This image arose from a family journey through a Southwest Navajo reservation when our daughter was small. The inhabitants there wondered about my husband’s tribe for his extreme height and facial features. He told them his tribe was the Japanese tribe and they nodded.
In the painting, we are positioned precariously on the top of a fruit ladder in the wind. We are considering moving across the country to construct a Zen Buddhist temple in Taos with local adobe and traditional Japanese temple carpentry. A decision of a radical life change. Again, a Hopi rattle flies through the air activating instinctual indigenous culture across time that feels more like a personal tutelar guide in the threat of modernity.
