Photography by Daniel Nadelbach • Styling by Gilda Meyer-Niehof Sculptor Robert Rivera finds inspiration in both the Southwest’s inhabitants and its landscape. Here, the artist poses with two of his mudheads. Crafted from gourds, they measure 30"H and are adorned with turkey feathers, leather shawls and necklaces fashioned from pottery shards. In the background, a sun kachina mask hangs on a cactus.

2011 MASTER OF THE SOUTHWEST

Gourd Guru: An unusual medium becomes the calling card for sculptor Robert Rivera

Robert Rivera can clearly remember the day he discovered his calling. He and his wife, Linda, were driving through California in 1978 when they came across a field filled with gourds that piqued his interest. They stopped to find out what the oddly shaped fruit was and left the farm with their small car stuffed with gourds. “I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with them,” he recalls. “I experimented and made decorative bowls. I took them to work and everyone loved them and wanted to buy them, so I knew I was onto something.”

Rivera has since refined his craft, transforming the fruit into a range of sculptures reflecting Southwest culture, including kachinas, mudheads, masks, vessels and storyteller dolls. “The more unique the gourd, the more opportunities it presents,” the artist says. Other natural elements, such as yucca stalks, feathers, shells and turquoise nuggets, also are incorporated. Much of Rivera’s inspiration comes from the region’s American Indian and prehistoric cultures—Anasazi, Hohokam and Solado—and from his surroundings in Placitas, New Mexico, outside of Santa Fe.

This pony warrior stands 11"H and features such details as a horsehair headdress, handcrafted gourd drum, leather medicine bag and beaded necklaces.

Rivera grew up in Fallbrook, California, where his father practiced woodcarving and his mother sketched clothing designs as a hobby. He took art classes as a teen and hoped to pursue the field in college, but opted instead to become a welder at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Over the years, he dabbled in arts and crafts, and, two years after stumbling upon the gourd farm, made a swift and steadfast decision to quit his job and pursue art full-time.

This headfirst leap into his career had an uneasy start—his initial attempt to market his gourds saw about 60 galleries rejecting the pieces before one gift shop agreed to carry them. Luckily, collectors quickly became interested in the self-taught artist’s work, and today, his creations have been carried at Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indian-apolis and Rockwell Museum of Western Art in New York.

Rivera has won numerous awards and has been represented by three galleries for more than 30 years, including Joan Cawley Gallery in Scottsdale. Director Marilynn Spiegel says Rivera is a pioneer in his medium. “He is credited with elevating gourds from a craft to a fine art,” she states. “His work goes from absolutely elegant to pieces that can go in rustic cabins.”

Rivera sculpted porcelain antlers for this deer chanter kachina.

Collectors note the breadth of Rivera’s work and its regional influence. “Robert’s amazing and sophisticated use of gourds and other materials to represent the peoples of the Southwest appealed to us almost immediately upon
our first encounter with it,” ex-plains one couple from Minnesota. Another couple, Faye and Ron Douglass of Paradise Valley, Arizona, own more than 15 sculptures by Rivera and value his meticulousness. “One of the amazing things that draws us to Robert’s work is how very clever his ideas are and how carefully each piece is made,” they comment. “How would one ever get these ideas and then find the time to make them all with such care and microscopic attention to detail?”

To questions like these, Rivera has a simple answer: “I can tell just by seeing a gourd exactly what I’m going to make with it.” And so, more than 30 years after his first encounter with a gourd, Rivera has amassed a storage shed filled with them—each allocated with a design. Numbering nearly 2,000, the gourds wait to be crafted by this Phoenix Home & Garden Master of the Southwest.

This grouping of Apache basket kachinas stands 28"H and carries miniature bundles of yucca stalks.

Parrot feathers, horsehair and turquoise adorn a kachina rattle.

Rivera travels the world looking for gourds; a few recent trips have taken him to Pennsylvania’s Amish country and to Nigeria. He notes that to date he has used only eight or nine of the more than 100 varieties of gourds available. He chose snake gourds to sculpt three Navajo singers.

The artist says he looks at the shape and size of a gourd to help determine what it will become. Here, he holds a gourd that will be crafted into an antelope mask.

A painted gourd jug seems to balance on the head of this Zuni water maiden.

These masks from a private collection display a range of designs crafted by Rivera. They are embellished with such items as deer antlers, pheasant and parrot feathers, turquoise and yucca stalks.