Customer Reviews

Two Zuni Artists: A Tale of Art and Mystery (Folk Art and Artists)

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Dr. Keith Cunningham's book "Two Zuni Artists" is a valuable resource into the life and art of the Zuni culture. The book includes personal interviews with Zuni artisans and insightful information about their ceremonies and culture. Along with the Zuni research is a story. The story follows the lives of a family of artists and their struggles and accomplishments. The book's subtitle "A Tale of Art and Mystery" is definately appropriate, although you must read the book to find out the mystery. Included with the text is a multitude of plates and pictures that depict actual Zuni art and Zuni life. The characters from the story are also pictured in the book. I highly recommend this book to those people who are familiar with Zuni culture and to those who know nothing about it. Overall, a very interesting and insightful book.

This book starts out as a conventional anthropology treatise, examining the life-work of a Zuni fetish-carver and his mother, a potter. Cunningham, a professor at Northern Arizona University, does a nice job of interviewing the artists, putting their work in context, and sketching the history of Zuni from prehistory to the present day.

What sets this book apart from dozens like it: when the aging parents of 'Helen', the mother, die, the ensuing family crisis causes Helen to fly off the rails into confused mysticism, which ultimately leads to her exile from Zuni. It's a sad and dramatic tale, familiar (to a degree) to anyone who's lived in a small, isolated community. The difference is, Zuni culture isn't American culture: Helen's store is closed by tribal police, and charges and counter-charges of witchcraft poison the atmosphere.

It's a sad and familiar story of family conflicts, mental illness and how a society treats its misfits (not well). This is not at all what one expects from a university-press art book. Very nicely done, and recommended reading for anyone interested in contemporary Pueblo art and culture.

Happy reading--
Peter D. Tillman

Dr. Keith Cunningham's book "Two Zuni Artists" is a valuable resource into the life and art of the Zuni culture. The book includes personal interviews with Zuni artisans and insightful information about their ceremonies and culture. Along with the Zuni research, is a story. The story follows the lives of a family of artists and their struggles and accomplishments. The book's subtitle "A Tale of Art and Mystery" is definately appropriate, although you must read the book to find out the mystery. Included with the text is a multitude of plates and pictures that depict actual Zuni art and Zuni life. The characters from the story are also pictured in the book. I highly recommend this book to those people who are familiar with Zuni culture and to those who know nothing about it. Overall, a very interesting and insightful book.

This book is at best a good account of Zuni arts and at worst a sensationalized account of crazy events in Zuni.

My major beef with this book is that while making the names of "Helen" and others in the account fictional, the author published photographs of "Helen's" actual children and family members. In a small community, one would only need to be vaguely familiar with the story and would know who the authors were talking about. When there are photographs, there is no doubt who the authors are referring to. This breach of academic responsibility has become the hallmark of anthropology in Native communities. This book is one more reason why anthros, Keith and Kathy Cunningham included, are extremely dis-liked in Indigenous communities.