.INSIDE NMAI
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A NEW HEADDRESS FOR THE DANCE
Born in Tuba City, Ariz., Mahle was raised in his mother’s village, Sichomovi, located on the Hopi reservation in Polacca on the First Mesa. A full-time artist, Mahle is also the father of two boys and three girls ranging in age from two to 17. Mahle has been painting since he was nine. He fi rst started painting in grade school, but it was from watching his uncles that he learned to paint, carve and draw in the Hopi way. Like his uncles, Mahle started carving and painting katsinam (rep- resentations of spiritual beings that bring blessings to the Hopi), kopatsoki and other traditional Hopi arts for his relatives for cer- emonies. Over the years, Mahle mastered his media, becoming ever more skilled with his fi ne line work – an artistic means of expres- sion at which he excels. As Mahle
explains, everything has a
Hopi Kopatsoki, 2011. Made by Lavelle Frayne Mahle. Arizona. Wood, paint, parrot feathers, leather, yarn. 26/8785.
C E C I L E R . G ANT E AUME L 52 A AM IIMEERRCCAAN INDI N A N INDIAAN F FALLLL 2 2001122
ate each summer when a young Hopi girl performs the Butterfl y Dance, she is given a beautiful head- dress called a kopatsoki by the young man with whom she partners for the
dance. It is made especially for the dancer by her partner, or perhaps by one of his male relatives. Needing a new kopatsoki to pres- ent the Hopi Butterfl y Dance in the Circle of Dance exhibition opening in October at the National Museum of the American Indian’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, the Museum turned to Lavelle Frayne Mahle, a 35-year-old Hopi artist.
meaning in Hopi art; everything has a story to it that is related to Hopi life. Mahle says that he had the idea for painting the kopat- soki he created for the Museum in his mind for quite some time before he actually began working on it. Mahle placed a Niman katsina between two stalks of corn in the center of the kopatsoki. The Niman katsina sends all the katsinam to their spiritual home in the San Francisco Peaks at the end of the Niman (Going Home) ceremony. Mahle surrounded him with water symbolism and the rain that he brings to the Hopi. Even the colors Mahle selected represent, he says, the fl ow of water and the moisture that goes into the land to nurture crops. At
his family’s suggestion, Mahle oc-
casionally sells his work locally, notably at The Hopi Foundation in Flagstaff and Heard Museum in Phoenix, but it is creating for his community that he fi nds most satisfying. A prolifi c as well as talented artist, Mahle is working on a compendium of his work. He is proud to say that his oldest children have started painting. X
Cecile R. Ganteaume, NMAI curator of Circle of Dance, is also the curator of Infi nity of Nations: Art and History in the Col- lections of the National Museum of the American Indian (on display at the Museum’s George Gustav Heye Center in New York City) and the editor of the publication of the same title. She is a recipient of a 2011 Secretary of the Smithsonian’s Excellence in Research Award.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ERNEST AMOROSO
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