10 April 2016

Halftone Kachina Doll


RELICS: KACHINA
Watercolor woodblock print
13 x 13 inch image (33 x 33 cm) on  17 x 19 inch (43 x 48 cm) Shioji washi
edition: 8
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Kachina are ancestral spirit messengers in the mythology of Pueblo Indians and there is a tradition of carving wooden kachina dolls as teaching tools. I first became acquainted with these figures when I lived in New Mexico in the mid-1990s. The kachina figure depicted here, from a photo I found on the internet, dates to the 1940s and was carved by an unknown artist.

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