At the edge of a mesa house, a tihu begins with what water leaves behind: the root of a cottonwood, pulled from a bank and read for its grain. The carver does not ask it to become smooth. Facets remain beneath the kaolin ground, a record of pressure before the first pigment arrives.
The mask is a field of directions
Yellow turns toward the north and northwest; blue-green gathers in the west and southwest; red holds the south and southeast. White faces east, while the colours together belong to the zenith. Beneath them all, black is the nadir — a ground, not an absence.