Larry Melendez
Zuni Fire
God
9 1/2"
total height
Kokosori is known as the Zuni
Fire Kachina. The Fire God kachina descends from the hills to
begin the Zuni ceremony of Shalako during the first week of December.
He is also considered a hunter,
and can be seen accompanying the Left-handed kachinas or Mudheads
at different times. The Kokosori has also been spotted alongside
the Eototo kachina distributing seeds for the new planting season.
Larry Melendez is from Sichomovi,
First Mesea, AZ. He is is Butterfly and Badger Clan. Larry is
the son of Thelma Denet (potter) and Mario Melendez.
He is the brother of Tammy
Denet and Manuel Denet Chavarria Jr. (carver). He was a student
of Fred Ross.
Larry has gotten many awards
for his Old Style Traditional Katsinam. Many of his pieces harken
back to the Route 66 Katsinam that were so popular in the 1960s.
These carvings have the larger
feet and thick legs, resembling the old clothespin kachinas.
Larry does clean work and uses traditional materials.
"The style I do is the
old-style from the late 1800s and early 1900s. The style didn't
change until the railroad came through the southwest."
"I was a protégé
to my older brother. He was the one who did a lot of research
into the Kachina dolls and from there we revived it," Melendez
said.
The old style dolls don't
come with a base and are usually suspended on the beams of Hopi
houses. The dolls are also teaching tools.
"Whenever elders tried
to teach a lesson about how to successfully live in the environment
we live in it was done with these dolls," Melendez said.
Melendez uses a lot of organic
material but some materials are newer than others. With paint,
some are natural pigments and others are acrylic.
"It depends on what the
doll is and the materials applied compared to what materials
you have available compared to the size of it," Melendez
said. "Sometimes I have to deny orders, because I have no
deerskin or I have no horsehair or I have no parrot feathers
and I have to say, I can't do that."
Melendez hunts for wood in
specific shapes to make his dolls.
"I have had dolls take
up to six months to complete because I am waiting on material
to apply to that Kachina," he said. "Sometimes I try
to take advantage of the material even if I don't need it right
then but I know I will need it in the future," Melendez
said.
Melendez believes that his
art is a way of giving back to his community and hopes that he
can leave something for younger generations to learn from and
build upon.
"That is what I would
like to instill in the carvers under me," Melendez says.
"I have a lot of young artists who come over just to learn.
They come in and they are just curious and they want to learn
and that is good. They learn it and retain it and with some luck
they will pass it on. I would hate to have my grandkids have
to go into a museum to learn how we were."
