Purchase this issue

Purchase PDF of this issue

Cover Feature: Lucia Antonelli

Tradition and Tourism, 1870–1910 Recent Acquisitions at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. Katrin Noon Finding a Home in Spirithouse. Lucia Antonelli All That Life Holds. Identity by Design Tradition, Change, and Celebration in Native Women’s Dresses. Joyce Roessler A Commitment to Glass. Photography of Glass Ornaments Methods and Uses. Artist Statement Marsha Fleisher. Artist Statement Lindly Haunani. Artist Statement Angela Crispin. Museum News The Getty Villa. Marketplace Art Clay World USA.

All That Life Holds
Petaluma, California, a quiet town within a gorgeous countryside, is home to many artists. To reach one of its very special artist’s home and studio, you turn left just past a vineyard several miles beyond Petaluma. You pass beneath a pink stucco archway into a tableau so picturesque that it recalls the pages of a storybook, and therein resides Lucia Antonelli. The house itself lends to the illusion: an ochre stucco affair that looks at once eccentric, slightly foreign and distinctly timeless. Every inch of wall and floor space is covered with ornaments, color or texture. It is hard to escape the comparison between her home and her beautifully intricate, ornate jewelry. Photographs by George Post.

Recent Acquisitions at the Wheelwright Museum
of the American Indian
On May 27, 2007 the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, New Mexico, opened Tradition and Tourism, 1870–1970, an exhibition of recent acquisitions in celebration of the museum’s seventieth anniversary. The Wheelwright houses extraordinary art, artifacts and archives pertaining to Navajo, Rio Grande Pueblo and other native peoples of New Mexico. Over the past decade, the museum has developed a unique exhibition, publication and acquisitions program that emphasizes living Native American artists and genres of historic Native American art that are neglected by other institutions. Tradition and Tourism, 1870–1970 examines one of the Wheelwright’s primary interests: artforms developed by native peoples for use by non-native consumers—items commonly thought of as “tourist” art. The exhibition includes textiles, folk art, baskets, and pottery, as well as recent acquisitions pertaining to Navajo and Pueblo jewelry and related traditions. Photographs by Addison Doty, courtesy of Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Finding a Home in Spirithouse
Artists often remember feeling drawn from a young age to explore a particular medium, recalling that spark of passion when they first stumbled upon their particular material. Other artists can pinpoint a decisive moment when their path suddenly diverged, leading them to where they are today. But for Katrin Noon, the clothing designer behind Spirithouse, the road was not so clearly marked. Instead, her course curved about with exploration and enthusiasm for the unknown trail ahead, changing shape and expanding as it stretched before her. Photographs by Katrin Noon.

A Commitment to Glass
One simple, straightforward statement underscores Joyce Roessler’s raison d’être as an artist, dating back to an apprenticeship with a stained glass artist thirty or so years ago. “Really, my work is all about the glass,” she says. While growing as an artist and developing new work, Roessler has never lost sight of that magical medium born of intense heat and air and seemingly alchemical ingredients. Photographs by Pam Perugi and George Post.

Methods and Uses
Glass was invented almost five thousand years ago, initially as an opaque substance that was soon used as a substitute for the precious gems of antiquity, such as turquoise and lapis lazuli. Just as people then would undoubtedly hold transparent and translucent stones up to the light to view, so glass would be similarly admired. From very early on, humans would realize the importance of the play of light when viewing objects made of glass. Thus glass is often shown in either reflected or transilluminated light, or a combination of the two. In addition, the processes of decomposition, weathering or corrosion (Liu 1986) often enhance ancient glass objects’appearance. Iridescence, the most beautiful of such effects, has been imitated since the nineteenth century, perhaps most successfully by fuming. Similarly, when glass decomposes, its appearance can change to the degree that it is no longer recognizable as such, more often resembling ceramic or stone.

When one photographs glass ornaments, all these factors may come into play. Good craft or art photography, beyond the mastering of the equipment and techniques, is about how to see, and just as important, how to visualize and to help your audience be observant of the qualities of the glass object being portrayed. Photographs by Robert K. Liu.