Angie Reano Owen

Last updated

Angie Reano Owen
Born
Angelita Reano

1946
Nationality Santo Domingo Pueblo, American
Alma mater Albuquerque High School (1965) [1]
Known formosaic inlay jewelry
SpouseDon Owen [1]
Parents
  • Joe Isidro Reano [2] (father)
  • Clara Lovato Reano [2] (mother)

Angelita "Angie" Reano Owen (born 1946) is a Santo Domingo Pueblo jeweler and lapidary artist from New Mexico.

Contents

Owen is known for her intricate jewelry that draws inspiration from precontact Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam designs. She is recognized for helping to revitalize Pueblo shell mosaic inlay in the 1970s.

Early life and education

Santa Domingo Pueblo, birthplace of Angie Reano Owen Santo Domingo Pueblo sign, Santo Domingo Pueblo NM.jpg
Santa Domingo Pueblo, birthplace of Angie Reano Owen

Owen was born in 1946 to Joe Isidro and Clara Lovato Reano [2] in Santo Domingo Pueblo in New Mexico. [3] Her family was known for their heshi shell beads, and her mother was a jeweler. [4] She attended Bernalillo High School and graduated from Albuquerque High School in 1965. [1]

As one of Joe and Clara's eight children, she joined in the family's jewelry business, making Thunderbird necklaces for the tourist trade, after the boom in interest in Southwestern jewelry. [5] [6] Owen and her brothers and sisters would sell the family's wares on the steps of the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [1] [7]

Hohokam turquoise mosaics, an example of the precontact art that inspires Owen's jewelry designs Hohokam turquoise mosaics.jpg
Hohokam turquoise mosaics, an example of the precontact art that inspires Owen's jewelry designs

Art career

In the 1970s, Owen became known for her mastery of ancient Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam inlay jewelry, a delicate technique which she is noted for reviving. [8]

After a trip to Tucson, Arizona, where she viewed precontact mosaic inlays, Owen began to develop her own take on the traditional artwork. She innovated a technique of combining shell and stone with a unique adhesive that is known only to the family. [9]

Her mosaics use slices of stones and shell, such as turquoise, coral and Tiger cowrie, which she arranged in patterns or landscapes and inlays with epoxy. [4] [10] They are carefully placed, set, then sanded smooth. [11]

By the 1980s, her designs became more elaborate, with mosaic designs adorning complex organic forms, [12] arranged in an "unconventional integration of various prehistoric and postmodern design elements". [13] Owen's designs are noted for their intricacy and multifaceted surfaces of inlaid shells, stones. and natural materials. [14] [15]

Owen is recognized for helping popularize this traditional Ancestral Pueblo style of Native American jewelry, which was not previously well known. [16] [17] [18] After developing her technique, she taught her family members to carry on the tradition, including her brother Joe, sister in law Angie P. Reano, and her children Rena, Dean and Donna. [4] [19] Other members of the Reano Owen family have gone on to become talented inlay jewelry artisans in their own right. [6]

Honors and awards

In 1995, she was named the Ronald and Susan Dubin Artist Fellow at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. [8]

Owen's artwork has won several Best of Division awards at the Santa Fe Indian Market and Heard Museum Fair in Phoenix, Arizona. [20] [21]

Collections

Selected exhibitions

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Santo Domingo Pueblo, New Mexico</span> Ethnic group

Santo Domingo Pueblo, also known Kewa Pueblo is a federally recognized tribe of Native American Pueblo people in northern New Mexico. A population of 2,456 live in structures some of which date from circa 1700; in Sandoval County described by the U.S. Census Bureau as a census-designated place.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Santa Fe Indian Market</span> Annual art fair of Indigenous art

The Santa Fe Indian Market is an annual art market held in Santa Fe, New Mexico on the weekend following the third Thursday in August. The event draws an estimated 150,000 people to the city from around the world. The Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA), a nonprofit organization hosts the market, which showcases work by about 1,000 Native American and First Nations artists from Native American tribes and Indigenous nations from coast to coast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inlay</span> Artistic technique

Inlay covers a range of techniques in sculpture and the decorative arts for inserting pieces of contrasting, often colored materials into depressions in a base object to form ornament or pictures that normally are flush with the matrix. A great range of materials have been used both for the base or matrix and for the inlays inserted into it. Inlay is commonly used in the production of decorative furniture, where pieces of colored wood, precious metals or even diamonds are inserted into the surface of the carcass using various matrices including clear coats and varnishes. Lutherie inlays are frequently used as decoration and marking on musical instruments, particularly the smaller strings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Loloma</span> Native American jeweler (1921–1991)

