Ira Lujan, Chacoan Sun Dagger, right

In these paired glass works, Chacoan Sun Dagger (Left and Right), Ira Lujan (Taos Pueblo) translates one of the most celebrated archaeoastronomical phenomena of the ancient Southwest into a contemporary sculptural language. The pieces reference the Sun Dagger at Fajada Butte in Chaco Canyon, where Ancestral Puebloan builders engineered a precise interaction between stone slabs and sunlight to mark solstices and equinoxes.

Lujan’s incised spirals echo the petroglyph at Fajada Butte, while the embedded metallic oxides suspended in glass evoke shifting light, dust, and time. As daylight moves across the surface, the etched arcs alternately sharpen and dissolve, recalling the way the solar “dagger” bisects the spiral in a moment of celestial alignment. By casting this phenomenon in glass—an inherently luminous and fragile material—Lujan bridges ancestral knowledge and contemporary Indigenous presence. The steel bases ground the works materially and conceptually, suggesting architecture, endurance, and Pueblo continuity. Together, the pair becomes both homage and reactivation: a meditation on timekeeping, cosmology, and the enduring sophistication of Chacoan science reframed through modern Pueblo artistry.

Made from ladled glass, the artist highlights the texture and brightness of the material. The earthen colors reflect the natural environment at Chaco Canyon and other Ancestral Pueblo sites across New Mexico.