Represented in important museum collections and galleries, this award-winning artist's work is also found in homes and offices of discerning private collectors nationwide--each work bearing Tenakhonva's trademark Rabbit Clan signature.   (   )

Clark's all-consuming concern for promoting accuracy and the traditional ways of making his figures extends to his selective use of the work "kachina" and an aversion to the incorrect usage by many of the word "dolls" to describe the works.

"Kachinas are the living spirits themselves," he points out, "and the term 'kachina dolls' actually has no meaning.  More accurately, what I make is called the 'ti-hu'  (tee 'hoo)."

The ti-hu figures are traditionally given primarily to young girls at special times in their lives. This probably gave rise to the term "kachina dolls" but, in truth, they are neither!

The ti-hu is a representation, but it is also a spirit...a life.  Because of this, Clark Tenakhongva reverently makes each ti-hu the way his grandfather taught him.   Each is fashioned in the traditional likeness of the kachina it honors and, because it possesses a life of its own, it is not to be burned with a woodworking hot-pen nor poisoned with synthetic paints or linseed oil.  Rather it is lovingly handcarved only from the root of the cottonwood tree and colored only with natural pigments mined from, picked from and found on Hopi land.  Even the tiniest cottonwood root bits and chips left over from the carving are carefully gathered and returned to the Earth.  Never are they just "thrown away"!