Continuum: Celebrating Native Art and Native Voices

This Kosa is a traditional piece of one of the entities that you find in the Pueblos. They are kind of like clowns, but with a more sacred lean than Western perception of what a clown is. 

Clowns are very special to me because they caught my attention as a child, because they reflected things back to whoever was watching them that seemed to stick with me as a child. And I think that's their job. To sort of mimic what they see around them, to reflect that to society, what it is they are doing or behaving like, or seem like. And I believe that, for the Pueblo people, this being was really important to helping the society stay in balance with itself. 

...And it’s made so that the hand that’s holding whatever is left empty because you can imagine anything there, really. And at that point, you know, when you start appreciating everything around you, it's a reminder of how everything has a meaning, purpose.

...I attempted I think two pieces, and finally on the third attempt it came out, and it happens to be a gorgeous water jar shape piece and the color is referred to as a gunmetal, which is a silvery black color, which is very unusual and difficult to achieve.

It has a kind of presence that, if you walked into a room and you saw it, it wouldn’t startle you, but you would sense that you stepped into its energy field...it really belongs collectively to my family and my community and all of the ancestors who have given us this gift.

...I came to this work in my early thirties and I had no idea that this gift was inside of me. In retrospect, I understand that it was part of my genealogy. I was carrying it in my blood and it was passed on to me, I know, by my great-grandmother's spirit...

Buffalo horns are a real sacred object for Lakotas...the Buffalo spirit lives in the horn caps and so it’s real central to all of our ceremonies. We use it to pour water in the sweat lodges and in our Sun Dance the buffalo skull is the the center of the altar...

…I’ve always heard of this “horn rim glasses” and it was, I don’t know, I thought well why not buffalo horn? A couple years ago, I did get some large horn caps, and so I just had to do it…I carved out Rez Bans on the temples of the glasses and inlaid it with mother of pearl.

...I believe that in our work there’s got to be a balance in everything that we do, and that there’s got to be humor to balance out the seriousness of the spirituality part...we are contemporary people...we're pushing the envelope of art and we're just like everybody else...