Diné Cardboard Cutout Cowboy and Horse [SOLD]

Navajo Folk Art was discovered and brought to the attention of folk art collectors in the 1970s by Chuck and Jan Rosenak.  It is not that they created it or caused it to happen.  They were on a nation-wide search for folk art from the east to the west and north to the south.  Most of the folk art they discovered came out of immigrant-generated craft traditions from the old world.  When the couple arrived in Santa Fe in December 1983, they discovered a small collection of mud toys made by Mamie Deschillie, a Navajo, on display at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.  That was the beginning of their search for Native American folk art which would result in their amassing a major collection of Navajo folk art and writing two books on the subject.

In addition to making mud toys, Mamie, in the mid-1980s, began making figurines out of cardboard and scrap fabrics.  She is the first Navajo to do so and her cardboard folk art creations are collected eagerly and displayed in museum exhibits.  The Museum of American Folk Art in New York City displayed them in a traveling exhibit in 1993.  Her folk art was included in the Collection de l’art brut in Lausanne, Switzerland.  She was also represented in the national tour Lost and Found Traditions: Native American Art 1965-1985.

Mamie was born on July 7, 1920 in a small sheep-herding village of Burnham, New Mexico.  As did most Navajo females, she learned to weave Navajo rugs and raise sheep, but Mamie went further and created a new folk art form of mud toys and cardboard cutouts.

This cardboard cutout of a Navajo man on an orange horse is one of her creations.  The male is dressed in a velveteen blouse decorated with turquoise and silver jewelry and is riding a horse painted orange with a patterned fabric saddle blanket.  She signed her name on the front leg of the horse.  A metal stand has been made to facilitate display of the figure.

Condition: original condition

Provenance: from the extensive collection of a Santa Fe resident who is unfortunately moving to another city and found it necessary to greatly reduce her collection.

Recommended Reading:  The People Speak: Navajo Folk Art by Chuck and Jan Rosenak