Navajo 2 Piece Creation/Corn Set - Dennis Ross (#58)
$495.00
Artist: Dennis Ross
Folk Art
Largest base: 3 3/4"
Tallest figure: 6 1/2"
Dennis Ross creates people; short, chubby people with a story to tell. In this case, it is a corn family of 2 with husband and wife. These individuals inform us that the first Navajo people were created from corn and that corn remains an important aspect of Navajo life, as a food source, as a cultural staple and as a fertility symbol. Dennis is not afraid to put a lot of detail into his sculptures, and that is apparent from these carvings. Take them home, you will love them forever.
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About the artist:
Asked how he first started carving, Dennis Ross answers with a laugh, "My brother - he gave me a knife, and a stone, and a piece of carving wood, and said, 'Here you go'." Dennis was twenty-six years old. His brother, Harry Bert, also gave him a little constructive criticism on that first experiment into the creative world of carving, but Dennis took it from there.
Related legends:
Corn in Navajo Traditional Life
The Supernaturals also warn him of taboos connected with the use of corn. It should not be cooked until it is ripe nor eaten before it is fully cooked, or frost and floods will damage the crop. In the "vigil of the corn" ceremony the corn is fed with dried meat; if it were to be fed with corn it would thus consume itself, just as feeding meat to the masks would cause men to eat each other. When giving this warning Talking God refers to the time that ugly woman fed corn to the corn with result that " the people starved and men ate the flesh of other men."?
Dine Emergence/Creation
This is a story told by the Navajo people by word of mouth to the young and old. The Navajo believe there are Five Worlds. We are presently in the fifth world. The first world was a small, dark and water filled world. It was known as the Red World where the flying insects were the first and only people. The second world was blue with the air. The spirit people here were swallows? More about this legend