On the hot and sunny streets surrounded by adobe buildings, the Santa Fe plaza and downtown teemed with thousands of Indigenous artists who stood at booths, tourists who bought jewelry, food vendors who sold frybread, and private galleries that drew tourists in.
Melissa Lewis Barnes is a Navajo artist living in Durango. She’s one of 1,000 Indigenous artists selected to table at the two-day-long Santa Fe Indian Market this year. The annual event features more than a thousand Indigenous artisans from across the country and is the largest juried Native American art show in the world.
Barnes explained how to create her handmade beaver fur cowboy hats as tourists walked by her booth.
“I do hand-painted artwork and use the hats as a canvas. I punch it up with some cool beaded loom-beaded hat bands. I do braiding around the edges. My goal is to make a hat stand out. It really should be a showstopper. I know I'm sharing my work with the absolute best of the best in the Native world,” said Barnes.
Barnes shared a booth with Linda Baker, a former Southern Ute tribal council member. Baker is presenting her traditional Southern Ute regalia.
“This is a boy's cradleboard. It's probably about, I don't know, two and a half, three feet tall. It's fully beaded on the top, it's got the banner that goes across the front, plus a fully beaded cover where the lacing goes. That's not only maybe a piece of art to some people, but it's also utilitarian,” said Baker.
Baker is one of four Southern Ute tribal members with a booth at the Santa Fe Indian Market this year.
Sisters Karen Box Anderson and Debra Box are Southern Ute, living in Colorado Springs. Their father is from Ignacio, Colorado. They’re sharing a booth. Karen Box Anderson sold her jewelry, and Debra Box displayed her beadwork and rawhide work. This year was Debra’s 37th tabling at the market.
“This is hand-scraped rawhide. I use a beef hide, and I paint it with earth pigments and outline it in India ink. I use brain-tanned deer hide. I use the small beads. I like to use size 13, up to as small as grains of salt. You can get a lot more detail in your beadwork design if you use a smaller bead,” said Box.
Musical performances, artist presentations, and a fashion show took place over the weekend. At the Native Fashion Show, Indigenous models strutted the runway wearing Indigenous-designed fashion pieces.
