BASHERT, Or How I Finally Acquired a Piece by Rainy Naha

Among other things, I enjoy collecting words and phrases from other languages and cultures. One of my favorites is the Yiddish word bashert, denoting “meant do be.” It certainly applies to my acquiring a ceramic work by Rainy Naha.  Sometime in the 1990s while at the Palace of the Governors, I met another visitor with whom I struck up a conversation and he said to me, “Be sure to go to Santa Clara Pueblo tomorrow. It’s their feast day.” So, based simply on this recommendation, the following day (August 12th, the feast of St. Clare) I drove to Santa Clara Pueblo. In addition to the dances celebrating the feast day, there were vendors selling food, toys, jewelry, and pottery. I wandered among the various tables and came upon Rainy Naha’s. I was immediately impressed with the quality and beauty of her work. Her pieces were simply exquisite. This was fairly early in my collecting career, and I had been in Santa Fe, where I had visited numerous galleries and had spent all of my “art money.” I was, therefore, unable to purchase anything at Santa Clara. However, I never forgot Rainy Naha’s ceramics.  So, a conversation with a random stranger started me on a journey that lasted more than thirty years until on September 16th, 2024 I, at last, acquired a jar by Rainy Naha.

Large Jar with Butterfly Maiden and Bee Katsina by Rainy Naha, Hopi-Tewa, 9.75”w x 6”h (2024).  Collection of E. J. Guarino.

Rainy Naha is a Hopi-Tewa artist.  The Hopi-Tewa are a group who are descendants of Tewa-speaking Pueblo people who left New Mexico around the time of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 and settled on Hopi in what is present-day Arizona. The Hopi-Tewa people live mostly in the pueblos of Hano and Polacca on First Mesa and are known for their pottery, especially pieces inspired by the ancient pottery found at Sikyatki Ruin at the base of First Mesa.

            Detail of Rainy Naha jar with Bee Katsina.

 

The large jar I acquired by Rainy Naha is painted with complex and highly symbolic imagery.

One side of the jar is decorated with a Momo, or Bee Katsina, which is bordered by four bees. The Bee Katsina is a very interesting figure in the Hopi religion. Momo appears as a side dancer in Mixed Dances and the Water Serpent Ceremony. Focusing on the children, he stings them by shooting tiny, dull arrows at them with a small bow. If a child cries out, Momo squirts a little water on the “wound” and offers the child a tiny cup of honey from his headpiece. Along with the other Katsinam, Momo is welcomed for aid in bringing spring and new growth to the land. It is Momo, the Bee Katsina, who brings with him the gift of fertility for plants without which the people would starve.

Detail of Rainy Naha jar with Pahlik Mana.

 

The opposite side of the jar is painted with Pahlik Mana, or Butterfly Maiden. This figure wears a large, intricately painted tablita, or headdress, with feathers painted in Rainy Naha’s hallmark style. This figure is not a katsina, but a female dancer who is beautifully dressed. This spirit being is said to dance from flower to flower as she pollinates them, bringing fertility to the fields as well as life-giving water to the desert.

Detail of Rainy Naha jar with bands of Hopi-Tewa designs.

 

The jar’s two figures are separated by bands of Hopi-Tewa designs – everything from butterfly wings to rain and cloud designs. Each of the squares in this section of the piece has a different design from classic Hopi-Tewa pottery, creating an intricate and colorful checkerboard design.

The jar was created using traditional Hopi clay and was hand-coiled. The jar was coated in a variety of slips before it was burnished and, then, hand painted using yucca brushes. It was traditionally fired using sheep dung and it is signed on the base with a feather and the name Rainy.

Rainy Naha is known for her thin-walled, elegantly formed whiteware jars with background slips that encompass color tones from eggshell to pale caramel to a peach hue known as the Hopi blush as well as intricate and precise representations of katsinas, Hopi dancers, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bats, clouds, cornstalks, stars – all important aspects in Hopi-Tewa culture and religion. Naha’s work has often been compared to historic Walpi Polychrome ceramics, which were produced from around 1375 to 1915 at Walpi, a village on First Mesa considered to be the mother village of the eleven other Hopi settlements.

The artist also draws inspiration from pot shards she finds near Awat’ovi, an archaeological site that is not without controversy. During the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the mission of San Bernardo de Aguatubi was destroyed, and the priests killed. After the Reconquista in 1692, the church was rebuilt, but tensions remained between Hopi traditionalists and those who had converted to Catholicism. In 1700, hostility towards the converts led to the complete destruction of Awat’ovi.  All of the village’s men were killed, and the women and children were scattered among the other Hopi settlements. Awat’ovi was never again inhabited. Although archaeological excavations were done in the 1930s, they have been backfilled and the site has remained closed although it is a National Historic Landmark. For the most part, the Hopi feel that Awat’ovi was abandoned for a reason and that it should remain as it is.

It took me not years, but decades to buy a piece by Rainy Naha, but it was bashert that the one I finally acquired was a perfect fit for my collection. However, it was well worth the wait. The jar is at once modernist and, at the same time, rich in history and symbolism.

 

Photographs are courtesy of King Galleries.