Art Dealer Diaries Podcast · Mark Sublette

2025 Santa Fe Indian Market Best of Show Award Ceremony - Epi. 361, Host Dr. Mark Sublette

August 27, 2025·55 min·4 clips

Regina Free built a bison sculpture entirely from delaminated paper towels, foam, and reclaimed metal from her Oklahoma pasture.

1. Art Dealer Diaries host Dr. Mark Sublette records the live 2025 Santa Fe Indian Market Best of Show Award Ceremony presented by Swaya. 2. Sublette identifies himself as co-sponsor of the Best of Show prize through his Medicine Man Gallery Foundation for the Arts, which provides the award funds. 3. The episode's core purpose is to give listeners direct access to the acceptance speeches of winning Native artists across ten art classifications. 4. Janalee Valencia of Pueblo South Uipi wins jewelry classification for her reversible mosaic inlay work using Cayman turquoise, orange spiny lapis, and shell, a tradition she has practiced for 30-plus years after her parents made her continue it in high school. 5. Jennifer Tafoya and Chris Youngblood of Santa Clara Pueblo win the pottery classification with 'Clash of the Titans,' a collaborative piece reinterpreting dragon-phoenix mythology as Pueblo serpent and thunderbird, fired in a traditional outdoor process that Tafoya calls 'way riskier' than modern kiln firing. 6. Santiago Romero wins the 2D painting classification with 'Pastel Arches,' an impasto oil work built from approximately 10,000 rapid palette-knife strokes across two days, depicting the arc of light from dawn through dance ceremonies to sunset at Santa Ana Pueblo. 7. Robert Alberg, Hopi from the village of Munkoopi, wins his fourth consecutive best-of-carvings award with a multi-figure kachina sculpture depicting white cloud clowns falling from the sky — a concept he says took five to six years to conceive and two years to carve from a single piece of Colorado cottonwood. 8. Regina Free of Newport, Oklahoma wins best-of-sculpture with 'Mesa,' a bison figure built entirely from foam sheets, felt, delaminated two-ply paper towels (used for fur texture and even the horns), and reclaimed pasture metal — her first entry after two years back in the art scene. 9. Lola Cody wins textiles for a Two Gray Hills Navajo rug woven from churro sheep she raises herself in No Water Mesa, Arizona, noting that she deliberately skips carding to produce natural color variations in the wool. 10. Virgil Ortiz wins decorative arts with 'Aeronaut,' a ceramic-and-glass figure from a science-fiction universe he designed 24 years ago to educate the public about the 1680 Pueblo Revolt; the 19 characters in the universe each represent one of the 19 Pueblos still in New Mexico. 11. Jackie Brenup of Browning, Montana, a 45-year professional beadwork artist from the Blackfeet Nation, wins best of beadwork with a portrait in size-15 Japanese beads depicting Weasel Tail, a pre-reservation-era warrior whose great-grandchildren Brenup personally knows. 12. Youth winner Nos Flav, a Tlingit artist from Anchorage, describes spending a year processing fish skin, salmon vertebrae, black cod, brain-tan skin, and cedar to produce a piece integrating raven's tail weaving — all techniques she has been learning alongside her mother. 13. Teresa Secord of the Penobscot Nation wins basketry with 'Wabba Baka Summer,' a sparrow-form ash-and-sweetgrass basket woven on a wooden form scaled from her great-grandmother's 1800s antiques, using a classic infinity weave she says has been made in her tribe for more than 200 years. 14. The IAIA Alumni Award goes to Emmet Nuvakoja for a Turtle Kachina sterling silver necklace, presented by Beverly Morris of the Kolagun Tribe of Wanalaska, Alaska. 15. Native American Art Magazine editor Michael Klassen presents a special award to Carol and Martha Douglas for a frog basket. 16. Regina Free's Best of Show acceptance speech describes a two-and-a-half-year return to art after stepping away to raise three children, including a prayer she made on 'this ledge' that if she got the chance to create she would commit fully. 17. The post-ceremony interview segment features Sublette speaking directly with Tafoya and Youngblood, who explain that Youngblood forms and carves the pots while Tafoya applies sgraffito and natural mineral pigments sourced locally in northern New Mexico. 18. Sublette's interview with Alberg reveals the carving's title is still undecided; a museum visitor suggested 'Kicked Out of Heaven,' which made Alberg laugh. 19. Art collectors, museum staff, and anyone interested in the current state of Native American fine art will find direct quotes from a dozen active working artists. 20. Listeners seeking a concise single-artist profile rather than a multi-speaker ceremony format may prefer other Art Dealer Diaries episodes focused on individual interviews.

As heard by us

A ceremony listen where the making matters as much as the win.

Dr. Mark Sublette treats the Santa Fe Indian Market best-of-show ceremony as more than a prize line. Artists come up to accept recognition across categories, and the room stays close to the work itself: a Two Gray Hills Navajo rug woven with churro wool, a sculptural piece made…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get a front-row seat to Indian Market's main judging ceremony and the call of the winners.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Art Dealer Diaries Podcast