred rituals because the young members of the Navaho tribes are not interested in learning the songs and tedious techniques of the hataali (1983:11).

The permanent sandpaintings are the only way the Navaho have now to keep the sacred ceremonies and symbols alive and preserved. The more esoteric symbols used by the medicine men are not used in the permanent sandpaintings as were in the ancient sandpaintings.

Many of the remaining masters of sandpainting live in the Monument Valley, or the land of rainbow colors. They are the copper skinned Navaho Indians who are still living in the land of Dine-the-people (1966: 5).

The Navaho do not have one particular supreme being, but they use ceremony to direct their lives by calling on the assistance of the “Yei” or the “Holy Ones” to help them with supernatural powers and to regulate the good and evil events that would unfold in their lives (1968: 213 214).

The Navaho ceremonies and myths carried the belief that before the people on the surface of the earth lived, the Holy People or Ones, lived in the lowest of twelve worlds below the surface of the earth (1972: 96). There are dozens of Holy People, and in viewing many photos of the recent permanent sandpaintings, as well as photos and drawings of more ancient sandpaintings, you see that different Holy People are painted to summon different energies for different ceremonies (1963: 73-80).

Sandpainting is at the center of these complex ceremonies and generally is used in their major healing ceremonies. The Navaho word for sandpainting is “place where the gods come and go” and it has been used in ceremony for healing by medicine men for centuries (1983: 1). Farris (1990: 132) points out the term "iikaah" in Navaho to be what the Navaho call the sandpainting process or “they come, as into an enclosure”. Villasenor (1963: 44) describes the Navaho sandpainting as a visual prayer which is offered to the “Infinite Maker of Creation (1963: 45)”.

An example of a Navaho Ceremony in which the sandpainting is entered in the ritual itself is the Navaho Bear Ceremony. In the Navaho Bear Ceremony, the patient sits on a sandpainting which has been prepared in ritual and a medicine man in a bear costume leaps out of the darkness from a corner of the hogan and confronts the patient. If the patient faints at the sight of the the bear, then the ceremony is further performed by the medicine man as the person’s shock is taken as a sign of “bear sickness” (1997: 480).

written by Solon Rhodes

Book References

Downs, James F. 1972 Case Studies in Cultural Antropology. Holt, Rinehart, Winston, Inc. New York.

Faris, James C. 1990 The Nightway. University of new Mexico Press. Albuquerque.

Gilpin, Laura. 1968 The Enduring Navaho. University of Texas Press. Austin.

Parezo, Nancy J. 1983 Navajo Sandpainting: From Religious Act to Commercial Art. University of Arizona Press. Tucson.

Pavlik, Steve. 1997 The Role of Bears and Bear Ceremonialism in Navajo Orthodox Traditional Lifeway.The Social Science Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4, 475-485.

Reichard, Gladys A. 1963 Navaho Religion: A Study of Symbolism. Princeton University Press. Princeton.

Villasenor, David V. 1966 Tapestries In the Sand: The Spirit of Indian Sandpainting. Naturegraph Publishers, Inc. Happy Camp, California

Sandpainting Links:

http://www.hanksville.org
Hanksvile.org. Good beginning
information on Native American poetry, lore, and art.

http://www.penfieldgallery.com/sand.html
Penfield Gallery of Indian Arts: Navajo
Sandpainting Exhibit. A wonderful
gallery with links to images of paintings
of 40 different permanent sandpainting
artist.

http://www.chiefdodge.com/HowTo/
sandpainting.html
This site gives a brief idea of how to
create a sandpainting.

The bear is thought to be one of the most popular Zuni fetishes (carvings) and represents strength, courage, power, good luck, and healing.

Find out more about Bears:

http://www.bears.org The North American Bear Center provides a good source of general info on bears for the public.

Greatbeargraphics.com is a site for a web graphic business in La Honda, Ca. After looking at their site, I began thinking about the greatbear constellation and about star constellations.

 

The Stars and Constellations

The Greatbeargraphics' logo shows the bear in the Great Bear constellation to be possibly a polar bear...could be since the temperture in space is very cold. To read about the 14 stars that make up the Great Bear and to see an image of the bears that make up what we commonly call the big and little dipper, go to http://www.bears.org/spirit.

Other great links to learn about the stars and constellations:

http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/constellations.html

http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/sowlist.html

 

I was intrigued about the perceptions of the viewer in the research about the constellations. I rarely see what other people say they see in the star constellations. I still don't see the bears in the Greatbear constellation even after viewing the great mapping image at Bears. org.

Moreover, looking at the bear wallpaper that is used as the background for the "What About Bears" title above, got me to thinking about how different people perceive color and images differently.When I first downloaded this free bear wallpaper, I looked at it and thought "This is stupid, there aren't any bears in it". Only after several moments of looking at it did I even see the gray bears. It reminded me of the exercise in my Introductory Psychology class of looking at an image that can be seen as an old lady or a young woman depending on which you are looking for and what you see as the figure and what you see as the ground in a painting. I began to be curious about this and looked up on the internet resources that might explain this difference in perception of people more completely. I found that it is related to our figure-ground perception.

Ground Perception:

What do you see in the image above? A cup or two faces. While you might be able to see both, you can only see one at a time.

In photography classes, students are taught to alter figure-ground so that the figure, or the person being photographed, stands out.

Thinking about different perceptions of the viewer also reminded of looking at clouds and seeing images in them. What have you seen lately in the clouds?

Cloud Links:

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wcloud0.htm

oceania.org/seacell/images/future.html

I could go on with this research forever. As a matter of fact, I spent my entire 1st through 12th grade homeschooling and using this exact method of learning. I was encouraged to study absolutely anything I was interested in. One topic always lead to another and another until I would find myself circling and eventually returning to an original topic. With each spiralling, I would go deeper and deeper into the topic. By this very method of study, I learned that all subjects are connected.