Mirroring

This tiny beaded bag - which accompanies a 'doll', or, more accurately, a small 'soft sculpture' - is decorated with double cones that symbolizes the concept of mirroring: what is above is below. 

Award-winning Assiniboine-Sioux artist Juanita Growing Thunder explains, "The reflected doubles symbolize the earth world and the spirit world." Mirrored images often reference the meeting of the sky world (or the spiritual) and the earth world (or the daily) and the intermixing of these two worlds.

Growing Thunder stated that these images are "a reminder that you are supposed to live within both."

Images and quotes from: Grand Procession: Contemporary Artistic Visions of American Indians. By Lois Sherr Dubin. Denver: Denver Museum of Art, 2010. 64 pp. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index. $19.95 cloth.

Grand Procession

I've been asked by Great Plains Quarterly to review Lois Sherr Dubin's book Grand Procession: Contemporary Artistic Visions of American Indians.

The book just came in the mail and I'm pretty excited to check it out. It features the work of Jamie Okuma, the Growing Thunder women, and Rhonda Holy Bear, who are all amazingly talented Native American female artists worthy of large-scale recognition.

Grand Procession is an exhibit put together by the Denver Art Museum to celebrate the contemporary art practice of doll making. This isn't merely 'children's toys', but rather a sculptural art practice of creating human and animal figures all 'dolled up' in highly-detailed regalia. What I appreciate about these artists is the fact that they seek to accurately emulate Plains and Plateau clothing traditions from the 18th and 19th centuries, and they do so in full color and in three dimensions.

Bead Artist Profile | Jamie Okuma

Jamie Okuma (Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock) began working with beads as a child creating her own dance regalia for powwows near her home, on the La Jolla Luiseño Reservation.

In high school, Okuma made her first miniature jingle dress, which she placed on a doll figure, and thus, the Jamie Okuma we know today emerged.

Historical accuracy, exemplary workmanship, and keen attention to detail are the hallmarks of her dolls, which are also frequently referred to as ‘soft sculptures’ since the term ‘doll’ seems to diminish the aesthetic range of these creations.

Terminology aside, the magnificent small wonders that she creates replicate life in miniature.