Dance Moccasins 1935

Michael Trekur made this drawing of Zuni dance moccasins in New York City in 1935, probably with colored pencils. I imagine him carefully rendering the different parts of the footwear, from the buffalo skin to the rawhide laces. It feels like he’s trying to document every little detail, from the front and back view. What might he have been thinking as he made it? Maybe he was thinking about the people who would have worn them, the dances they would have danced, the earth they would have touched. I find myself thinking of the movement these moccasins would have allowed, the sounds they might have made, the stories they could tell. I also imagine how Trekur’s rendering of the moccasins is his own kind of dance. It becomes his translation of an object, and like any translation it transforms the original into something else entirely. His drawing is a record of a dance between the eye, the hand, and the world.