Sunday, August 24, 2008

Now is there some sort of fair on the square today?

Michele and I went to Indian Market yesterday. We left home before 6:00 so we could have breakfast at Tia Sophia's. When we got on line, we were at Uli's, two doors down from the restaurant, but we were still in the first wave to go in. Our waitress brought our breakfast burritos and said, "You have two minutes to finish, then get out!" How we laughed.

We had read in the Indian Market guide about Wanesia Spry-Misquadace, an Ojibwa artist who lives in Santa Fe. She is preserving a very rare form of art, birch-bark biting, so we stopped by her booth first. Her pieces are exquisite. Here is an image of what the bitten birch bark looks like. It's not one of Wanesia's pieces, though. Hers are more intricate; she does turtles and insects.


Two Great Quotations

We were a couple booths away from Wanesia's when we heard the first of the Two Great Quotations of the Day. A woman was looking at a sculptor's work and asked, "Are you selling this?" There was a long pause while he looked closely at her and decided she really hadn't just been beamed down from the mother ship. "It's all sold [before 8:30! How cool is that?]," he told her. She said, "Well, you should put up a little sign then."

Later we were looking at the booths on Lincoln Avenue and heard the second of the Two Great Quotations. A woman said to her companion, "Let's go to the other side of the street. You can get the stuff on this side in any store." We assumed she shopped at Walatowa-Mart.

The best-dressed tourist contest

The contest was a toughie this year. Would we choose the woman dressed in diaphanous skirts, pink full-quill ostrich boots, and layers of floating scarves that trailed behind her like exhaust? How about the woman wearing every bit of her silver and turquoise jewelry? Ordinarily it would take six men and a boy to hold her up under the weight, but for Indian Market, it's best to solo. We finally decided on the woman clomping around in her bespoke boots featuring Our Lady of Guadalupe in colors so bright and vibrant they could have been given a coat of tan.

What we brought home

Michele got a Zuni fetish of a bear.


My friend Tony, a Santa Clara sculptor, gave me this little bear. We worked together for several years at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and he said he wanted to give me something to celebrate our friendship over the last 25 years. What a nice guy!


I got this little beaded sheep from Ronda Dosedo of Zuni, New Mexico.

6 comments:

Chuckbert said...

I'm jealous that you get to go to Indian Market. Did Randy Chitto have unusual things?

I love the sheep.

P-Doobie said...

Randy didn't have anything unusual this year. His pieces were variations on a theme. For example, he had a large turtle holding a star over Baby Jesus Turtle. He had koshares and storytellers.

I will send you the article on the birch-bark biting.

Shoe said...

I like the sheep, too!

BobbieS53 said...

Cain't you get me one 'a them little dogs with a scarf lookin' up?

Poss said...

Very pretty little sheep, and the bear is very lovely.

And how was the quickly eaten burritah

RetroMag said...

I think you made a sound judgment in your choice of the Best-Dressed Tourist. You also made a sound choice of the items you brought home. Both are very nice!