The power and cultural knowledge of our relationship to Earth and Nature is the province of Roxanne Swentzell of the Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. Swentzell is an artist whose commitment to recognize and work within the beating heart of seasons, forces of time, and human’s place within these structures informs the clay with which she speaks. A mother, grandmother, artist, and teacher, Swentzell lives with clay as her voice. She is a member of the respected Naranjo family of artists, which includes sculptors, academics, and sculptor/auto restoration specialist, Rose B. Simpson, her daughter. Swentzell has created a way of life that adheres to traditional values and practices that may seem out of step with modern existence, but for her, the manner in which she pursues her artistic career is more than resourceful and fruitful. Awarded numerous citations for her unique and artistic contributions to the cultures of New Mexico by the State, Native organizations, and art institutions, Roxanne Swentzell is a celebrated living treasure, yet remains an enigmatic individual.

       The Corn Mothers Are Crying laments the illnesses and troubled conditions of Native populations whose lives reflect sickness in mind and body as societal and non-Native factors become more ingrained in tribal communities. Perched at the swell of the clay seed pot, four bereft figures present the types of maladies that continue to infect Indigenous communities. In describing this piece, Swentzell revealed that she considers the piece to be a healing prayer. Drawing from Pueblo people’s the reverence for corn, Swentzel creates an overarching semiotical system with the seed pot as Earth, the directional corn ears as the Corn Mothers, and the figures as their children.¹ Using this imagery, Swentzell constructs a visual warning to observers. While the figures present an Indigenous plague of suffering and trauma to the spiritual soul of the People, Swentzell warns that we are simultaneously failing to heed the signs of our earth in crisis. Human appearance foreshadows the terminal stages of dire peril if change is not initiated. Diet, drug addiction, alcohol, and child welfare have transformed the idealized Native existence into lives of failure, disease, societal breakdown, and spiritual abandonment. As the corn ears lean toward each figure, their backs are turned from the Corn Mothers, from the center, and to an insular isolation. Swentzell leaves no recourse to overlook, evade, or ignore.

      Roxanne Swentzell advocates for the kind of changes that would seem to harken to a doomsday call, if the evidence of her observations were not reality on tribal lands. Though she does not sugarcoat her statement, her aesthetic choices in this piece are nevertheless balanced, crisp, and precise in each figure’s details. From the swell of the pot to the pull of the corn ears, the fluidity of the composition remains undeniable. If only the statement of her art was anything but the oracle’s voice crying to the People, their leaders, and communities of the world, would we listen?

¹ Roxanne Swentzell, “The Corn Mothers Art Crying,” artist statement.