Artists at Work

2019 Demonstration Artists

The Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market is an immersive experience, where collectors and artists can meet and discuss the inspirations and time-honored techniques used to create their works of art. Each year during the market, a special showcase of artist demonstrations takes place on the plaza in front of the Steele Auditorium. This is an opportunity to learn about a variety of art forms—basketry, beadwork, sand painting, weaving, pottery and more—as 24 artists demonstrate their processes and sell their pieces on Saturday and Sunday.

Anthony Belvado (San Carlos Apache)

is a second-generation Apache violinmaker who learned the skill from his grandfather. His violins have an agave body, a mesquite string holder and tuner, and a rawhide cap. Apache people began making violins in the 19th century, and Belvado has devoted the last 30 years to revive this endangered art form.

Sally Black (Navajo)

of Monument Valley is one of the most innovative weavers of traditional and pictorial sumac baskets today. Black started weaving when she was 8 years old. While watching her mother, famed basket weaver Mary Holiday, weaving a Navajo rug, Black got the idea to put Navajo rug designs and other pictorial elements into her baskets.

Ron Carlos (Salt River Pima-maricopa)

uses the precontact Hohokam “paddle and anvil” technique to make pottery, with handprocessed clay and natural pigments harvested within the Salt River Pima-maricopa Indian Community. Carlos also a teaches ceramics in his community.

Peter Ray James (Navajo)

has had his soft sculptures featured on album covers, exhibition posters and magazine covers. He attended the Parsons School of Design and graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts. James’ Navajo name, Nahat’a Yilth Yil Wood (“One Who Delivers the Message”) reflects the storytelling aspect of his artistic endeavors.

Terrol Dew Johnson (Tohono O’odham)

cofounder of Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA), which promotes food sovereignty, Indigenous farming practices and basket weaving on the Tohono O’odham Reservation in southeastern Arizona. Johnson studied customary basketry with tribal elders before creating his own styles with unusual woods and fibers. He now collaborates on woven sculptural work with architects Aranda\lasch.

Don Johnston (Qagan Tayagungin Unangan)

weaves baleen baskets with walrus ivory finials. After a chance meeting, Iñupiaq weaver James Omnik Sr. taught Johnston this labor-intensive art form. His 2017 Heard Fair Best of Show basket, Qagaxtag (Love), is on display in the Artistic Excellence exhibition in the Heard Museum.

Marlowe Katoney (Navajo)

of Winslow, Arizona, draws upon his skills as a figurative painter in his exquisite pictorial weavings. He incorporates pop culture and humor into customary Navajo weaving designs and challenges himself by weaving curvilinear shapes. His Angry Birds—tree of Life weaving is in the Heard Museum’s permanent collection.

Melissa Lewis-barnes (Navajo)

creates custom, hand-made cowboy hats that incorporate her Navajo and cowboy heritage. She irons and sands beaver fur felt, hand sews the details, and adds her own beaded hatbands and hand-painted designs.

Royce Manuel (Akmierl Aw-thum)

a tribal historian and retired firefighter, has revived the Salt River Pima-maricopa Indian Community’s kiaha, or burden basket. He weaves these openwork, utilitarian baskets from agave fibers. Manuel also makes fiber sandals, flutes, bows and arrows, and calendar sticks.

Jennifer Neptune (Penobscot) and Frances Soctomah (Passmaquoddy)

make Wabanaki baskets of softened wood cut from ash trees and sweetgrass collected from salt marshes, a long Passamaquoddy tradition. Frances started making baskets at age 8 under the tutelage of her grandmother Molly Neptune Parker. She is continuing in her family’s tradition of adding flowers to her basket covers. Jennifer is an anthropologist, artist, teacher and writer.

Shelden Nuñez-velarde (Jicarilla Apache Nation)

specializes in hand-coiling traditional Jicarilla Apache pottery in both traditionalfunctional and contemporary forms. As his ancestors did, he gathers the clay and slip from Jicarilla clay sources. He soaks the clay, cleans, sifts, mixes, hand coils, shapes, sands, polishes and then fires his pottery outdoors, using pine or cedar wood.

Jilli Oyenque (Ohkay Owingeh)

is a basket maker, specializing in Pueblo red willow baskets. One of six or so artists reviving this art form, she has practiced this art form for over 20 years and harvests and processes her willow.

Ryon Polequaptewa (Hopi)

of the Sun Clan from Shungopavi is one of the finest katsina carvers today. His katsina dolls contain a lot of character, a dose of humor and reflect the great care that he takes in creating each one. He is reviving the carving of more traditional dolls. In 2009, he was one of the advisors for the Heard exhibit Hopi Katsina Dolls: 100 Years of Carving. Ryon also is a music maker, or a thunder maker, as a member of the Blu Thunder Singers.

Monica Raphael (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians)

is a mixed media artist specializing in beadwork.

Charlene Sanchez Reano (San Felipe Pueblo)

is a mosaic inlay jeweler, who studied studio art at New Mexico Highlands University and with her Kewa in-laws. Sanchez Reano specializes in two-sided necklaces that juxtapose precontact materials such as spondylus and turquoise with imported stones in a variety of colors.

Marilou Schultz (Navajo)

comes from more than five generations of Navajo weavers and has been weaving since she was a child. She weaves all styles of Navajo rugs as well as her own designs. A fulltime teacher, Schultz spends summers weaving and conducting natural dye workshops and presentations and/or demonstrations on the history of Native tribes, weaving and dyeing methods and on teaching and working with Native American students for schools, organizations, museums and weaving guilds.

Daisy Simms (Quechan)

was named an Arizona Living Treasure for her legacy of creating net-beaded collars worn by Native women throughout the Colorado River region.

Yolanda Hart Stevens (Piipaash/quechan)

is a dancer and beadwork artist from Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the Colorado River. She studies Pee Posh ceramics and uses clay beads in her necklaces. She heads the Pee-posh Project to instruct children in these art forms.

Tim Terry Jr. (Gila River Akimel O’odham)

is one of the few living masters of an ancient shell etching technique among Sonoran Desert peoples that uses cactus juice to etch exquisite designs in shell gorgets.

Buddy Tubinaghtewa (Hopi)

works in the “old” style of carving, painting and adornment, drawing on a rich heritage of decorations and shapes, some dating back more than 400 years. At the same time, he is one of the new generation of carvers who moves away from traditional styles by adding movement and intricate details through the creative use of electric tools. Deeply rooted in Hopi culture and tradition, he has developed a style and a flair that is uniquely his own. “I let the wood determine what it wants to reveal,” he says. “Then, together, the wood and I create a visualization that eventually turns into a reality.”

Louis Valenzuela (Pascua Yaqui)

a mask maker, mentors Yoeme (Yaqui) youth and teaches art at Hohokam Middle School. Born in Eloy, Arizona, and raised in Barrio Libre of South Tucson, he attended the Chicago Art Institute in the 1980s.

Todd Westika (Zuni)

taught himself to carve fetishes after a relative gave him a small bear fetish to use a “guide.” His gained a vast knowledge of rocks from geology classes he took as a geological engineering student. Westika won first place at the 1994 American Indian and Western Relic Show and numerous awards at Museum of Northern Arizona’s Zuni Show.

Rosie Yellowhair (Navajo)

of Upper Fruitland, New Mexico, is a sand painter who harvests and grinds her own earth pigments. Her vast knowledge of Navajo oral history comes from her traditionalist grandfather, uncles, and father, Earl Yellowhair.