Another piece, a bronze cast from a stone original, is of a medicine woman, whose face and long, flowing hair encompass a hollowed circle, which cradles a medicine bag. The circle, too, is meaningful in Native American culture, says Daniel, who notes its significance and presence in other aspects of their spirituality,
Another piece, an eagle with a broad wing of splayed delicate and thin sculpted feathers of creamy, translucent stone, "weeps." It weeps because it is broken. "I was very proud of it," states Daniel, who invested considerable time and energy into it. "It hurts my heart and it hurts this heart," he says, acknowledging his connection to the stone as he places the tips of his index fingers together to illustrate the "even keel (they) were on at one time." Yes, he can patch it up, but he will never sell it.
Most of the work he sells has ended up in the hands of private collectors who can afford his work. While that alone might signal to some that someone has "arrived," Daniel is pleased but modest about "where" he is in life with his work. While collectors have rewarded him well for his work, he also remembers where he came from and what it took to get to where he is now.
"It took all those years to get me to (this) point," says Daniel, matter-of-factly recalling his early days in Albuquerque twenty years ago. Yeh, he was a "starving artist," living under a viaduct.
He laughs-you understand, it’s been an incredible, not-so-romantic journey-and recalls he possessed little more than his "knife, a small electric grinder and a couple of files." Barely getting by and "eating in missions," he was, he says, cognizant of one thing: "I knew what I wanted." "Now, it's the good life," says Daniel, elated but cautious, tempering his good fortune with memories of his crying out and of "asking the Great Creator to help (him) out." "I chuckle a little bit (now), but in the back of my mind, I know where I came from, so I incorporate that into my work, too, of how I started, how I struggled-I wish I had my earlier work, because I buckled down on that," says Daniel, recalling how desperate he was to succeed.
While he grew into his work and experienced success, most of the money he earned was funneled into booze. Admitting he "hit the bottle," the alcohol swelled his head with notions of exaggerated fame. "I thought I was a big star," says Daniel, who, at the time, was making "lots of money." The toll of the bottle would eventually come due.
Quitting drinking six years ago, Daniel faced escalating health problems. In the process of improving his health, he also talks of "getting back to that different stage, different level," of reaching to the stone to touch it with his heart-not that he ever lost sight of his work, despite binging for a two to three week period after the sale of a piece. That Daniel never lost sight of his work was due to a kind of "blind spot," ironically, which allowed him to "see" his work to the exclusion of everything else, including the storm of alcoholism that raged about him. If clouded, he remained focused on his work, which became even sharper when he sobered up, providing a whole "different outlook" with work "more from the heart." Daniel has doubts of reaching the level of Master Sculptor. "I'll probably never reach that level," Daniel says matter-of-factly, though it doesn't blunt his quest for perfection. Again, he looks to the "weeping" eagle, passing judgment on it. Oh, he could have fixed it and passed it off, but he would not compromise himself, knowing it's faulted. "It's got to look right to me," says Daniel. "I guess I've always been that way-my house always clean, floors always mopped, dishes always done. I think my mother put that in my brain a long time ago," says Daniel, recalling his mother saying, "You do the best that you can in life and one person out there will notice that." Daniel thinks for a moment, responding elliptically when asked who he counted most among those who influenced him. He recalls the days of his youth spent on the reservation at Mt. Pleasant. While most were poor, it didn't stop Daniel, his five brothers and two sisters from enjoying the company of their friends in a community where doors always remained unlocked and families stuck together. "You were always welcome at somebody's house," recalls Daniel, noting his mother's house was like that. At the time, his mother had very little, which held true to the families of Daniel's friends who visited his mother's house, but it mattered little to his mother who shared what they had with Daniel's friends. Daniel recalls his mother telling him, "You always want to give" and not "to worry about tomorrow." Maybe they only had fry bread to share with Daniel's friends, but whatever they had, they shared. He connects his mother's teaching and of life's shared lessons on the reservation to serve as a model for equality. "I don't think that we're better than the other person-higher or lower. "Everybody," Daniel observes, "is on the same even keel." It is a notion which encompasses the whole of his life and work. It allows him to be on the same "even keel" with the stone of Mother Earth he sculpts to those who purchase his finished work. Daniel's intense feelings for his sculpture, he believes, parallels that of women giving birth to and raising their children. "I know how women feel when they're giving birth; I feel the same way with my stone," says Daniel, who gives the stone life and painstakingly nurtures it to completion. And like a child that leaves his mother to go off to college, Daniel's work, too, will go on into the hands of private collectors. His feelings, like a mother's longing for her child, is intense: "I got so much energy, time-and I hate to see them go. After they leave my hands, I wonder how they're doing out there." when he is asked whether collectors appreciate his work as much as he, he tells a story of a collector, a woman and psychic, who purchased one of his sculptures. It was her sensitivity to the energy invested in Daniels' sculpture that caused her to discern his troubled state of health and prompted her to call him. "I know you're sick, aren't you?" she inquired of Daniel. "Yeh, how did you know?" Daniel responded, hesitantly. "I can feel it in your stone," the caller replied. Incredibly, the call had come after he had suffered a heart attack.