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LeJeune Chavez said, I call this piece “the reimagined Thunderbird necklace.” “I used small cut beads of sizes 13 and 15 to get the details of the thunderbird. The colors I used represent the gems used on the Santo Domingo Pueblo thunderbird necklace in the 1920s and 1930s.” (Courtesy of Lejeune Chavez )
The Santo Domingo Pueblo (Kiva) artist combined beads, stone and silver to make needlework miniature tapestries on glass.
Due to the swaia.org pandemic, Chavez was one of 450 artists who entered the virtual market of the Santa Fe Indian market.
In her work, hundreds of tiny beads may hover a circle of turquoise stone on a silver covering covered by a turquoise rainbow. Thousands of kinds may become traditional thunderbird necklaces, and hundreds of them may become deerskin cuffs. Others jumped into the dragonfly’s wings. Chavez pierced and penetrated the needle into the bead. Her husband Joe works in silver.
Chavez used the isolation time in isolation to try designs she had never tried.
She said: “I have always wanted to use beadwork (Thunderbird).” “I think this is the time I will do it. I use small beads from 13 to 15. The larger the number, the smaller the beads.
LeJeune Chavez’s beaded cuffs feature the Santo Domingo Pueblo Thunderbird logo as a design element. She said: “I used beads of sizes 13 and 15 cut into small beads, and designed thunderbirds, clouds and dragonflies on both sides of the beaded cuffs.” The cuffs are traditional “smoke skin” deer skins.
Artists in Santo Domingo made traditional thunderbird necklaces from old battery boxes during the Great Depression and recorded records. Chavez uses a traditional palette of primary colors to string together her beads, with glass beads as small as a grain of kosher salt.
She said: “I remember making some small bracelets out of cotton thread and those big beads.” “I put them in a shoe box, went to the neighbor, and tried to sell them.”
When she was attending a boarding school in California, she continued marketing. She sold the work to the staff and the school museum.
After graduating from high school, Chavez got a job at the Santa Fe telephone company. Then it’s time to submit.
She said: “I just decided to quit my job and make a living as a beadwork.” “That was 30 years ago.”
Her husband quit his job as a contractor to take a silver job. Chavez proposed the idea of ​​combining the two art forms.
She called the pendant turquoise, which is surrounded by turquoise beads on the silver-covered bezel, called “silver beads.”
She said: “I like to call these our iconic works because no one is doing this kind of work.”
The beaded turquoise necklace pairs Chavez’s intricate patterns with a single Kingman turquoise stone.
She smiled and said: “My husband did stone cutting, so I touched a few drops on the stone.” This piece also includes a single jet frit and a movable ring, so it can be used as a pendant. She also added golden Swarovski crystal beads.
Chavez said: “I didn’t design my own design.” “I saw it in my mind, as if I was drawing a bead.”
Speaking of the end of the pandemic, she said: “At first I was a little shocked, everyone is like this.
“But because we are all self-employed artists, we are able to integrate into our daily work. This is our kind of therapy.
“I miss the visitors to Santa Fe,” she continued. “I miss our jewelry, touch and feel. But for now, this is the way we have to go.”