A showcase of small art, children

It was a capacity crowd, but sales at this year's Indian Inter-Tribal Ceremonial were decidedly smaller than usual, vendors reported.

"People just don't have money to spend on stuff like this these days," sighed one jewelry seller. "It's all they can do just to feed their kids and keep 'em in school clothes."

But good things also come in small packages, and small change wasn't the only miniature thing about the 89th annual celebration of Native Americans.

For the first time, the poster artist was a rug weaver - a weaver of miniature rugs, to be exact.

In real life, Matilda Yazzie's tree of life rug featured on the 2010 Ceremonial poster is about the size of a piece of printer paper.

Yazzie, who hails from Navajo, N.M., started out doing full-size weavings at the age of 10 under the tutelage of her mother and grandmother, Nellie Yazzie and Desbah Chee.

When her sisters started experimenting with miniatures, she followed suit, and soon found her niche.

Yazzie, who is Tábaahá (Edgewater Clan), born for Ta'neeszahnii (Tangle People), discovered she could produce them and sell them faster than full-size tapestries.

She uses a tiny loom about 12-by-14 inches, and sewing needles for her weaving tools. Her husband, Vincent Bia, makes her dyes, using both natural and aniline pigments.

"People like the little rugs," Yazzie said. "They use them for all sorts of things, like to put under a piece of jewelry."

Yazzie was surprised to be chosen this year's poster artist because she did not even enter a design. Turney's Indian Goods, which had bought her little rug for $1,000, entered it for her.

The tapestry features a corn stalk with red, blue, brown and yellow birds flying among its leaves, bordered by an intricate leafy design in shades of sage-green.

"They liked it because it's small and it has a lot of birds," said Yazzie, 46.

Not far from Yazzie's booth in the exhibit hall labored another artist with an eye for the tiny. While casually chatting with passersby, Allen Aragon of Albuquerque drew a perfectly straight line about two paintbrush-hairs wide in glaze on an oval of ceramic.

Aragon's stunning ceramic pendants nestled in silver frames are so unique he never knows what category to enter them in.

Born to a Navajo mother and a Spanish father in Ganado, Ariz., Aragon picked up both silversmithing and pottery. He has found a way to beautifully combine the two.

He cuts tiny ovals, teardrops, or other shapes out of clay, covers them with designs you almost need a magnifying glass to see, and fires them three times before setting them in beautiful silver backdrops he also makes himself.

Painting the diminutive ye'ii bi chei faces, cornstalks and other Native motifs takes an incredibly steady hand, which Aragon, fortunately, has.

"Do I ever mess one up? Of course," he said. "That's part of any art form."

Aragon's creations start at about $375, but he's been known to donate them to raffles for childhood cancer charities, hoping to get back at the disease that claimed his nephew, Thoreau High basketball star Rowdy Aragon, at the age of 18.

At the entrance to the exhibit hall, "mouth painter" Dennis Arviso was back to painting miniatures. Last year, Arviso had been excited about the gift of a self-rotating easel that allowed him to paint full-size paintings. But he, like Yazzie, soon found they weren't as practical as small-scale works.

Since Arviso is paralyzed from the neck down, he paints by holding his brush between his teeth. He can certainly paint as well as what he calls "hand painters," but he can't paint as fast.

"It takes me anywhere from two weeks to two months to do a full-size painting," Arviso explained. "For it to be worth my time, I would have to sell it at a lot more than people are willing to pay. It's a lot easier to sell the miniatures."

There were even miniature dancers at the Ceremonial. It seemed like every dance group had at least one tiny child.

Among the littlest dancers was Jason Ahhaitty, a Kiowa enjoying only his second summer on the planet.

As the dancers lined up for the grand entry, Jason's dad Josh Ahhaitty was frantically trying to keep Jason from curling up in the dirt, fancy dance regalia and all, and falling asleep.

"He's tired," Josh apologized. "He doesn't know what's going on."

But that doesn't mean Jason can't dance. Once the group took its turn in the arena, he bounced along to the drum, keeping perfect time.

"That's how we pass these dances on to our children," explained Josh. "First you learn to feel the beat. Then you start picking up the steps."

The rock stars of the Native American dance world, the Apache Crown Dancers, also had two young boys, or at least small boys - you couldn't see their faces behind their masks. This reporter tried to interview them, but they just stared at her stonily.

That's exactly what they're supposed to do, explained a woman with the group. The mountain spirits they portray when they don the regalia do not communicate with us mere mortals other than through their dance.

While the diminutive mountain spirits stood stoically, 3-year-old Amy Descheenie was having a meltdown. The great-great granddaughter of the Ceremonial's original fire starter, Francis Denetsosie, had just figured out she was supposed to walk out in front of several thousand people to help light the Ceremonial fires, and it was sending her into a panic.

Her mom, Rebecca Descheenie, squatted down, wiped her tears with gentle fingers, and said some apparently reassuring thing. She pointed out the family's relatives in the crowd, which made it seem less threatening.

Sure enough, Amy managed a princess smile and, holding tight to Mommy's hand, bravely waved at the sea of strangers as she walked into the arena with the other Denetsosie descendants.

No matter how small you are, you gotta do what you gotta do. That might just have been the unofficial theme of the 2010 Ceremonial.

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