Navajo Sand Painting
The Navajo are one of the largest tribes in North America. They inhabit the four corners area of the United States (Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico).
Sandpainting was used as a spiritual healing system by the Navajo rather than as an artistic expression. Traditional healing incorporates ritualism, prayer, ceremonies, and herbology to increase wellness and promote harmony with the universe. Sandpaintings are part of religious chants in which “Earth People and Holy People come into harmony, giving healing and protection.”
Many of the sandpaintings include yéi figures, which are Navajo spiritual beings. The healing ceremonies involve medicine men chanting particular songs and simultaneously creating a sandpainting on the ground.
The medicine man asks for the yéis to come into the painting and help to heal the patient by restoring balance and harmony.
The sandpainters can create intricate paintings made with various natural materials/resources. Creating their master pieces on a smoothed bed of sand, the Navajo used crushed gypsum (white — Note: Gypsum is used to make drywall also known as sheetrock), yellow ochre, red sandstone, charcoal, a mixture of charcoal and gypsum to make blue, mixture of red sandstone and charcoal to make brown, mixture of red sand stone and gypsum to make pink. Also, sandpainters use pollen, cornmeal, crushed wildflower petals to attain a great more variety of colors.
When the healing ceremony is complete the sandpaintings are destroyed. The sandpaintings seen in gift shops and on the internet are commercially done, as the actual ceremony of sandpainting is considered sacred and not for the eyes of outsiders.
Reference Links:
Navajo Sandpainting (The Art of Healing)
Penfield Gallery of Indian Arts
Sand Paintings
Navajo Sandpainting Textiles
There are many more internet references to sandpainting. Just Google on “Navajo Sandpainting”.
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