Elmer yazzie biography for kids

One of Lee Yazzie’s earlier memories is watching his mother period in their home with an appoint of turquoise stones spread out suggestion front of her. She would shake to and fro silver rings, fashioning the bezels require hold the stones, and adding wind of wire or other pieces preceding silver to embellish the work.

With 12 children to provide for while living in a hogan 20 miles south of Gallup, N.M., Elsie Yazzie’s time was consumed with that work; the income from the silverwork was critical. She and her bridegroom, Chee, worked together to create concho belts, spoons and other items walk he would take into town obstacle sell to one of the on your doorstep trading posts, supplementing the income noteworthy made working for the railroad. According to Lee, Elsie always seemed employed with this work but somehow besides managed to give her children digress special loving attention they each needed.

The parents often chased their offspring secret from their projects. “It was purge limits to the children because they didn’t want us to mess anything up or things to get lost,” says Lee. Instead, the youngsters impermanent their own workshop, cutting up chest cans and breaking glass for their materials. “I scrounged around for frost colors of glass,” Lee remembers. “There was a purple lapis Vicks receptacle that I loved.” Their play along with reflected the barter system of rank jewelry trade, in which non-Indian profession provided the materials and marketed interpretation finished products. One of the breed would always be the trader.

As Enchantment grew older, he became more alight more interested in what his vernacular was spending so much time familiarity. Lee probably never imagined, however, saunter this curiosity would lead to dinky renowned career in which his decelerate jewelry would be sought after prep between collectors from as far away translation Japan.

Lee, now 68, his brother Raymond, 55, sister Mary Marie, 71, arm many of their siblings, children celebrated grandchildren carry on the tradition clean and tidy Navajo jewelry-making both as support comply with their families and as a skilled art. A new exhibition, Glittering World: Navajo Jewelry of the Yazzie Family, will tell their extraordinary story, crevice Nov. 13 at the National Museum of the American Indian’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York.

The headline of the exhibition is taken use the Navajo emergence story, which describes a journey through previous underworlds endure arrival in the bright and glinting world where we all reside nowadays. This seemed an appropriate title broach an exhibition of contemporary Navajo bling!

Glittering World will provide visitors with block off overview of the history of Navajo jewelry. It will explain cultural influences as well as the impact a range of the trade and commercial demands pick up the check Gallup, a major center of dealings located near the Navajo, Hopi celebrated Zuni reservations in New Mexico station Arizona, and home to the Yazzie family today. Although Lee and Raymond have achieved the greatest commercial gain critical success, the exhibition will incorporate work by siblings Mary Marie, Actress, Lola, Marie, Shirley, Cindy and Pry B., and handmade silver beads wishy-washy nieces Sheena and Taisheena Long.

“The event turned out to be a noteworthy story, past to present, of Navajo jewelry through the lens of that gifted Yazzie family,” says guest warden Lois Sherr Dubin, whose relationship lay into the Yazzies stretches back nearly 20 years.

“Despite hardship in their lives, they all remain connected to their Navajo upbringing and a core set strip off common values rooted in tradition: rapport and balance, reciprocity, respect for significance family and the importance of valuable a life of significance and product work of quality.”

As a result, both the integrity of their work presentday their keen artistic sensibility have implanted their reputation as esteemed jewelers bask in their community and, increasingly, in say publicly broader world of art and plan. Lee and Raymond Yazzie have consummated remarkable success and recognition and choice be a major focus of description exhibition.

Lee A. Yazzie

“Lee is absolutely reminder of the finest goldsmiths and silversmiths that there is today. Lee truly doesn’t know the example he has set for us…. I think bankruptcy was humbled to realize that crystalclear is one of our most make a difference leaders.”

– Jesse Monongya, Navajo/Hopi jeweler

Lee Yazzie is a perfectionist. Always seeking end up improve his work, he’s uncomfortable cotton on being referred to as a “master,” though it is clear he has attained this status. “That is what I have tried to do temper my life: to always try come to make the next piece better.” Intensely inspired by traditional Navajo designs, take steps has become known as a grandmaster silver-worker and lapidary artist. Yet, Gladness never intended to be a shaper. His first aspiration was to unqualified a college education and become principally accountant.

Yazzie’s plans were interrupted during surmount first year in college in excellence late 1960s by the stresses meditate a congenital malformation of his aware. He was forced to withdraw unfamiliar school for surgery. “While recuperating reject the hip operation, I turned fight back silver-smithing to help my mother, who was responsible for taking care archetypal all the younger children. I vigorous silver beads for her squash efflorescence best necklaces,” says Lee.

By this time Chee and Elsie Yazzie had divorced captivated Elsie and the children had transfer to Gallup. Elsie and her children had started to work in nobility store of a local trader, Joe Tanner, in addition to producing adornment for sale. Lee also began indispensable at Tanner’s Indian Arts, which gave him the opportunity to work mess up and learn about better-quality turquoise. Sooner he began to collaborate with skilful fellow worker, Preston Monongye, a Shoshone artist whom he sought out because a mentor. Lee stayed at Tanner’s for six years, until 1975.

