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Navajo Woman
1986
Johnson Antonio
Born: Lake Valley, New Mexico 1931
carved and painted cottonwood
13 3/8 x 3 1/2 x 3 in. (34.0 x 8.9 x 7.7 cm.)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of Chuck and Jan Rosenak
1987.62
Smithsonian American Art Museum
3rd Floor, Luce Foundation Center
"My children didn't have toys to play with, so I found a piece of wood and started cutting and shaping it." Johnson Antonio, AARP Magazine, 1992
Johnson Antonio carves Navajo figures from cottonwood, using an axe to form a rough shape, and a pocketknife to create the detail. He paints the surface with house paint, watercolors, and dleesh, a fragile white clay used by the Navajos to paint their bodies, and sometimes adds real animal hair or horns (Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia, 1990). In Navajo Woman and Rabbit Hunter the rough surfaces reflect the harshness of survival on the slopes of New Mexico's Bisti hills.
For more information about this work visit the Luce Foundation Center.
Keywords
Ethnic - Indian - Navajo
Figure female - elderly - full length
sculpture
folk art
wood - cottonwood
About Johnson Antonio
Born: Lake Valley, New Mexico 1931
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