Charlene Sanchez Reano, b. 1960. San Felipe Pueblo by birth, Kewa by marriage. She married into a dynasty and became one of its leading hands.
Charlene Reano came to one of the Southwest's great mosaic traditions the way you come to a marriage — from outside, by choice. She was born at San Felipe Pueblo, not at Kewa, and studied art at New Mexico Highlands University, working out her own inlay in silver and gold. Then she married Frank Reano, of Santo Domingo (Kewa) Pueblo, and stepped into the Reano family's shell-mosaic tradition — the same ancient Pueblo technique her sister-in-law Angie Reano Owen is credited with reviving. Angie taught her the mosaic. What Charlene built from it, with Frank, has hung among the family's best work for more than forty years.
Charlene and Frank make their jewelry as one, and the division of hands is clean: Charlene designs, cuts, and lays the mosaic — the composition and placement of every tile; Frank grinds the shell and does the silverwork and finishing. The pieces go out under both their names. She works fine mosaic tile in mother of pearl across its natural tones — white, brown, gold, grey — with jet, green turquoise, and coral, patterned tight and clean. It's the Kewa mosaic tradition, with a lineage its own galleries trace back to Ancestral Puebloan ancestors, worked in a style she and Frank made their own. (No personal maker's-mark is documented for her — consistent with Pueblo shell-and-stone mosaic, where attribution runs through gallery and family provenance rather than a stamped mark. We name that rather than guess.)
Charlene has drawn a steady collection of ribbons from the Santa Fe Indian Market, the Eight Northern Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show, the IACA, and the Heard Museum Guild Fair. The Reano family took part in the very first show at Pittsburgh's Four Winds Gallery back in 1974 and has been represented there ever since — a multi-decade relationship — and Charlene's work is carried across the established Native-art galleries and museum shops of the Southwest. A San Felipe woman who married into a Kewa jewelry family and became one of its most collected contemporary makers.
Know more about Charlene? Contact T.Skies.