Turtle Island– Augie Velasquez

Among the Iroquois human life began when the Skywoman was pushed out of her domain.
She fell to an island that grew when a Muskrat brought mud from under the sea and placed it on a Turtle’s shell. Turtle and Island grew to make a home for Skywoman, who shortly gave birth to a daughter.

“The beginning of the World”
Legend say that when the Earth cracks it is just the Turtle stretching.

The Last Escape - Augie Velasquez

Once we were many. Mother Earth trembled beneath our thunder.
Eyes red and wet with dust, that dust that kept the sun from reaching the Earth.
Once a stranger came
Now only silence remains,

Note: .

My granfather, Juan Velasquez, was born in New Mexico and worked for the Sante Fe Railway as a track layer and thereby arriving in Riverside, California in the late 1800's, where he settled and raised a family. My grandfather's family was from Sonora Mexico. This is the reason I chose the Yaqui Deer Dancer as my logo; I feel it represents my heritage and my spirit.
From Mother Earth we came. She nourished us and to her we return. I am self taught and work with images which appear in my subconcious, never duplicating.
I purchase stone from all parts of the world. Mother Earth is well represented. I sometimes feel the presence of energy while cutting into the stone. I believe this energy to be the release of the spirit, perhaps that of a restless soul or such as the first breath of a newborn.
Often I feel I am guided through this experience, and feel most complete when working with the stone. It's as though first the image appears, my soul becomes a flame that only sculpting can put out. I have a life long involvement with sculpting of stone, wood, clay and ceramics.
A native of California, I mastered my craft as a Stonemason and Brickmason in the Southern California building industry. Always in my mind's eye, I saw the natural carvings in the stones as they were placed and formed in the various architecturally designed projects of the building industry. After resettling to new lodging in the Northern California foothills of the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains with all their many unique stone formations, I felt a special need to share what I saw and felt in these stones.
These ancient stones that have been placed here with us from the past. The "natural beauty"
of the stone itself and then the design that speaks to me to carve, perhaps it is from my ancestors, the Great Aztec and Mayan Stone Carvers of ancient Times.