Charles Sequevya Loloma was a Hopi Native American artist known for his jewelry. He also worked in pottery, painting and ceramics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas</span>

The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which includes Central America and Greenland. The Siberian Yupiit, who have great cultural overlap with Native Alaskan Yupiit, are also included.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martha Hopkins Struever</span> Native American art dealer

Martha Hopkins Struever (1931–2017) was an American Indian art dealer, author, and leading scholar on historic and contemporary Pueblo Indian pottery and Pueblo and Navajo Indian jewelry. In June 2015, a new gallery in the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, was named for her. The first permanent museum gallery devoted to Native American jewelry, the Martha Hopkins Struever Gallery, is part of the Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gail Bird and Yazzie Johnson</span> Southwestern American Indian artists

Gail Bird and Yazzie Johnson are Southwest American Indian artists known for their innovative jewelry partnership that has led to unique creations using stone and metalwork which blends both contemporary and prehistoric design motifs. Bird and Johnson have been crafting jewelry together since 1972, with Bird designing the pieces and Johnson leading on fabrication and metalwork.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of Native American art history</span>

This is a chronological list of significant or pivotal moments in the development of Native American art or the visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Earlier dates, especially before the 18th century, are mostly approximate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Native American jewelry</span>

Native American jewelry refers to items of personal adornment, whether for personal use, sale or as art; examples of which include necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings and pins, as well as ketohs, wampum, and labrets, made by one of the Indigenous peoples of the United States. Native American jewelry normally reflects the cultural diversity and history of its makers, but tribal groups have often borrowed and copied designs and methods from other, neighboring tribes or nations with which they had trade, and this practice continues today. Native American tribes continue to develop distinct aesthetics rooted in their personal artistic visions and cultural traditions. Artists may create jewelry for adornment, ceremonies, and display, or for sale or trade. Lois Sherr Dubin writes, "[i]n the absence of written languages, adornment became an important element of Indian communication, conveying many levels of information." Later, jewelry and personal adornment "...signaled resistance to assimilation. It remains a major statement of tribal and individual identity."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art of the American Southwest</span> Visual arts of the Southwestern United States

Art of the American Southwest is the visual arts of the Southwestern United States. This region encompasses Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of California, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Utah. These arts include architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, and other media, ranging from the ancient past to the contemporary arts of the present day.

Lisa Holt and Harlan Reano are a husband-and-wife team of Pueblo potters and artists from northern New Mexico. They have been making pottery together in 1999, they use traditional Cochiti pottery techniques and create modern work.

Virgil Ortiz is a Pueblo artist, known for his pottery and fashion design from Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico. Ortiz makes a variety of pottery, including traditional Cochiti figurative pottery, experimental figurative pottery, traditional pottery vessels. His clothing and jewelry designs are influenced by traditional Native American pattern and aesthetics. He is best known for his edgy pottery figures, his contemporary take on the traditional Cochiti pottery figures (monos) from the late 1800s.

Phillip Sekaquaptewa was a Hopi artist and silversmith in Hopi silver overlay and stone inlay, featuring the lapidary genres of commesso and intarsia. Sekaquaptewa used colorful stones and shell for his Hopi silver overlay, not only plain silver decorated with chisel strokes on black oxide surfaces, a Hopi-signature technique known as matting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rose B. Simpson</span> Mixed-media artist

Rose B. Simpson is a Tewa sculptor of Khaʼpʼoe Ówîngeh is a mixed-media artist who works in ceramic, metal, fashion, painting, music, performance, and installation. She lives and works in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. Her work has been exhibited at SITE Santa Fe ; the Heard Museum ; the Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Santa Fe (2010); the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian (2008); the Denver Art Museum; Pomona College Museum of Art (2016); Ford Foundation Gallery (2019); The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian (2017); the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2019); the Savannah College of Art and Design (2020); the Nevada Museum of Art (2021); Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Norton Museum of Art (2024).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christine McHorse</span> Ceramics artist of Navajo descent (1948–2021)

Christine McHorse, also known as Christine Nofchissey McHorse, was a Navajo ceramic artist from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Juanita Inez Ortiz, also known as Inez Ortiz was a Native American Cochiti Pueblo artist, specializing in pottery. She is of the Herrera family of Pueblo potters in New Mexico, whose work is often found in art collections and in art museums. She was from the Cochiti Pueblo in Cochiti, New Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black-on-black ware</span> Type of Native American pottery

