I went on my first Artist Date on Sunday to the Heard Museum in North Scottsdale to see the American Indian Doll exhibit. I thought it was a great first play date to help bring out my inner artist, and what a better way to bring out your inner child than looking at dolls. Playing house with dolls has always been fun and extremely imaginative, and viewing this exhibit took me back to many happy childhood memories.
“More Than Child’s Play” showcases about 80 dolls, some meticulously crafted by contemporary Native artists to serve as historically accurate fine art works for serious collectors, others crudely fashioned and timeworn, as if long-ago children dropped and dragged them across vast plains or high plateaus.
“They are an echo of life in miniature,” says Janet Cantley, the show’s curator. “Their clothing is significant. The detail in the beading and the face painting and even the hairstyles are significant. It’s all of life in miniature. Important ceremonies and cultural values are all represented.”
The dolls come from native communities across North America, among them the Akimel O’Otham, Apache, Cocopah, Tohono O’odham, Yaqui and Zuni in the American Southwest; the Seminole in the Southeast; and the Aleut, Inupiat and Tlingit in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
Depending on their origin, some are made from corn husks, palmetto fiber, tree bark, reindeer horn, walrus tusk and animal hair. There are also dolls made to sell to tourists passing through reservation land and to teach tribal customs and values to children.
“They have an extraordinary level of detail and range of material, coming from northern Mexico all the way up to the top of the world in the Arctic,” says Cantley, noting an 1870 Cheyenne doll made partly from bison fur and braided porcupine quills.
The most potent muse of all
is our own inner child.
is our own inner child.
STEPHAN NACHMANOVITCH
More photos of the American Indian Dolls after the jump.
