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Friday morning people from various pueblos hustled in the hot sun to prepare for the weekend’s 35th Annual Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show.

“The logs were a surprise to me,” said Wenona Brascoupe, show coordinator. The Eight Northern’s advisory committee suggested months ago that it would be cool to have something for people to sit on while they watched the dances, she said.

Logs from San Ildefonso pueblo appeared Thursday afternoon.

Friday morning, a group of men with chain saws turned them into seats. These log slabs lie under an awing of freshly cut tree branches that provide welcome shade for the audience. Cottonwood branches came from Pojoaque pueblo. Willow arrived from Picuris pueblo. Branches from other pueblos arrived throughout the morning at the Eight Northern Visitors Center at Ohkay Owingeh.

Brascoupe, who is working on the show for the first time, said that the experience has been rewarding. “It makes me happy that we can provide a venue for this event,” she said. “We’re all working together to make this a good experience.”

This year the organizers added a hospitality tent for the 220 artists they expect. They also added a tent dancers will use for changing. Saturday and Sunday dances are scheduled throughout the day every 45 minutes.

Organizers expect 18,000 paid admissions during the weekend event. Children are free.

With this year’s proceeds, they want a landscape architect  to develop a plan to turn the event grounds into a park with trees, permanent seating and other amenities, said Carol Guzman of  the Eight Northern Pueblos Arts and Crafts Show.

In the early days of the show, pueblos took turns as hosts. By the 1990s Eight Northern was the largest Indian art festival in the United States, noted for its fine traditional work and access to Native American artists. With the popularity of the event came snarled traffic, parking woes and mountains of garbage.

Logistically, it became a problem for the individual pueblos, Guzman said. “So the decision was made to build this center.” She noted that it takes 10 working days to put the show together at the site and another five days to take it down.

Glenn Gomez, a Taos/ Pojoaque potter  and an Eight Northern advisory committee member, said he looks forward to this weekend’s show.

“It’s a reunion of classmates, artists and other people,” Gomez said. He’s been a potter for 18 years and a participant in the show since 1989. He said he enjoys the chance to talk with people from around the world about his work.

“It’s been a pretty good show for me,” he said.

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