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Guest curator Lois Sherr Dubin first encountered the jewelry of the Yazzies in Gallup in 1993. Trader and gallery owner Joe Tanner’s personal collection included a bracelet arced into a corncob, its kernels comprised of turquoise, coral, gold and opals. The artist was Lee Yazzie.

“That was the bracelet that really drew me,” Dubin said in a telephone interview from New York, “its sheer beauty, its originality. When you see something that is magical – and I don’t use that word lightly – you kind of get a kick in the gut.”

Lee Yazzie is the fourth eldest of 12 surviving children, all of whom grew up in an 8-foot hogan. His father was a medicine man; both his parents made jewelry. Raymond is one of the youngest of the Yazzie siblings.

Gifted from the start, at 14 he won Best of Show at the Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial with a concho belt borrowing Navajo rug motifs.

The exhibition includes the concho belt as well as Lee’s corn bracelet.

“I like the pieces that in miniature capture heroic and epic ideas,” Dubin said. “It’s the echo of the landscape and the sculptured content of the stone. It’s the play of the blue and the red. It’s evocative, but at the same time they can stand alone. It gives that extra layer of meaning.”

Raymond’s 1¾-inch-high ring reveals monumental concepts in its use of turquoise, opal, sugilite and 14-karat gold embellished with the gold crosses of the morning star. Etched gold sunrays lace the finger hole. His bracelets have been known to contain nearly 500 stones.

“They never repeat a design,” Dubin said. “Each one is something different. They keep raising their own personal bar.”

That level of perfectionism runs through their veins. A medicine man who also worked for the railroad, their father Chee Yazzie knew the importance of balance and symmetry in sand paintings. Both brothers appropriated images of the Yei or Holy People in their bracelets.

“Unless the precision is perfect, the healing doesn’t work,” Dubin said.

Both siblings were forbidden from touching their parents’ work bench because the stones and tools were expensive. They learned by observation, constant practice and by steadily pushing themselves, Dubin added.

Lee briefly pursued becoming an accountant, but health problems forced him to leave school. While he recuperated, he began helping his mother, a respite that kindled his own interest in making jewelry. Quality is his hallmark; he rarely produces more than 10 pieces in a single year.

“I think a certain amount of training came from observing their parents,” Dubin said. “But the level of artistry was within them.”

While Lee is a master of metal and stone, Raymond excels at lapidary work in explosive color. Lee invented the mosaic turquoise method – building a monolithic piece of stone from smaller single bits. Sun, wind, turquoise, corn and mountains provide a wellspring of literal and metaphorical imagery.

Each brother pushes traditional Navajo motifs lifted from the landscape, sand paintings and textiles onto their personal canvas and into contemporary life.

“They reflect the Navajo views of harmony, balance and quality at the same time,” Dubin said, “maintaining their culture while earning a living.”

Turquoise carries both spiritual and economic value to the Navajo people. One of the sacred stones of Navajo beliefs, it reflects the color of the sky and water.

A central part of Navajo prayer offerings, it becomes a gift of kinship and friendship. Its earliest Southwestern use dates to about 300 A.D.