What I Usually Say About Myself
When Telling the Truth, but not the whole story, you
understand
When Telling the Truth, but not the whole story, you
understand
Hello. I am April Romo de Vivar, a sculptor in clay of Native and other
people. An entrepreneur my whole life, I live in Tucson, Arizona. I
have four children and about eight or is it nine, grandchildren, I think.
I also have three dogs.
I cannot claim to be Native American, as only one great grandmother
on my mother’s side was Native American, but this has made me
interested in educating myself about native peoples and then
educating others with my clay work. I have also, always been
interested in web and search engine marketing. My brother knows
search engine optimization techniques and I want to tap into them.
Right now my figurines of Native American angels are being
reproduced and sold all over the southwestern United States. I make
angels, not necessarily as a Judeo-Islamic-Christian emblem but, to
signify spirits watching over us all.
I make women of many Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and California
native people and they each are dressed authentically, with their
Indian bags, facial tattoo designs and many hold peace lilies,
peonies, sweet peas, roses and other popular flowers. I don't know
how to do ikebana arrangements, but I try to make them pretty. I
dress them all for a certain period of time and usually, they also hold
or wear something that they are known for making with their hands. I
make Mexican and maybe Greek or Italian or other brunette people,
too.
I make nativity scenes, known as nascimientos, presepios, or
creches and cribs and the Kings or Wise Men come from different
tribes, different ethnic groups further away and they bring gifts,
which show what their people are known for. I do this to educate,
more than as religious product, an educational toy for grown ups, as
it were. Many store owners who sell my work, remove the angels
from the nativity scenes and just sell the scene as a gathering of
native people.
The nativities are of a Mescalero Apache family, a Zuni Pueblo family
and of a Navajo family. They come with backdrops rich in authentic
detail and with food and animals of the area.
I am busy making two new nativities for American Legacy. One is
more traditional, but my hands now want to make a cowboy nativity,
hmmm...
The work sells very well and I was wondering if you would be
interested in receiving one of the wholesale catalogues of the
company, which is reproducing my work? (You must be a retailer
and not just a regular store customer.) They have made many
different sizes and price groups and they have turned some of the
native women into wind chimes and refrigerator magnets (which the
store owners run out of first).
One of my Native American nativities is in the permanent nativity
collection of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. That's where
Presidential services and national government services are almost
always held.
people. An entrepreneur my whole life, I live in Tucson, Arizona. I
have four children and about eight or is it nine, grandchildren, I think.
I also have three dogs.
I cannot claim to be Native American, as only one great grandmother
on my mother’s side was Native American, but this has made me
interested in educating myself about native peoples and then
educating others with my clay work. I have also, always been
interested in web and search engine marketing. My brother knows
search engine optimization techniques and I want to tap into them.
Right now my figurines of Native American angels are being
reproduced and sold all over the southwestern United States. I make
angels, not necessarily as a Judeo-Islamic-Christian emblem but, to
signify spirits watching over us all.
I make women of many Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and California
native people and they each are dressed authentically, with their
Indian bags, facial tattoo designs and many hold peace lilies,
peonies, sweet peas, roses and other popular flowers. I don't know
how to do ikebana arrangements, but I try to make them pretty. I
dress them all for a certain period of time and usually, they also hold
or wear something that they are known for making with their hands. I
make Mexican and maybe Greek or Italian or other brunette people,
too.
I make nativity scenes, known as nascimientos, presepios, or
creches and cribs and the Kings or Wise Men come from different
tribes, different ethnic groups further away and they bring gifts,
which show what their people are known for. I do this to educate,
more than as religious product, an educational toy for grown ups, as
it were. Many store owners who sell my work, remove the angels
from the nativity scenes and just sell the scene as a gathering of
native people.
The nativities are of a Mescalero Apache family, a Zuni Pueblo family
and of a Navajo family. They come with backdrops rich in authentic
detail and with food and animals of the area.
I am busy making two new nativities for American Legacy. One is
more traditional, but my hands now want to make a cowboy nativity,
hmmm...
The work sells very well and I was wondering if you would be
interested in receiving one of the wholesale catalogues of the
company, which is reproducing my work? (You must be a retailer
and not just a regular store customer.) They have made many
different sizes and price groups and they have turned some of the
native women into wind chimes and refrigerator magnets (which the
store owners run out of first).
One of my Native American nativities is in the permanent nativity
collection of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. That's where
Presidential services and national government services are almost
always held.
My
Definition
of a Folk
Artist
Definition
of a Folk
Artist
A folk artist picks up, dresses in and trains under the heavy
mantle of traditions, ancient and defined. Our joy comes from
people recognizing tradition inside our latest pieces of work, even
when we pull away from that tradition. Each piece is our signature,
recognizable and distinguishable from thousands of other pieces
made about the same subject.
We work with the materials at hand (someone gave me two bags of
terra cotta clay and the rest is history), expressing our emotions in
the artwork. We draw upon community traditions, artwork that we
have seen in our environment, those pieces closest to us, to our
feelings, to our homes.
Most pieces are reproductions of another artist's work, a holy saint
in a niche in a church, a rug pattern on a floor, neighborhood
activities seen by the artist, familiar things, important events, both
personal and historical. As we wander through neighborhoods,
here or abroad or anywhere, through stores, churches,
marketplaces and art galleries, we gather images inside of
ourselves and pull them out when back at home in front of our craft
materials, using them then, combining them, reducing them,
enlarging them with our hearts, hands, eyes and souls.
I went to high school in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil and then lived in
Tegucigalpa, Honduras and in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. I
spent my time there filling my eyes and heart and soul with images
of their colors, their clay work, their cultures and music. I am a mutt
of a citizen, full of many cultures and not one single nor defining
culture to call my own. Luckily, my three sisters and two brothers
are exactly like me and we can talk the same 'soul' language and
use the same experiences, a true blessing.
The things that I make could sell in the marketplaces of the cities
where I have lived here in the southwestern United States, they
could sell in Mexico or Honduras or Brasil, because I make them
like that; it's what I know and have gathered within me.
I have no formal art training of any consequence, but everything
that I have ever seen, and I own dozens of art books now from
national, international and even state galleries and have devoured
the pictures within them with my eyes and everything seen remains
inside me. Some pictures make me stare at them endlessly. All that
I know comes out of my hands and into the clay or onto my
canvases. I love what I do and cannot stop myself from working.
Many people call themselves my collectors now, twenty some
years later, and I feel blessed by this. One Romo de Vivar nativity
scene is in the permanent collection of the National Cathedral in
Washington, D.C. Others are owned by some pretty wonderful
people, especially those Friends of the Creche members.
I work selfishly, to please myself and each piece is unique. I
sometimes work so much that I do not stop while sleeping, I find
myself in my dreams, inside my studio and making something.
My work is called whimsical, finally thank goodness, and endearing.
That pleases me, because one of the first store owners that I
approached decades ago remarked that he 'didn't sell that kind of
crap in his store' and, embarrassed, it made me strive to constantly
improve. I do improve, each year my hands obey my vision a little
more.
April Romo de Vivar
a Short Biography
a Short Biography
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The music here used to be Amazing Grace sung in Cherokee and performed by Walela. Click on their banner to visit their site and to buy the CD which contains that song. |
Below are my first St. Francis of Assisi and
my latest. They are so very different, as time
has trained my hands to obey my heart.
my latest. They are so very different, as time
has trained my hands to obey my heart.
