D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August 2009
Desert Rhapsody
From shaman figures to clay "pods," Columbus artist Diana LeMarbe creates artwork that connects her to the Southwest.
By Marjorie Lilly
Diana LeMarbe invites me into her house in Columbus, where she has her artworks in corners and on shelves all over the living room.
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Diana LeMarbe with one of her clay "pods." (Photo by Marjorie Lilly) |
A couple of clay shaman figures stare from their places. There's a zig-zaggy water serpent in a window, pots with a curly motif reminiscent of Mayan design, and a desert landscape and a starscape painted on medium-sized clay tiles.
About six years ago, LeMarbe finally got a chance to be a full-time potter. After a degree in art education in Oregon, a career in teaching, and bouts of ill health that swallowed up a lot of time, she now has her own workroom and has bought her first-ever electric kiln.
She had a show of shaman figures at the Deming Arts Council in January with names like "One-Legging Keeper of the Stones" and "Mesquite Spirit." She sold 23 of them that month. In May, LeMarbe exhibited her works at the Rio Grande Theatre gallery in Las Cruces. She's gotten blue ribbons for two years in a row for her graphic-art pieces in the annual Black Range Show.
She's now starting a new series of works she calls "Pods." Six or seven artists in Columbus, including LeMarbe, are working together to do exhibits in the area.
"You try all the things you can do instead of what you can't do," she says of her creative process, which is somewhat limited by arthritis.
She shows me her small workroom, decorated with a couple of the clay "pods" she's making. One pot is ready to be worked on. There are nubbles and bumps and leaf-lines on it that evoke seed pods.
It's half dried to a state called "leather-hard," and ready to be sliced with a knife. "It has to be hard enough so it won't collapse," she says. LeMarbe conceived of the pot with Mata Ortiz-style swirls, and she cuts along these lines and removes a swath of clay. She has calculated well, and the pot doesn't fall apart.
"I love it!" she says, smiling. "I love the feel of it."
From a drawer LeMarbe takes out a couple of pure-white jaws and a small animal skull she found the day before when out walking in the desert in Columbus. These natural objects feed into her creative work. She also has some "devil's horns," which will probably work themselves into an object she makes.
She's very much inspired by Native American art. LeMarbe and her husband Paul have spent a lot of time studying petroglyphs in the Southwest, and she mentions the ruins at Aztec, NM, where you can go down into a huge kiva and see paintings of shamans that the public can't see at active kivas.
LeMarbe's affinity with Indian art is not just a fad. One of her grandmothers was half Algonquin. "I felt very early there was something missing," she says, and when she met her grandmother she had the feeling she'd found it.
In the front living room and in their bedroom she has built working chimeneas, or indigenous fireplaces — in this case, Pueblo style, not Mexican — painted white. A neighbor taught her how to fashion them out of adobe bricks made in Columbus. The Pueblo style has shelves on it, which are useful for displaying her pottery. She also made a banco, or a traditional adobe bench built into the wall.
The house itself is like an extension of her pottery. She calls it a "Columbus special." It started out as a 20-by-30-foot space, but now consists of six or seven rambling rooms, all added on whenever they had some money to do it. The rooms are made of cement block covered with drywall and white paint, and the result is as comfortable and appealing as her artwork.
She and Paul carried out a silk-screening business called Southwest Sun Enterprises in this house from 1985 to1998. They printed Mimbres and other designs on tote-bags, aprons, wine bags and more, and marketed them with mail-order catalogues. For years they held a holiday open house that brought from 350 to 700 people, sometimes from other states.
LeMarbe has always been involved in a wide variety of mediums, from furniture with painted tiling to pencil drawings to sculpture.
An important influence on her has been Juan Quezada, the famed Mata Ortiz potter. She knew him and his "discoverer" Spencer MacCallum in the very early years, in the winter of 1979 and 1980.
She remembers how Juan and his brothers Nicolas and Reynaldo piled in the back of their Datsun truck and she and Juan's wife Guille and Spencer sat in front. They all slept at Juan's house.
"I thought I was hot shit because I had been to college," she says. "But never had I ever seen any work anywhere as exquisite.
"I had no idea you could do pottery without glaze," she adds, referring to the Mata Ortiz technique of polishing pots with small stones. This has since affected her own work: "I use glaze as an accent instead of a covering. I love the integrity of clay. I hate to camouflage that."
LeMarbe has been free of crutches for eight months now, after using them for seven years. "Paul has made it possible for me to do my art," she says. "He's made the bases for my sculptures and frames for my pictures. He makes sure I get fed when I'm working long hours. Sometimes I lose track of time. He'll say, 'I think you should get some rest now — you're sweating.' We have a super partnership."
A Studio Sale of Diana LeMarbe's artwork will be held on Saturday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 716 Slocum St. in Columbus. Turn west off Hwy. 11 on north Broadway, then north on Slocum; follow the flags to the studio. For information, call 531-2741.