On August 6th Steve Elmore Indian Art will present an exhibition and sale of
100 Hopi baskets from the early 20th century. The Hopis, still living in ancestral pueblo villages high atop Black Mesa in northern Arizona, still make the baskets. And, of course, the baskets all have their specific ethnographic use and mode of manufacture, not to mention that they are covered with great Mandela-like designs and symbols that capture the imagination. Many traditional forms will be presented, including peach baskets, piki trays, coiled hats, wicker cradleboards, and numerous flat plaques.

Hopi baskets are truly the last ethnographic baskets being made in Native America and remain an essential component of traditional Hopi culture even today. Obviously, the baskets are made for carrying, whether it be peaches or a tray of piki bread. Importantly, the baskets are also essential to the Hopi carrying on their traditional way of life, and the baskets have many social and ceremonial functions besides that of mere utility. For example, certain women's dances require each dancer to have a basket to participate, and of course, many of the kachina ceremonies use traditional baskets. Hopi baskets also serve as a kind of currency within the community. They are traded, used for paying obligations, and often sold to traders and collectors for real currency. Significantly, the baskets are essential in each traditional Hopi wedding, as the bride's family pays back the groom's family for making the bride's wedding clothes with baskets. This `payback' can take a year or more to complete and require the making of up to a 100 new baskets. The size of the payback is a real point of pride for the bride's family as well as all the individual women who wove the baskets. Carrying on such traditions and ceremonies are one of many ways that the Hopi are able to preserve their distinct culture.

There are two principal kinds of baskets: wickers which are made on Third Mesa and coils which come from Second Mesa villages. Coils are considered sturdier and harder to make than wickers which have a pleasing texture to their sweeping openness. Kachina images, as usual, command higher prices and more attention. The wickers are made from scrub sumac and the coils from yucca and galleta grass.

We salute the Hopi basket makers of yesterday and today!

This exhibit and sale is a great opportunity for all collectors to participate in supporting this tradition. We invite you all to come to our show and learn about this often overlooked indigenous art form.

Click here to see the collection.

Opening Reception: Friday July 9th, 5-7pm showing through July 29th, 2010

In his fourth annual painting show, native New Mexican Steve Elmore celebrates the theme of Triangle Mountain with a dozen new oil paintings. In his continuing quest to realize a new style of southwestern landscape, merging realism with his own personal expression, Steve has created new images of the mountains, trees, and skies of the West, emphasizing their abstract triangular nature. The paintings progress from realism to increasing abstraction achieved over a year of work in the studio. "I look forward to sharing these new paintings in which I am expressing myself through the geometry of the Western landscape. They are different from my previous work and make a unified presentation."

• "I have wondered whether I could commit myself to a series of paintings on a single theme, and unexpectedly, a difficult personal year forced me to focus more narrowly on my painting. I was glad to have a single theme to stay with. I wanted my own inner geometry to merge with the geometry of our Western landscapes. The paintings are not overproduced like much of contemporary art. No computers or perfect tape lines were used in these paintings, just a yardstick, a pencil, oils, and a lot of brushwork. I want to show how simple it can be to paint. Each of the geometric designs slowly emerged from a simpler beginning, in a layered process. At one point, I had to scrape the canvases clean like a pelt to take the paintings to their next level. "I seem to be painting out of the two different sides of my brain, so that some paintings are more geometrical and ordered than the others. I think it takes both sides to keep the paintings interesting."

"Now I am curious about the new paintings that will follow from this disciplined period." Steve continued, And my job, of course, is just to keep painting. Keep on living, keep on painting."

Click here to see the collection.

Collectors are a special breed, compelled to accumulate pieces they love and that nourish them back. Biologists have pointed out that many different species of animals also collect, from ferrets, raccoons and packrats to ravens, and even the stiffle fish. While we can't be certain what motivates people to collect, we can certainly know the results when we see them, and Lynn Trusdell's collection of Native Jewelry certainly ranks as one of the largest and most complete collections of old indian jewelry ever assembled.

• For over four decades, Lynn Trusdell carefully squirreled away the best pieces of old Indian jewelry that resurfaced around her, in the small old canal town of New Hope, Pennsylvania. Through her antique shop, The Crown and the Eagle, and the famous local flea market at Lambertville, she bought and sold thousands of pieces of southwestern Indian jewelry. The best she kept for herself and her friends. Many of the pieces were published in two collector books on Southwestern Indian Jewelry by Schiffer Publications. Recently her collection has been bringing record prices for Native jewelry at auction. Now, selections from her personal collection are available again after decades of being off the market. Over 120 pieces from her estate will be offered to our dedicated and new collectors alike on June 4th with an opening reception from 5 to 7pm.

Click here to see the collection.