Over the past year, I’ve focused on searching out an interesting array of visits for our 2011 field trip, visits that exemplify the high quality and extraordinary diversity of Southwestern American Indian jewelry today and in the past.  I’ve mixed in visits to major museum storage collections to give us a broader look at the rich American Indian art tradition here in the Southwest. 

As in all of our field trips, there will be frequent opportunities to purchase fine Indian art. 

The following are highlights of next year’s trip:

•    Our rendezvous with Zuni master inlayer of mosaic jewelry, Dale Edaakie, has a special twist to it.  Dale has agreed to prepare pieces of his jewelry at various stages of completion so we can see first-hand each step of his creative process.  .

•    We will meet with Hopi jewelers Raymond Sequaptewa and Verma Nequatewa (Sonwai) to see their most recent pieces and then join Jake Koopee for a spectacular pottery firing on the crest of First Mesa. 

•    Jan Musial’s home in the woods near Flagstaff is a veritable museum of Navajo baskets, weavings, pottery, and paintings, and Jan has invited us in for a first-hand look, and is planning a lunch for us outdoors in his sculpture garden.

•    Curators of the Heard Museum in Phoenix will take us into their storage rooms to examine the unsurpassed Zuni jewelry collection donated to the Museum by C.G. Wallace, the most prominent trader at Zuni for more than fifty years.   Some of the pieces at the Heard are among the finest ever created at Zuni Pueblo.

•    We’ve been invited to the Paradise Valley home of Dennis and Janis Lyon whose Southwestern Indian art collection is widely recognized as one of America’s most important private collections.

•    The Museum of Northern Arizona was built around the idea of preserving of Hopi art and today houses one of the great Hopi collections; Museum Director Robert Breunig will take us through the back rooms, showing us their remarkable holdings. 

•    Perry Shorty joins us at he El Rancho Hotel in Gallup to show us his most recent work.  Perry’s wonderful and complex silver jewelry continues to command special attention among collectors worldwide (we now face strong competition from the Japanese who have discovered him).

•    At the Wheelwright Museum we will view an amazing collection of over 500 pieces of Zuni jewelry that was assembled by a client of mine.  I know this collection well and personally worked to have it donated to the Wheelwright with my promise to publish the story of this collector who gathered and documented her jewelry over 48 years. 

•    Jeweler Mary Tafoya’s work cannot be confused with that of any other Southwestern artist today.  She composes mosaics of fitted fragments of shell, pipestone, jet, and other materials that are then fashioned into necklaces and other jewelry.  She welcomes our group into her Santo Domingo studio for a showing and discussion.

•    I’ve asked Santa Clara potter Jody Naranjo to join us at our home.  Jody’s work is, by all measures, some of the most sought after pottery in the Southwest today.

•    We will again visit jewelers Richard and Jared Chavez at their San Felipe Pueblo home.  Richard’s wife, Sharon, will prepare one of her sumptuous lunches as we review the innovative recent work of father and son.

•    19th century Spanish colonial blacksmiths were the first creators of silver jewelry in the Southwest, and their descendants are doing some exceptional silverwork today.  We join E. Boyd Award-winner Gregory Segura for a showing of his extraordinary jewelry at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art in Santa Fe. 

•    Yazzie Johnson and Gail Bird, a pair of very, very special jewelers, will be with us on our trip, and they’ve promised to bring some of their wonderful jewelry for us to consider after our final farewell dinner.

Seminar participants arrive in Albuquerque on June 9.  We will meet you at the airport and take you to the Hotel Albuquerque in Old Town.  Please plan to arrive by 4:00pm.  Lodging the last evening of the trip, June 18, will be at the Sheraton Albuquerque Airport Hotel next to the airport.

The cost of the seminar is $5240 per person (double occupancy).  This fee covers transportation and lodging from arrival in Albuquerque to departure from the same airport nine days later.  Transportation to and from Albuquerque is the participant’s responsibility.  Some dinners, lunches and breakfasts are included in the cost.  All other meals are at the participant’s expense.  We cover all other fees and costs, with the exception of tips at the participant’s discretion.  If you wish to share accommodations with another participant, we will try to help with this arrangement.  Single room accommodations are at a supplemental fee of $800.

Our group will be limited to 25 guests. 

If you’d like to join us, please to sign up online with your deposit of $800 per person.

Warm Regards,

Martha H. Struever