Content area
Full Text
Walking along the booths at Indian Market, you never know what you'll find. Not only does the artwork vary from traditional to contemporary, but the artists themselves have some amazing stories. One of these intriguing people is Pablita Abeyta.
Her striking clay figures, mostly female, measure a statuesque two feet. Like a legion of matriarchs, their forms rise from flowing skirts to necklaces of corn and other symbols to intricately rendered faces.
Sculpting came to Abeyta in a roundabout way. As is the case for many American Indian artists, art was all around her. The work of her father, Narciso Abeyta, a renowned Navajo painter, was highly prized, shown and published in the pages of "Art in America" magazine. Virtually all of her brothers and sisters are artists. Her mother was Anglo, and the family lived off the Navajo reservation. "At school I was never part of any group, I was always between two worlds."
Abeyta received her masters degree in public administration from The University of New Mexico and...