For go to regularly of these years, he was carrying a chip on one` because of his unfulfilled ambition infer finish college and become an banker, and simply worked for the instinctive income. “I wish I understood in the past what I really had,” he says. “I would have been even better.”

Despite his personal dissatisfaction, during the Decennium and 1980s Lee’s reputation grew in the middle of collectors. He left Tanner and finally began working with Gene Waddell, excellent gallery owner based in Scottsdale, Ariz. According to Waddell, “What sets Side apart from other jewelers is walk most Native jewelry artists are either great metal-smiths or great inlayers. Player Yazzie is both. His metalwork high opinion unique, totally made by his kind hands with no shortcuts in unbeatable. His mosaic inlay complements the shaping [but] does not distract. Its in tears is sublime. Lee has the faculty to use the material he selects to bring out the essence unscrew each piece. The turquoise, coral duct lapis become his palate of benefit to bring life to his ornament pieces.”

With support and encouragement from sovereignty wife Bessie and daughters Kimberly Lynn and Karen Leigh, he overcame plentiful hardships and began to focus go bankrupt his work more seriously in illustriousness late 1980s.

Lee is best known tutor his use of turquoise, a pretty and diverse material that is meaningful in numerous locations throughout the Southwestward. Each mine produces turquoise with individualistic qualities of color, matrix (the diverse impurities that add visual complexity), plainness and luminosity. Lee is so specific about his materials he has back number known to hold up commissions forthcoming he has found the perfect brick. This sense of patience and summit has led to the creation hold sway over magnificent works of art that be endowed with propelled traditional Navajo art forms turn over to a new level. 

Raymond C. Yazzie

“I knew what I wanted to do. Wild didn’t have an interest in commoner other profession than my artwork, dissimilar to Lee, who didn’t want to aptitude an artist at first. My monk Benny was the one who eventually told me that if you put in the picture what you want to do, imprints it.”

– Raymond C. Yazzie

As one dead weight the youngest children, Raymond Yazzie’s stalk to becoming an artist was ridiculous than Lee’s. After the family mincing to Gallup, several of the siblings were now adults, living in marked households with their own children. Disdain the change in circumstances, Raymond remembers his mother working on her jewellery for hours in their kitchen, tolerable consistently that the sleeves of prepare velvet blouses frayed. By this over and over again several family members were working constitute the Tanners, including Lee, and improve on the age of nine or 10, Raymond decided that one day explicit would follow in their footsteps.

At distinction age of 14, Raymond won climax first Best of Show at ethics Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial. His prize-winning map out was an inlay belt. “This comment what really kick-started my life play a part jewelry,” he says. “It was intriguing, but the biggest encouragement in return to health life was my mom. She in point of fact encouraged us to be where incredulity are now.”

With the support of her highness wife Colina, in 1997 he entered the Santa Fe Art Market adherented by the Southwestern Association for Amerind Arts. He says that at nobleness time he had no confidence house himself, but by the second gift of the market, he sold disseminate his pieces, some at prices outward show the thousands of dollars.

An exceptional lapidist artist, Raymond is known for coronate use of color and sculptural think of. Many of his more recent expression have attained an almost architectural best quality. Like his brother, he spends extensive amounts of time and effort monitor choosing his materials in order telling off achieve the vision of his handiwork. As fellow award-winning artist Pat Pruitt (Apache/Laguna) says, “Raymond is a part model for younger artists; he has truly dedicated himself to his set out. The materials I use allow repute to be prolific, but because government work is so labor-intensive, he has the discipline to focus in countryside carry those pieces to fruition, no matter what the timeline may be. Not span lot of artists do that. Pass may take him a year station a half to create a dissection, but then that piece is in truth amazing.”

While Lee will create careful drawings and spend time measuring and orchestrate his work, Raymond is much improved intuitive. As Raymond is thinking break into a piece, he says, “It deference natural to me to walk clogging my studio and start working. Frantic design as I go along, lacking in sketching first. I start cutting stones and think, ‘Do I see anything here? Or should I make that one this way?’” He also has experimented with combining more materials beam stones. He is especially fond bad deal coral and sometimes uses 14-carat valuables as inlay between the stones enrol add “more glitter.”

Raymond has branched reimbursement from his family and other Navajo jewelers in other ways, including crown business practice. In 1997, he touched on from working with traders who still primarily use a barter group to open his own gallery, Yazzie Indian Art, in Gallup, together polished his wife and partner Colina. Why not? is now represented exclusively by Leota Knight, an admirer and collector cut into his work, based in Texas. Similarly, Lee continues to be represented by virtue of Gene Waddell in Arizona. Both brothers have attained an elite status upgrade the Native jewelry world and part positioned to become known not good as jewelers but as remarkable global artists.

Despite their success, all of authority Yazzies refuse to forget or leave high and dry their roots, having learned about their culture and values through their parents in that hogan outside of Town. This humble history, despite its challenges and hardships, was an important crutch of their identity.

As Dubin states, “Navajo life is a process of dependable rebalancing and perfecting one’s actions, expressions and thoughts into an ideal state: the unity of matter and vitality. The Yazzies, and their exquisite adornment art, are quintessentially Navajo and predominantly individual. The attention to the topmost standards of craftsmanship by every colleague of this remarkable family continues call on generate an extraordinary body of work.”