Etsy Updates
Once again, my Etsy shop page is located at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5120242.

I am now a proud member of both the Etsy Glass Haven Team and the Etsy Beadweaver’s Team!

The EBW Team is made up of bead artists who aspire to successfully market their beadwoven creations on Etsy.com and elsewhere. As such the EBW Team has two areas of focus:1) Practical business help, including sales promotion by networking, marketing and creating awareness of beadweaving as an art. 2)Artistic inspiration, instruction and encouragement. Please search EBW TEAM for more beautiful beadwoven creations or visit our blog for links to all members’ shops:
http://etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com/

The Glass Haven at Etsy is a group of Etsy shop owners who are also members of The Glass Haven (http://theglasshaven.com/), a forum for lampworkers and lampworked glass lovers. They are joining together to collectively promote themselves and their Etsy Shops, as well as Etsy itself as a venue for handcrafted items. Please search TGH for more lampwork goodies.

I thought that I would post this mask today for a couple of reasons. The first, is that the Etsy beadweavers are doing a November Challenge: Ancentral Expressions. The second is that this piece has been hanging out in my livingroom for years and its time to show it off again. This piece will not go into the challenge since Steve and I created it a number of years ago and thusly does not fit the requirements, but I am still super proud of it. As I recall (Steve, if you read this please let me know if I have it right), Steve did the design work, the woven beaded bands and the leatherwork. I did the bead embroidery on the front after Steve drew it out for me, the wirework God’s Eye (on other side of piece, not pictured) and the beaded fringe.

The Navaho tell the following story about their origin: When the Dineh (the people) emerged from the Third world into the fourth and present world, the gods gave them a choice between two yellow powders. They were asked to choose between the yellow dust from the rocks and earth and the yellow corn pollen. The Dineh chose corn pollen, and the gods were pleased. They told the Dineh that now that they had chosen, they were to leave the yellow dust in the earth. If it were ever removed, it would bring evil & disease.

In the late part of World War II, the government and Enrico Fermi began to test atomic bombs in New Mexico. Needed for the bombs was uranium, also available from that area. The yellow sandstone was blasted from the soil, leaving behind the rich uranium for government use. Both the Navaho and Hopi tribes were affected by this action; they were hired to work in the mines without protection from the dust, the radiation, and from uranium poisoning. Many developed cancer, and breathing problems , a lung disease known as silicosis from the glass-sharp fragments in the dusty air.

This mask tells the story of these fatal mines, when the yellow dust was removed from the earth, of the fruitless fight in Congress during the 40’s, and then again the win of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act more than 50 years later, in 1990. Steve and I were researching Native myths when we ran across a book on the law suit. Further, it tells of the fatal diseases that the testing,mining and pollution left for the Indian Nations.

MATERIALS: Cow skin Suede, wood, glass, amber, moss agate, horn, fish vertebrae, snowflake obsidian, fossil, clay, brass, jasper, amethyst, tourmilated quartz, Biwa pearls, ostrich egg beads, waxed linen, diodes, resistors, copper wire, Turkey & Coque Feathers, Gas Mask.

Here’s a link to the mask on Steve’s RedBubble Account.

Also, search out the rest of his work – he is a stellar photographer. http://www.redbubble.com/people/nuin