Mamie Deschillie (1920 - )

Mamie Deschillie 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.  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.