Is it Kitsch? Camp? or Fine Art?
Glimpses of Indian Life
Making it Local
Authenticating the Inauthentic
Secularizing the Sacred
Mixing High and Low
Yearning for the Past

Yearning for the Past
Today, Native artists cover a broad range of items with novelties and souvenirs to serious works reflecting both self-expression and social commentary.

Those producing high-end art often draw inspiration from "traditional" elements, including pre-contact designs, Black-on-gold Jar stereotypes, novelties and utilitarian objects, as well as their ritual and ceremonial life.

Many artists, Maria Martinez among them, produced a full range of art, high and low, throughout much of the last century. Today artists such as Jody Falwell, Rosemary Lonewolf, Grace Medicine Flower, Katheleen Nez, Diego Romero, Ramona Sakiestewa, and Lonnie Vigil, continue to create new works of art by integrating the old with the new.

They are the contemporary artists who continue to create works of art along New Mexico's great cultural divide. Their work is neither kitsch nor camp, but a new form of artistic expression that draws on the legacy of both.

 
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