Chitto, Randall – Clay Turtle “Bear Dancer with Arrow”
$ 1,950.00
Randall (Randy) Chitto (Choctaw) studied pottery beginning in 1980 at The Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe under the instruction of Otellie Loloma. He created his distinctive style of storyteller and figurative pottery. This may be one of my favorite pieces of his we have had so far! It is one of his turtle figures, wearing a bear headdress. Look closely as the turtle is stone polished on the body, legs, and face. However, it is the bear headdress that he is wearing that is amazing! All the fur is etched across the entire surface. The dancer is holding a bow and arrow, and Randy carves the bows from wood and arrows and makes the quiver from leather! There is a lot of detail and design work on this piece that makes it so outstanding! Randy makes all the additional elements. It is signed on the bottom. We are pleased to now represent Randy Chitto’s figurative pottery in both Scottsdale and Santa Fe!
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Randall (Randy) Chitto (Choctaw) studied pottery beginning in 1980 at The Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe under the instruction of Otellie Loloma. He created his distinctive style of storyteller and figurative pottery. This is one of his classic turtle storytellers. The turtle has a baby turtle on each leg and one on her arm. She is holding a leather papoose with a baby turtle inside. Randy makes all the additional elements, such as the papoose. It is a charming piece! It is signed on the bottom. We are pleased to now represent Randy Chitto’s figurative pottery in both Scottsdale and Santa Fe!
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Chitto, Randall
Randall Chitto began his career by drawing in the dirt under his family's Mississippi home. He would draw in the blank pages of any book he found was the next. When the budding artist's family relocated from their Choctaw Reservation home to Chicago as part of the Indian Relocation Act of 1956 it soon gave Chitto the opportunity, while still in high school, to be chosen in a citywide competition for admittance into specialized art classes. These included classes at the Chicago Art Institute and the Illinois Institute of Technology.
When Chitto enrolled in The Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, his primary medium was painting but it was while studying here that he discovered clay; he graduated with degrees in both two- and three-dimensional work. His clay work is now in the collections of numerous museums including The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, The Denver Art Museum and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ. Chitto is the winner of a Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Fellowship and is also a Dubin Fellow at the School of American Research.
For the Mississippi Choctaw people, the turtle is the keeper of stories and history and it is the turtle that has become Chitto's primary subject. They appear as Koshares (sacred clowns in Puebloan cultures) and Storytellers, alongside an occasional bear Storyteller. Each one appears in the playful manner that Chitto confesses may be a simple caricature of himself.
"I am deeply proud of the art pieces I make," Chitto notes, "even after all these years. The amount of work and the craftsmanship I put into each piece is so immense the finished piece is very exciting for me." For Chitto there is no greater feeling than that of putting in a full day in his studio - and the creation of his meticulous and joyful clay turtles has allowed him to do that, to live life as the artist he has always been.