Description
 The Emergence of the Clowns is four separate sculptures, placed in a dramatic composition to create emotions, stories and delight.  Each figure is approximately 20” by 12”.  The sculpture is created from red clay and painted in slip.  Swentzell a native Santa Clara Pueblo works in a traditional Pueblo manner, coiling and scrapping the clay, to produce works which are hollow.  Traditionally this technique was used in making pots and utilitarian shapes for centuries. Swentzell has modernized this technique to create The Emergence of the Clowns.
The figures were deliberately arranged in four corners or at the end points of a cross.  The separate entities are highly expressive clowns.  They have some similarities to medieval and even modern jesters.  Bold, black stripes cover the entire bodies and faces of the clowns.  None of the figures are touching, but they are tightly grouped and their forms flow with one another.  It is similar to a group of dancers that are frozen simultaneously in time and motion.  Each figure has uniquely expressively qualities but all the figures work together to create space and a powerful composition.  To have any one of these figures alone would be exciting and expressive.  However, the group exaggerates compound ideas and involves the viewer. The powerful and expressive forms seem to be stretching themselves out of the very ground that holds them.  The artist’s superior use of form and space, lead the viewer to believe these figures are virtually growing from the ground. Some of the clowns’ bodies show the viewer only part of or less then half of it.  Swentzell has convinced the viewer through realistic volume and form that the other parts of the clown’s bodies are really in the earth of which they are evolving.  The arms and bodies are used to give a real sense of ground, space, effort, might, struggle, and even exhaustion. The articulate hands and body positions are just the beginning to the expressive qualities of this piece.
The clown’s faces all have dramatic features full of pure emotion and personality.  The viewer could compare their expressions to those experienced when waking up after a long nights sleep.  Their eyes are half open, even squinting from what the view assumes to be fresh light.  They seem scared and persistent at the same time.  The figures and faces are sculpted in a realistic manner.  They have very human like feature that even complement the artist and her ethnicity.  They are highly detailed across the entire figure including knuckles, navels, eyelids and tassels off their jester-like hats.  The viewer truly believes these creatures are poking their way through the earth.  They can relate to the realistic sensations of tight muscles, sleepy eyes, that first stretch as they awake from a long sleep.
Meanings and culture of origin
Swentzell’s sculpture of four clowns is based on her Native American heritage.  Raised in Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico, she observed and participated in her clan’s rituals and dances.  She drew from Pueblo myths as well as emotional experiences for her inspiration. The Emergence of the Clowns relates to the Tewa origin story that speaks of clowns leading the people from the under world through the earth’s navel into the middle world where they still live.  Each clown will go off into a different direction leading his or her group of people home.
This sculpture seems to portray the beginning of this journey, an awakening or birth, a celebration of life.  These figures and this scene represent life and pure emotions.  There is an idea of evolving consciousness and revelations in our lives.  Swentzell wants the viewer to see the emotions of life, vulnerability, fear, yearning, exhaustion, satisfaction, contentment, and even silliness.  She wants the viewer to see the pure joy of living life. She also has a concern for the earth: the earth the clowns crawl from, the earth (clay) the clowns were made from and the earth that supports all of our lives. She is reflecting her cultural and personal values of respecting and taking care of the earth.  Just as you take care of yourself, every day is a new beginning.  The clowns and her work teach us to see a whole new world.
Artist Information
Roxanne Swentzell is the fifth generation in her family to work in clay.  Her mother Rina Swentzell and Aunt Jody Folwel are potters.  Raised at Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico, she participated in the communities underground ceremonial houses, called Kivas.  She learned to appreciate her culture and it’s myths and legends.  She was a shy child and had trouble learning to speak.  She used clay and little emotional figures to communicate her thoughts and feelings.  While still in high school she studied at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, later the Portland Art Museum School.  Although studio-trained in contemporary ceramic technology, Swentzell still sculpts today in traditional Pueblo manner.
Cultural Changes
Troubled by conflicts of cultural differences, Swentzell says she struggles through life as a human being. She combines modern and traditional values, aesthetics and techniques.  Swentzell’s contemporary art is a combination of the past and the present.  She manipulates the clay using traditional methods but expands upon tradition by producing figures rather then pots.  Swentzell’s figures are larger, have more volume and are much more realistic then traditional Native American’s figures.  Nevertheless, the inspiration and the figures themselves derive from her history and culture.  Traditionally men made realistic art; woman did abstract designs and pottery.  Prayers and rain invoking figures were made by the men only. Native American figurative art has a long tradition of being abstract.  Swentzell has made artistic and personal choices influences by her culture and her world.  She is expanding her range of methods and subjects, while inevitably linking them to her history and culture.
Messages
 This work is about a myth or fable, converted for modern time and contemporary art.  All cultures have these stories designed to emphasize and stir up thoughts about life and lessons.  Swentzell has brought to life her history, memory, traditions and her culture’s myths of the clowns.  The work relates to the importance of her culture and her own thoughts and emotions.  The sculpture is a snapshot of an epiphany or a birth.  The work will conjure up the students’ emotions and the factors that cause them.  The students can think about life and what factors make it important.  What part their cultures play in their lives?  Everybody has to start over in life, new schools, homes, jobs, and friends are a small set of examples.  Every day is a chance to change or better your life; her piece represents that possibility.  It is also about a celebration of life and the fact that you are alive and can make these changes.  She depicted clowns who make fun of humans and who we are, they do this through laughter and celebration.  It is a piece about hope expressed in a very emotional way.