Out of Zuni
Exhibition honors family of master carvers
The bear tilts its head and grins, revealing a tiny tongue behind a dental gate.
The handwork of the founding father of Zuni fetish carving, the quirky beast seems to signal what has been long overdue: the first exhibition to honor the patriarch of this dynamic pueblo art form.
“The Leekya Family: Master Carvers of Zuni Pueblo” opens at the Albuquerque Museum on Saturday, June 24. The exhibition gathers 350 carvings of Leekya Deyuse, his contemporaries and descendants. Organizers borrowed the objects from 42 lenders, including Phoenix’s Heard Museum,
Santa Fe’s Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, the School of Advanced Research, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Keshi: The Zuni Connection in Santa Fe and author Kent McManis, the owner of Grey Dog Trading in Albuquerque’s Old Town.
Known for his gently undulating forms and whimsical expressions, Leekya, along with Teddy Weahkee and Leo Poblano, was among the first few Zuni lapidarists in the early 20th century to move from carving traditional fetishes for personal and religious use to carving figures for the Indian art tourist market. The 1975 auction of the C.G. Wallace collection kindled the Zuni fetish craze, bringing prices of up to $21,000 for a Leekya necklace.
The collection of more than 2,500 objects had been housed inside Albuquerque’s old De Anza Motor Lodge, where Wallace showed it off to everyone from Will Rogers to Museum of Modern Art Director René d’Harnoncourt.
The exhibition is showcasing 95 pieces from the 1975 auction. They haven’t been seen in 40 years.
Museum curator Deb Slaney tells Leekya’s story through the voices of his grandsons Freddie and Francis Leekya and his daughter, the late Sarah Leekya.
Freddie begins his own carving by bringing offerings of cornmeal, some food and a prayer before he digs for earth-toned Zuni stone, or travertine, at a secret pueblo site.
“He’s the one who told us where the mine was,” Freddie said of the grandfather he never knew. “He taught us how to get it and what to do with it.”