Imagining Ceremonial A Very Short History of Posters Ernie Bulow

Ernie Bulow

By Ernie Bulow

After half a century of investigation, I can’t find posters for the first decade of Gallup Inter-tribal Ceremonial. This makes any sort of history problematic. The first poster using a Native American artist was for the seventeenth, 1938. It was done by a teenaged Ha So De, Narciso Abeyta of Gallup.

In 1932 there was an iconic poster attributed to Louie Ewing, Santa Fe artist. He certainly holds the record for posters by the same art-

IMAGINING CEREMONIAL A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF POSTERS IMAGINING CEREMONIAL A VERY SHORT HISTORY ists, and by a wide margin. On some of his later posters there is an attribution to a Native artist—adapted by.OF POSTERS Ewings posters were sometimes silkscreens, his favorite medium. Starting in the Nineties there was an effort to use Indian artwork, but many of those artists did not really reflect the nature of Gallup Ceremonial. There were winners, of course, like the 2004 poster by Irving Bahe. It definitely attracts attention. Good copies of Ceremonial posters, especially for the first half century, are quite pricey.

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