By JaneWestberg

Art enables people to see through each other's eyes, dimming our preconceptions and prejudices and replacing them with a shared view. In southwestern Colorado, an enterprising art teacher and young artists are transcending boundaries of age and ethnicity as they create art from a deep sense of place.

I Have a Green Pillow On My Head, 1995, artist Reushan Shandeen Jim, Cajon Mesa Navajo Nation, age 4 1/2, sidewalk chalk on paper bag. This is the first rendering at Hovenweep by a young artist.

There was a blizzard the day the "Drawing Together" exhibit opened at the Anazasi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado. Still, more than 100 people, including the young artists and their families, traveled through the snow to the center. Before viewing the exhibit, they joined hands and encircled the center while Robert Tapaha, Cherokee, gave a blessing for the spirit of the art and the spirit of the artists.
For several years scores of children and families who live near the Hovenweep National Monument have been making art with artist Sonja Horoshko. They have been drawing and painting with her at the monument, in other beautiful outdoor settings, in their homes, and at Sonja's modest studio in Cortez. This was the first time though that the community had an opportunity to see the work exhibited. The art in the exhibit, which was all professionally framed, included renderings of Sleeping Ute Mountain, canyons, sheep, hogans, girls in jingle dresses, and selfportraits. The art of the children, who Sonja calls "young artists," was side-by-side with Sonja's art.
"The art is about the potency of rendering one's own place," says Sonja. To do this she gives the children and adults whom she mentors a "visual vocabulary" of tools that enable them to experience their world more deeply and observe it more clearly. One tool is to stand in the open spaces of your homeland and trace the horizon with your finger. "When you do this, you find yourself on center," she says. "Once you're on center you have a place." She then encourages people whom she is mentoring to represent what they see in some art form using other visual tools, such as an awareness of light and shadow.

Looking East From Hovenweep: Night Sky Over Sleeping Ute Mountain, 1997. Artist: Sonja Horoshko, acrylic on board, 4'x 4'.

Sonja has taught art for many years, but before moving to the Hovenweep area she had never worked with people who made art so easily and naturally. "Art has not been educated out of the families in the community around Hovenweep," she said. "It's part of their life that comes from the art of ceremony and ritual and being in balance. They are artists of their own lives and they carry that forward. So making art was a very natural process."
The Drawing Project started in 1995 when Virginia Jim, Cajon Mesa Navajo Nation, who works at the visitors' center at Hovenweep National Monument, took her daughter, Shana (Reushan Shandeen), outside to watch Sonja paint the beautiful landscape. Sonja, who was the artist-in-residence at the Monument that year, remembers, "After the traditional greeting, Shana asked me if we could make art together. I said, ëYes.' And we did. When she asked if she could come back another time with other family members, I agreed. The next week she came back with 45 family members—kids, aunties, uncles, mothers. We didn't have many art supplies so we drew on paper bags with sidewalk chalk."
Virginia remembers her daughter's excitement about making art. "She wanted to try different things, even drawing herself. She saw a pillow and put it on her head. I guess she thought it looked like a graduation cap because it had a tassel on it."

Left: Looking East From Hovenweep, 1996. Artist: Treamayne Cleveland, Cajon Mesa Navajo Nation, age 10, pastel. Right: Portrait of my Cousin Brother, Reuven Jim at Hovenweep, 1995. Artist: Hansley Eltsosie, age 6, watercolor.

Before long the Jim family, Sonja, and several other families were meeting regularly at Hovenweep to make art together. They explored the beauty of the area both in the light of day and at night. "We were always sitting on the canyon rim or in the pinon and juniper rendering what was right there," Sonja recalls, "the horizons, the birds, the trees, the Sleeping Ute Mountain, and ourselves. We shared our humanity and what is in front of us."
"Then the Tso family invited us across the road to their shade house, so we continued over there. Mary Tso is the grandmother. There are seven daughters, three sons, and all their children. It was a family endeavor. The Jim and Tso families are related to the families next door, so other children started coming and then their aunties. Soon we were all doing art together."

View of a Room in Sonjaís Home, 1998, artist: Eudora Claw, Cajon Mesa Navajo Nation, age 10, pastel 3'x4'.

