EARTH’S TERRACED BOWL
The art of the Pueblo Indians is so intimately woven into the pattern and fabric of their lives that it can hardly be called an art. It is never merely ornamental, and therefore dispensable; it is the intrinsic and indispensable mode of performing the essential acts of living, and its technique is an immediate reflection of the conditions of life. The forms which adorn the painted olla are those cloud, vegetation, and life forms which are spontaneously associated with the thought of water—a thought which is ever-present among these agriculturists in an arid country. The beads which trick out festal costumes are talismans, emblematic in the very nature of their materials and hues; and the colors which are ceremonially significant are the colors which Nature makes so varied and vivid in the soil and sky and vegetation of the Southwest. Dances themselves are as much in the character of agricultural operations and political duties as of festal holidays; and the Powers and Forces which to us are superstitions or personifications are for them normal presences. We speak of art and symbolism in connection with their modes of aesthetic expression because these are the terms with which we most nearly describe them; but it is always important in interpreting such an art to bear in mind that it has little in common, spiritually, with what in our own culture is analogous to it.
Earth’s Terraced Bowl is an interpretation of the imagery of this Pueblo art-in-life. Its purpose is to aid in our comprehension of a beautiful and ancient culture, setting the coloristic and symbolic elements into relationship with the life which they express. The site described is the plateau above the Rio Grande, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo range, where Santa Fé is built over the ruins of an ancient pueblo, and in its modern development is bringing into new expression the art and architecture of the ancient peoples. The images chosen are, first, the Pueblo woman potter, fashioning her ceremonial bowl, of which the terraced rim is emblem of the cloud-terraces that rise above the mountains in ever-changing variety; second, the man drilling emblematic beads of shell and turquoise, of jet and abalone, such as these Indians have used from beyond the dawn of history; third, the great mid-summer dance, now devoted to the mystery of the union of heaven and earth as it appears in vegetation and in the life which is dependent upon vegetation; and fourth, the festivals of fertility and of harvest, which complete, as it were, the definition of the life of man in this simple setting.