September 2, 2001

By JOSHUA BROCKMAN

SANTA FE, N.M. — Get your kitsch on Route 66. As New Mexico looks back on the 75th anniversary of Route 66, American Indian mementos still figure prominently in the trading posts and roadside stands across the Southwest.

“Tourist Icons: Native American Kitsch, Camp and Fine Art Along Route 66,” an exhibition at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture of the Museum of New Mexico through Feb. 3, explores the connection between fine art and souvenirs, a thread that endures in many of the crafts that were sold last month at Indian Market here.

“This novelty tradition has really fused with the fine-art tradition in a lot of the work that is being done today,” said Duane Anderson, director of the museum. “At Indian Market, the full spectrum is represented.”

American Indian souvenirs first became popular here in the 1880’s with the rise of railroad tourism. The flow of visitors increased dramatically, however, with the advent of automobile tourism in the late 1920’s. Indian artists responded by creating new art forms and variations on traditional crafts. A necklace from Santo Domingo Pueblo, for example, contains bits of black battery casings and red phonograph records in lieu of jet and coral, precious materials that would have made the jewelry too costly for the automobile tourist, who was typically less affluent than the railroad traveler.

Many of the 850 handmade and commercially manufactured objects on display in “Tourist Icons,” including some 300 pairs of salt-and-pepper shakers, are anonymous works created in miniature specifically for the automobile sightseer, who had limited space in the car to store purchases.

Small ceramic models of pueblos and kivas (ceremonial chambers) or female figures grinding corn or weaving helped explain native life to outsiders. Generic objects like candlesticks, ashtrays and animal figures were also transformed into Southwestern art using hand-dug clay and traditional firing processes.

“This particular exhibit challenges a very popular notion that all of this tourist material is unimportant, trivial, artistically inferior and that anyone who would buy some of this `stuff’ clearly had poor taste,” said Joseph Traugott, curator of the show.

Even celebrated artists produced souvenirs to make a living. Fannie Nampeyo’s bird ashtray and Maria Martinez’s three- inch black-on-black plate in the exhibit are displayed alongside larger and more intricate examples of pottery that would have been sold at Indian Market or to trading posts.

What’s more, members of the Tesuque Pueblo pioneered the “rain god” figurative tradition in the late 1800’s specifically for the tourist trade. Still practiced today, this 120-year-old ceramic form represents the longest continuously practiced figurative- art tradition in the Southwest, said Mr. Anderson, author of the forthcoming book “When Rain Gods Reigned.” “They’ve been rejected as `tourist junk,’ and yet to the Tesuque people who make them, they’ve become a means of individual self-expression for the artist and also a symbol of village identity,” he said.

The growth in automobile tourism also accelerated the secularization of sacred icons. Hopi kachina earrings, kachina candles and a Mud Head whiskey decanter from the Ezra Brooks Distilling Company reveal the way in which Indian religious imagery was appropriated by both native artists and outside companies for commercial uses.

Still, the revival of ancient design elements and the use of new materials remains a hallmark of contemporary Indian artists. Katheleen Nez, a potter who received a 2001 Southwestern Association for Indian Arts fellowship, modeled the design of her doughnut-shaped water canteen on a triangular vessel of the ancient Mimbres people. “It’s a melding of both a contemporary ceramic tradition and a prehistoric design tradition,” Ms. Nez said.

Joshua Brockman writes from Sante Fe, N.M about Southwestern art and history.