Black-on-black ware is a 20th and 21st-century pottery tradition developed by Puebloan Native American ceramic artists in Northern New Mexico. Traditional reduction-fired blackware has been made for centuries by Pueblo artists and other artists around the world. Pueblo black-on-black ware of the past century is produced with a smooth surface, with the designs applied through selective burnishing or the application of refractory slip. Another style involves carving or incising designs and selectively polishing the raised areas. For generations several families from Kha'po Owingeh and P'ohwhóge Owingeh pueblos have been making black-on-black ware with the techniques passed down from matriarch potters. Artists from other pueblos have also produced black-on-black ware. Several contemporary artists have created works honoring the pottery of their ancestors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loren Aragon</span> Native American fashion designer

Loren Aragon is a Native American fashion designer from Acoma Pueblo whose work is inspired by Acoma pottery and culture. His ACONAV couture brand is known for its asymetrical designs, patterns and materials such as silk and leather that blend cultural ideas with modern silhouettes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orville Tsinnie</span> Navajo jeweler and silversmith

Orville Z. Tsinnie was a Diné silversmith, jewelry maker and katsina carver from the Navajo Nation. He lived and worked in Shiprock, New Mexico for most of his life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gomeo Bobelu</span> Zuni artist and activist

Gomeo Bobelu, was a Zuni lapidary jeweler and silversmith who was known for his gemstone-inlayed silver jewelry. He was also a social justice advocate.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Silversmith & Lapidary Biographies: Angie Reano Owen". Bischoff's Gallery. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 "Angie Owen & Family". The Rainbow Man. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  3. 1 2 Graff, Michelle (May 10, 2016). "Museum to Host Turquoise Jewelry Exhibition". National Jeweler]. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  4. 1 2 3 "Cuff bracelet". collections.mfa.org. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  5. "Angie Reano Owen attributes this Depression-era necklace to her mother, Clara Reano". El Palacio. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  6. 1 2 Pardue, Diana F. (2007). Contemporary Southwestern Jewelry. Gibbs Smith. ISBN   978-1-4236-0190-6.
  7. "Santo Domingo Pueblo's Depression Jewelry". El Palacio. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  8. 1 2 "Angie Reano Owen – Artists – Indian Arts Research Center". emuseum.sarsf.org. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  9. "Joe Reano". British Museum.
  10. Greenbaum, Toni and Pat Kirkham. "Chapter 8. Women Jewelry Designers." Women Designers in the USA, 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference, edited by Pat Kirkham, Bard Graduate Center and Yale University Press, 2002. A&AePortal, aaeportal.com/?id=-20279.
  11. Pardur, Diana (July 16, 2010). "Portfolio | Native American Innovators". Southwest Art Magazine . Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  12. "Mosaic cuff bracelet". collections.mfa.org. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  13. Baxter, Paula. "Cross-cultural controversies in the design history of Southwestern American Indian jewellery." Journal of Design History 7.4 (1994): 233-45.
  14. Gänsicke, Susanne; Markowitz, Yvonne J. (June 25, 2019). Looking at Jewelry: A Guide to Terms, Styles, and Techniques. Getty Publications. ISBN   978-1-60606-599-0.
  15. Lowry, Joe Dan (October 1, 2010). Turquoise. Gibbs Smith. ISBN   978-1-4236-1980-2.
  16. "1995 Native Artist Fellows | School for Advanced Research" . Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  17. Pardue, D. F. (1997). The Cutting Edge: Contemporary Southwestern Jewelry and Metalwork. Heard Museum.
  18. Baxter, Paula A.; Bird-Romero, Allison (2000). Encyclopedia of Native American Jewelry: A guide to history, people, and terms. Internet Archive. Phoenix: Oryx Press. ISBN   978-1-57356-128-0.
  19. "Joe Reano Related Objects". British Museum.
  20. Roberts, Kathaleen (August 14, 2021). "Kewa artist Angie Owen uses techniques of her ancestors to craft award-winning jewelry". Albuquerque Journal. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  21. "Angie Owen – Santa Fe Indian Market" . Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  22. "Bracelet". emuseum.sarsf.org. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  23. "Results – Advanced Search Objects – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  24. "Earrings | National Museum of the American Indian". americanindian.si.edu. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  25. "Bracelet". Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  26. "Get a Bead On: Jewelry and Small Objects". Racine Art Museum . Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  27. "RAM Showcase: Focus on Adornment". Racine Art Museum . Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  28. Totems to Turquoise Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwesthttps://www.amnh.org/content/download/58463/944383/file/totems_main.pdf www.amnh.org/resources/exhibitions/totems
  29. "Department of Cultural Affairs Media Center: Media Bank: Turquoise, Water, Sky: The Stone and Its Meaning: Contemporary Artistic Expressions". media.newmexicoculture.org. Retrieved January 21, 2025.
  30. "Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in Community The Barnes Foundation". Barnes Foundation. February 20 – May 15, 2022. Retrieved January 21, 2025.