In 1939, according to a newspaper report, “state art directors . . . made provision for selection of a young Navajo painter to aid with the murals for the new McKinley county [sic] courthouse”1 (the now-historic McKinley County Courthouse was built with New Deal funding and opened in 1939). The same article explains that the plan was for “the Navajo painter [to] aid in a sandpainting reproduction on the ceiling of the entrance hall.” The wall painting seen here most closely fits that specific description. It is painted on the ceiling under the second-floor staircase in the building’s back entryway. Because the stairway divides into two at the landing, there is an identical painting on the ceiling across the stairwell.2 The artist created sandpainting pairs throughout the entire first floor, paying particular attention to flanking entrances, lobbies, and passageways with matching sandpainting designs in order, it seems, to bestow the space with protection and blessings.
The design seen here is likely an anthropomorphized “thunder being.” It is generally understood that the zigzag arrows emanating from the head and left hand of the figure represent the sound and reverberation of thunder, while its feet represent storm clouds emitting lighting.
Lloyd Moylan wrote about the value of stylistic experimentation to an artist’s practice in an essay on public art for the Federal Art Project, and Rural Rococo is evidence that he took his own advice. In the forms of a sky-high cottonwood snag and cotton-ball clouds, Moylan seizes the opportunity to try out the whimsical curves and embellishments of the rococo style of 18th-century France, an ocean and a century removed from his own time. Moylan fully commits to interpreting the Western American landscape through a rococo lens, embracing the style’s attention to detail and fondness for natural motifs. As a finishing touch, he adds delicately rendered figures of common American pastoral birds—chickens, a crow, and a mourning dove.
The Albuquerque Journal reported on a show of John Jellico’s work in 1938 that “11 portraits . . . and seven pictures of Indians” were included in the exhibition.1 This distinction between portraiture and “Indian pictures” reveals the cultural biases and dehumanizing stereotypes of the period, which are evident in Untitled (Portrait of an Indian). The emphasis on the sitter’s distinctive attire—his red headband and cuff bracelet—combined with the loose handling of his facial features dilutes and obscures the representation of individuality.
From 1939–1942, the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe sponsored a New Deal Federal Art Project initiative to create a portfolio of fifteen Navajo weaving designs drawn from its collections, and hired artist Louie Ewing to orchestrate the effort. The silkscreen printing process was a relatively new technology to the United States, so Ewing, with assistance from fellow artist Eliseo Rodriguez, had to essentially invent his own version of it. Two hundred of each print were produced. Prints were distributed to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and federal government “Indian service schools,” as well as universities, libraries, and museums nationwide for instructional and educational purposes.
