Forever my muse

Art as Therapy for a spirit in grief

My late maternal grandmother, Jane Werito Yazzie
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Venaya J. Yazzie

Five months have passed since I lost my grandmother.  Everyday I wake up and begin the process of missing her again.  Every moment I experience now, I think about how she would have reacted to it.  I find myself planning my daily activities as if she was still physically present on earth.  My brain is confused and seems to be constantly trying to keep up with the ever-changing status of my spirit.  To be honest my heart is broken, I am broken.

I lived a full life with her with me.  She was always by my side. She was my rock, my muse.  Now that she has traveled on to the next world, I am here existing in what feels like a cloud.

My late maternal grandmother, Jane Werito Yazzie was my best friend. We were more than forty years apart in age yet we were similar in many ways.  We loved the same things in life, we talked the same, were amused by parallel things. Together, as grandmother and adopted grand-daughter, we faced the joys and challenges of Navajo life in the Four Corners community. "Mom" passed on from this life on earth to the next world in early February of this year and since then, my life has been a struggle.

As an artist I have sought out the possibility to get "inspired" again, but it has not been easy. In the last five months I found myself leaning on Art, but not being totally aware I was.  What I have found is that many of the avenues of art, including the 'process' of art are taken for granted.  I know that I am guilty of this too.

After this trauma of loss of a beloved matriarch, I realize that art should always be considered as a means of perpetuating the human / emotional, spiritual healing process.  I have wondered among the many online art galleries of global artists and I have created my own home gallery of artwork from Indigenous artists I have collected through the years.  What were my intentions of these activities? By doing these tangible things, did I think they would hopefully fill the emptiness and loneliness I was experiencing?  Today I am pondering these kind of questions, and am still asking myself.  What is my purpose as an artist?

In the five months since her passing, I have come to the realization that I have been able to work through my mourning of her.  This personal journey of healing has been initiated through all the months of the grieving process by unconsciously living the life of a multi-media artist.  I can truthfully express that art saved me, and that today art is healing my broken spirit! The concepts of art as therapy have worked as a spiritual source for me.  My awareness of art as a therapuetic act has allowed for me to find some balance again.  My work as a painter and multi-media artist has steered me be in my studio for several hours a day.  In that space of art tools and the art itself has brought me to a state of being that is tolerable and my creative flow of energy and thought is becoming clearer day by day. In my research of grief after the death of a loved one I have learned that it has 7 stages. They are fully emotional and include: shock (disbelief), deniel, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression and acceptance and hope.

So, where do I think I am existing within this paradigm of the human grieving process?

Well, I am consciously aware that I have accepted the death of my grandmother. I know though that there is now set time of when mourning and grief will end or can be cured.  I know that I carry hope now, that because of my belief of the spiritual existence of the Creator God, I believe I will see her again in the afterlife.

Art as therapy is a concept realized this week.  I see that the art-way is wholly ingrained within the Navajo material culture, but moreover, it is rooted in the Navajo Philosophy of 'Iina' - Life.  This was evident in my family through the women of my immediate and extended family, who in act existed as 'Creatives.' They lived lives of women artists.  This is a profound realization for me!  For example, my great grandmother who was born in 1907 was an avid weaver of traditional Navajo rugs and blankets. She was also an extraordinary seamstress.  My grandmother Jane also encompassed these traits and they both passed on this ways to me.  For that I know my life is blessed indeed!

My goal now is to continue doing my art in every aspect that I feel is relevant for me to continue healing my heart and spirit.  My grandmother  Jane gave me all of the goodness of her life, she was living a life with me in mind and now in adulthood I am living those ways through the Arts.  I know I will still have the bad days, the sad days and the grief will still linger, but as an artist I know that the one constant is my art.

I pray for blessings all around me. And too, I pray for blessings all around you.

Venaya

New Earring Designs - Navajo Ancestor

New earring design- Digital art
VENAYA YAZZIE 2020
All Rights Rerserved

My newest earring designs are a showcase of the young ancestors of my Dine' (Navajo) people.

View my new designs at my Square store site:

Yazzgrl Art Earring Designs

High Desert Matriarch: SW indigenous Femme Artists

High Desert Matriarch artists:
Eileen, Amy, Venaya, Colleen, Jihan and Monica

New Mexican artist, Venaya Yazzie

On February 13-19, 2020 a group of regional Indigenous artists and their art 'confluenced' at the border town of Flagstaff, Arizona in the north region of the state.

Included in among the art was my own art.

It was a blessing to be among other women with the 'Creative Way' of being.  And, I was very happy to have worked with a co-curator of the exhibition, Amy S. Martin.  The exhibition was displayed at local coffee house hot spot, Firecreek Coffee Company.

The last day of the exhibited culminated with a film screening of Indigenous women filmmakers work.  I also was able to show my art film, "There is Water but No One Speaks." And after of which the artists did a panel discussion and talk.  The photo above includes the participating artists. Which included:

Jihan Gearon

Eileen Baca

Lyncia Begay

Monica Wapaha

Diedra Peaches

Aretha Shining Moon

Venaya Yazzie

To read more about the show follow the link below:

High Desert Matriarch Art

Blessings in All Things,

Venaya

Poem excerpt Venaya Yazzie

Ancestors in us, with us

Rooted to the strong, high desert cedar trees,

I speak with a green sage tongue

where female words sparkle -

like shimmering summer storm clouds,

like the shimmering eyes of our brown grandmothers.

 The old language lives atop the fingertip swirls:

adindii, adindii, shining, shining...

(by Venaya Yazzie, 2020)

Such narrative as poetry by Indigenous people in the twentieth-century is the truth. We as Indigenous poets, writers, speakers are the artists who are helping to speak the real truth.