The Morgans, who are potters, also invited Sonja into their home to teach their children and others the fundamentals of art. Yanua Morgan, Navajo, the mother of six children, said that Sonja had the children draw the details of the life around them. "Art teaches children to see," reflects Yanua. "Most people see a flower. With art you look more deeply at the flower, to see the colors, to smell it, to see beyond it." During one of the sessions, Sonja asked the young artists to observe how the light was casting shadows on three oranges on the table and to draw what they saw. The next morning Yanua recalls hearing her daughter, Jessica, screaming, "Mom, the shadows are gone! What did you do with them?" When Yanua came into the room, Jessica was hunting under the books and papers and even under the table to see where the shadows might have gone. She was relieved when her mother explained how they would come back. This event led to a deeper understanding of light and shadow.
Some children make art in Sonja's studio in Cortez. While their parents are buying supplies and running other errands in town, they draw and paint with Sonja, even using her home, which is across the street from the studio, as the focus of their art. Many schools have invited Sonja to hold workshops for their students. Everything in the students' world can become the focus of the students' art, even a dead lizard.

Mother Horse and Baby at Night Near Hovenweep, 1998, artist: Jessica Morgan, Ismay Navajo Nation, age 5 1/2, acrylic.

The young artists and their Elders not only make art about their world, but, like their ancestors, they also use resources from the land, such as pink and green sand, to create the art. Sonja feels that young artists should have the best materials possible for making art. There are no funds in the project for expensive store-bought paints and other media, but by using the land and their creativity, they are never without resources.
Making art as families and communities is central to the Drawing Together project. When children from the Towaoc Sunrise Youth Shelter were first included in the project, the definition of family needed to be recognized as including house mothers and others who are nurturing and supportive.
Often adults think that they do all the teaching. In Drawing Together, parents, like Yanua recognized they learn a great deal from their children. And children see the world in fresh ways. "The other day my daughters made flowers with wings," Yanua remembers. "They told me they were angel flowers. Natasha, who just finished kindergarten, explained, ëPeople think flowers die. They don't. They get wings and fly up. So don't feel bad when your flowers die.'" When Yanua heard this she said she had wonderful images of flowers all across the meadows and in supermarkets flying up into the sky.

Grandmotherís Sheep, 1998, artist: Marvena Tso, Cajon Mesa Navajo Nation, age 9, acryclic on cardboard.

Sonja feels very fortunate that she can know and work with the families in the Hovenweep region.. "The families brought me into their lives through the art. They've given me an understanding of how a family should function—in support of one another. They've given me honor and dignity and lots of food and gasoline. They are artists of their lives. I have a sense that I'm in the melody of life when I'm with them."
The impact of the project on the young artists is clear in the incredible art that they have already made and are continuing to make. Jessica Morgan has created a children's book illustrated with her art. Natasha Morgan is creating a book entitled, What a Princess Does on a Reservation. Natasha has named her bunny rabbit Shade and Shadow, after one of the tools in the visual vocabulary. Yanua, says, "Art has taught my children how to communicate with anyone. It breaks all barriers. Your age doesn't matter."
The project has been reaching beyond the immediate Hovenweep region. Several years ago the young artists in the Hovenweep area began exchanging art and poetry about place with children from Peetz, Colorado. Recently, Sonja conducted a workshop for school children from the Zuni Pueblo. The workshop, which was held at Aztec Monument, was filmed for a documentary that is being produced by the National Park Service. Also 80 children from Shiprock made art with Sonja among the orchards, mules, and sheep in McElmo Canyon. The Drawing Together project has touched the hearts and imaginations of many people, so the project is likely to continue to bring joy to the artists and to those who view the art. "Sonja has planted a lot of seeds," says Yanua. "This is just the beginning. It's going to go a long way."

Artist, Eudora Claw, beginning the painting of John Tsoís Hogan at her grandmotherís home, 1997. Portrait of My Father the Day the Water Came, 1997, artist: Colton Morgan, Ismay Navajo Nation, age 7, pastel.

April Juice I sit with my eyes closed In a room with colors and life. At my left, the simple passages of life in their intricate timing, At my right the Universe and Ute Mountain Don't tell me what keys you are playing. Black or white, the melody is teaching me to fly My soul is out above the Ute, curling down the canyon, slowly drifting back to this studio that embodies all that is love: You, Me, Art Yanua Morgan, April 1999 Art Juice Studio, Cortez, Colorado Yanua Morgan wrote this poem the night that Sonja's Art Juice Studio was opened in Cortez. Sonja writes: "We came together to celebrate the home for art. Tio played the piano for all of us—sonatas, preludes, on and on…. We were a collection of culture workers, border crossers—music, poetry, visual art, art historian, museum curator, environmental sculptor, and psychologist….Yanua wrote this poem on the back of a paper plate as she listened to Tio play, looking at our work now undeniably knitted together after four years."

Jane Westberg, Ph.D., is a clinical professor of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, Colorado. She is also associate editor of Education for Health: Change in Learning and Practice, an international journal of the Network of Community-Oriented Educational Institutions for Health Sciences.