Collection: SANDPAINTING & ART

The Navajo Indian Tribe
create the world's most
beautiful and intricate
mandalas using a traditional
sandpainting technique.

For the Navajo, each design element in a sand painting imparts meaning for the sacred
ceremony performed to honor the gods. The soft and subtle color of the sands and ground
minerals, the infinite variety in the repetition of the lines, the abstract conception of the
figures of the gods and transport the observer into a strange new world of beauty.

Sand paintings, as created by Native American Navajo Indians, were not made to be an "art object," but rather were made as part of an elaborate healing ritual or ceremony. ... The belief was that the sand painting provided a portal so that the healing spirits could come through the painting and heal the patient.