Angelbert's Imagination Studios 3.D. : Partical Painting

Partical

Painting / Jonathan Jackson (AIS Staff)

In the American Southwest, Navajo Shaman would create sand art by laying buckskin down and allowing the paint to flow through their fingers in a controlled and skilled technique. The Shaman saw the Sand Art not only as beautiful works of art, but primarily and more importantly as spiritual beings. These Navajo spirits took form in the Sand Art during spiritual healing ceremonies executed by the Shaman of the tribe. The accuracy of the work had to be precise in order for the patient to be fully healed. It also symbolized the re-aligning and centering of the patient's life.

The sand paintings were created using Yeibicheii (the Holy People) imagery as the subject of the work. During the ceremony, the Shaman would ask the patient to sit in the middle of the creation invoking Yeibicheii to heal the patient. In Navajo folklore, the Sand Art acts as a portal to the spiritual work, allowing the Yeibicheii to cross over the plane of reality to heal the patient, taking away the illnesses of the sick and transferring the illness to the Sand paintings. Twelve hours after the ceremony, the Sand painting was destroyed to rid the tribe of the bad energies it held which could infect the rest of the tribe if it was not destroyed.

Subsequent American artists used this very technique to create early works. Although these artists did not employ the same spiritual guidance in their creative process as the Navajo would, a parallel accuracy and precision to the Navajos was reflected in the ambitiousness of the American artists' works, allowing their own spirituality to show through.

Metoyer emphasizes more the process and less the finished product. Applying this technique allows the work to have its own unique, spiritual meaning with the details of larger presences, making the process of the work and archetype of its own.