A Charlie Willeto sculpture

Charlie Willeto
Diné (Navajo), (1897-1964), untitled, repurposed lumber and pigment, carved to depict a figure with upraised arms, the form densely decorated front and back with geometric elements.
height 25 1/4in, length 8 3/4in
From 1961 until his death in 1964, Charlie Willeto carved approximately four hundred figures from cottonwood, pine and recycled materials, most ranging in size from twelve to thirty inches.

Illustrated
Smither, John & Stephanie, et. al., Collective Willeto: The Visionary Carvings of a Navajo Artist, 2002, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, NM, p. 57

For additional perspective on the artist and his work, see "The World According to Charlie Willeto" by Susan Brown McGreevy, American Indian Art Magazine, Spring 2010, Volume 35, No. 2, pp. 62-70. "While Willeto's work undeniably defies mainstream Euro-American artistic convention, it defies mainstream Navajo artistic convention at the same time. Original and iconoclastic, it nonetheless emerges from the deep interstices of Navajo culture, to be forged within the crucible of Willeto's audacious imagination. Unlike sandpaintings or yé'ii bicheii masks, Willeto's art is not explicitly sacred; rather, his creativity embraces a less literal and more intuitive connection to a secret and sacred world, a world implicitly charged with mysterious energy. Thus, Charlie Willeto's world of art is spiritually evocative, artistically potent and above all, visually compelling." Ibid. p. 69