Roxanne Swentzell: Extra-ordinary People (New Mexico Magazine Artist Series)

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About Roxanne Swentzell: Extra-ordinary People

The fourth title in New Mexico Magazine's Artist Series showcases the work of Roxanne Swentzell, one of the most intriguing and acclaimed contemporary sculptors in the Southwest. Roxanne was born in 1962, the daughter of Rina Swentzell, a potter, architect, writer, and scholar from Santa Clara Pueblo, and Ralph Swentzell, a New Jersey-born philosophy professor at St. John's College in Santa Fe. For her last two years of high school Roxanne attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, where she was given the first exhibition of her clay figures. Later she studied at the Portland Museum Art School in Oregon. Today Roxanne's work, much of which is also produced in bronze limited editions, is collected internationally. It has earned numerous honors, including many first place and best of class awards at Santa Fe Indian Market and the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market. Her work is extensively exhibited in museums and galleries, and in 1997, Emergence of the Clowns was part of an exhibition of Native American sculpture at the White House. In this generously illustrated art book, Santa Fe writer Gussie Fauntleroy explores with Roxanne the ideals and beliefs that underpin her work. Her sculptures of human figures capture beauty that is unspoiled by glamour and enhanced by dignity, self-awareness, and humor. Along with her Pueblo community, she cherishes memory--the continuum of the ancestral past with present and future--which nourishes the wisdom to look beyond contemporary pop-culture idolatry and choose a more fundamental humanity. Her figures exalt the small, ordinary, everyday choices we make that define our integrity and enable us to become extra-ordinary. Roxanne's many admirers love her art for its simplicity, humanity, humor and superior craftsmanship. This book enables readers to enjoy Roxanne's artwork in the company of her quiet and observant spirit.