I am so happy to share such writing with you All.

Blessings,

Venaya Yazzie

Eastern Dine' Nation,

Navajoland, USA

My grandmother, my forever muse

In memory of my Love, my grandmother Jane Werito Yazzie
Photo: Venaya Yazzie
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2020

She was my light in this dark world called 'earth.'

She was my life in this wicked-place called 'earth.'

She was my best friend in this spacial dimension they call 'earth.'

She was my maternal grandmother, she was my 'home.'

When my grandmother was in her mid-forties, she took me into her loving arms and loved me unconditionally. She raised me up as her own 'daughter' and she molded me into her shadow of Navajo woman, Dine' matriarch. I miss her.

As I grew into adult womanhood, I realized how Creator God meant it to be for the two of us humble humans. She saved me in my infancy and in her wise, mature age, her golden years, i saved her.  We fed off of each others love and admiration for life. I was her baby muse.  And she will forever be my matriarch muse.

I was born as a Hooghanlani' -Manyhogans clan female being. On that first day of my first breath I was the image of all my ancestral matriarchs before me, before time.  I was tiny ancestor, fully adorned in turquoise and white shell and all my grandmother's and great aunties sang for me; their prayers gave my spirit life and strength to walk upon this land, in this dimensional space.

My grandmothers departure from this time and space has left a hole in my life.  Since February 4, 2020 I have been wandering this path without her by my side, and truth is - my heart is broken, I am broken into tiny pieces of sandstone.

As a visual artist, poet and Indigenous educator I am conscious of how I must move forward without her by my side. I know it is what Creator God had planned for us.  My grandmother walked with me all my life, and her life and voice and laughter and tears and happiness was shared with me, her 'daughter'. 

She shared with her acquired knowledge of the female matriarch and the compassion that we as women are born with.

As a young girl, she 'adorned' my fingers, my wrists, my neck, my ears with the most Beautyful mineral on 'earth.' Turquoise.  As a child, she showed her overflow of love by gifts of turquoise rings and bracelets.  When I remember her now, I visualize her fully 'adorned' in her jewelry, her royal ways of being.

Shima', my mother and grandmother Jane Werito Yazzie is no longer physically with me here, but she is her with me in spirit.  In my sadness and longing for her Navajo tongue and enduring adoration I hear her and my soul is healed. Sometimes if feels as though my heart stops beating and stay still, just so I can hear her narrative among the ancestral land of my high desert people.  She is absent in body, but then she lives on with me.

My grandmother, my forever muse.

Blessings,

Venaya VJ Yazzie

The legacy of 'masani,' Matriarch

Its been a long three months.

At times the reality of my grandmother's passing does not seem 'real.' Yet, we, the family are here without her in our daily lives.  The times are as turbulent as the winds that have been brewing here in northwest New Mexico, USA.  The legacy she left is abundant! Through the years she taught many skills to her daughter and to me, her adopted granddaughter.  I know I have a blessed life because of what she taught to me.

My narrative is her narrative. I am her, she was me.  The ways in which she lived her life in her latter years of life are embedded in my bones and her dialogue is rooted in my own tongue.  I miss her so much, and at times in my life, I feel so lost without her by my side.

My grandmother was my best friend, my most favorite person in the whole world.  I walk here not alone with her beauty beside me.  This reality has created a "unbalance" in my life to be sure.  Today, as I work to re-calibrate my place on earth, I hope to live a life that she would be proud of.

This capture I share concerns her, my dear matriarch's constant perpetuation of the Dine' cultural lifeways of the female being.  She was a weaver, a lineage of art ways she inherited from her mother, my great grandmother.  I have great respect for such ways and therefore will continue that legacy, its the only way I can pay honor to her.

Blessings.

Matriarch Jane Werito Yazzie RIP



Beloved Manyhogans Matriarch
Photo credit: Venaya Yazzie Photography
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2020

A Celebration of Life for Jane Werito Yazzie was held on February 8, 2020 at Maranatha Fellowship Church in Farmington, NM. She was laid to rest at the Brethren in Christ Mission Cemetery in Otis, NM.

Jane Werito Yazzie, a member of Eastern Diné Nation in New Mexico, left this earth to live in everlasting glory with her Savior Jesus Christ on Tuesday, February 4, 2020. She was Hooghanłani (Manyhogans), born for the Tódichiini (Bitterwater) people of the community of Dziłnaodithłe (Huerfano), NM.  She was middle daughter of the late Jim and Louise Werito and wife of the late Alfred Padilla Yazzie. Jane, matriarch of the family had seven children: her late five sons were: Alfred Jr., Keith, Raymond, Presley, Ronnie and her surviving daughters: Victoria, Maxine and adopted granddaughter, Venaya. Her siblings included: Annabelle Yazzie and Marie Black. Brothers: Bobby, Harvey Werito, and the late Jimmy, Wilbert and Thomas Werito.

Jane was beloved by many in the Farmington/Huerfano and surrounding communities. She always had a friendly smile to share and greeted everyone she met with gratefulness and humility. At age five she attended the Ignacio Indian Boarding School in southwest Colorado. In the 1970s she worked in Shiprock at the Fairchild plant. Jane was a weaver, seamstress and wonderful storyteller. In 2007 she along with her sister Annabelle and adopted sister, the late Ernestine Chavez were specially invited to speak about their experience at Ignacio Indian Boarding School at the Fort Lewis College Delaney Research Library in Durango, CO; they also visited the old school campus on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. Jane loved school and learning new things, she often reflected on her positive memories of her time spent at boarding school. She loved her two pet cats: Abraham and MiuMiu who were in her constant company at home. She will be greatly missed by all her family.

Bless each other.
VJY