UNDER THE SUN
The Heard Museum Guild Indian Market arrives in Phoenix with gorgeous weather and eager buyers.
The Heard Museum Guild Indian Market arrives in Phoenix with gorgeous weather and eager buyers.
With more than 15,000 guests in attendance over two days, the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market boasted beautiful weather, exceptional sales and attentive visitors on March 2 and 3 in Phoenix. It all resulted in an enormously triumphant market hosted by the Heard Museum, one of the premier Native American museums in the country.
“The 61st Indian Fair & Market was a huge success with attendance the highest in six years. We were thrilled with the quality and diversity of the art. Collectors were lined up at the gate awaiting the Saturday, 8:30 a.m. early-bird opening for museum members,” says Anna Flynn, chair for the annual event. “Many artists reported excellent sales. Audiences enjoyed music and dancing and children packed the storytelling and crafts events. We awarded the most money ever in the juried art competition.”
More than $62,000 in prize money was awarded, in addition to 145 ribbons that were given to 103 artists. In all 644 artists participated, with 267 of them entering the juried competition. Altogether they represented more than 100 tribal affiliations from American Indian and Alaskan Native tribes to Canadian First Nations.
In addition to hundreds of artists’ booths filled with everything from pottery and jewelry to weavings and paintings, the market featured a huge variety of other events including artist demos, book signings, dancers and musical performers, a fashion show and a meticulously curated museum gift shop—not to mention the actual museum, which is filled with historic and contemporary Native American artwork from all around the country.
This year’s top award winner was Navajo weaver Ephraim Anderson, who won best of show with his twill weaving White House Revival II. Anderson, who also does work under his brand Zefren-m, learned of the award hours after it was announced. “It’s kind of a funny story because I was out with a group of weavers and we were talking about how it was unlikely that any of us won,”
he says. “Later I got a message congratulating me, which was strange because I was asking myself, ‘Where is this coming from?’” he says. It was only much later, around 3 p.m., hours after the winners are announced at the museum, that Anderson learned his work had won the top award. “It was exciting and very unexpected.”
Anderson’s weaving was praised for its complex weaving pattern, all done in an ancestral method that the artist has dated back to 1250. “I really wanted to find the most complex twill weaving possible. It was certainly complicated,” he says. “It really all comes down to the manipulation of the yarn. Every time you add a heddle it can give you two, four, six or even eight times more work. It’s an exponential product.”
The work, which is now sold, also won the best of its class in the weavings and textiles category.
And even as the 61st market is now over and done with, work is never done—for the artists, the museum or the guild, which puts on the market for the museum. Work for the 62nd market is already under way. “See you next year on March 7 and 8, 2020!” adds Flynn.
1. Tony Duncan performs a hoop dance in front of a crowd during the first day of the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market.
2. Weaver Marlowe Katoney holds up one of his works at his booth in the demonstration tent. 3. Guests browse through booths at the Heard Museum’s annual market. 4. Market visitors join dancers during a performance. 5. Basket weaver Jilli Oyenque demonstrates her process. 6. Ryon Polequaptewa with his ribbon-winning Hopi carving. 7. Guild member Sara Lieberman, left, with Anna Flynn, chair of the 2019 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market.
Photos courtesy Haute Media.