Basket Dance, San Ildefonso Pueblo

Back in the 1930's, the Pueblo art and culture of New Mexico was almost entirely unknown to the rest of the United States. Then, as part of the CCC Program during the Depression, it was agreed to develop one of the great Anasazi ruins in the then-new Bandalier National Monument, and a young Pueblo girl from nearby Santa Clara Pueblo was given the chance to create native art for the main park facility. Pablita Velarde was literally a trailblazer in making Pueblo Art accessible to the rest of the world, and her then-inexpensive paintings of Pueblo life became not only an index to a vanishing way of life, but a method of preserving it.

Pablita (Tse Tsan) Velarde (1918-2006) was raised on Santa Clara Pueblo. At five, she attended St. Catherine's Indian Boarding School in Santa Fe. She transferred to the Santa Fe Indian School where she was a student of Dorothy Dunn. Dunn had established the first fine arts program and painting department at the school.

In the 1920's, Pueblo women were seldom educated and Native American artists were always male (although some pueblos developed lines of pottery created by women). Verlarde was one of the first female students in the program. Not only was she a woman, trying to be an artist, but in a culture which discouraged such ambitions. As she said later, "Painting was not considered women's work in my time. A woman was supposed to be just a woman, like a housewife and a mother and chief cook. Those were things I wasn't interested in."

Bandalier was very much a "New Deal" historical phenomenon. Tens of millions of Americans were out of work when Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration created both the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Government-sponsored work programs, the CCC built the Bandalier facility while the WPA helped pay for Velarde, as one of tens of thousands of hungry artists during the Depression, to decorate it. Her long-term association with Bandalier, during which she created over 70 paintings of Pueblo life, not only broke barriers for female Native American artists but were ethnographically priceless in showing how the Pueblo peoples lived their lives. A surge of interest in the East first led to her financial independence; she moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico (then a small town) where she lived for the rest of her life, but she never stopped creating.

Velarde's paintings were originally casein on Masonite board and glass (Casein paint is a water-based paint made from a protein precipitated from milk). Later, Velarde used a variety of techniques and media. These included tempera, watercolor, oils, and natural pigments that she collected and ground herself. Velarde opened doors for other artists, especially Pueblo women. Over the years, her styles naturally changed. Here is an early example of the kind of art Velarde created at Bandalier:

Harvest Dance (1940)

Later, she not only developed in different artistic media but became culturally far-ranging, including not only the Pueblo peoples but the Navajo living in close proximity to them in New Mexico and Arizona:

Ram Dancer, 2002

Her meticulous images of religious dances and festivals were a visual description of Pueblo life in the '30's (and for long before) and Native American life in the Southwest into the 21st century. Her Indian name, Tse Tsan, means "Golden Dawn".

Yei

Velarde was in every sense a trail-blazer, but she was also a dedicated artist whose works continue to illuminate life in the high deserts of the U.S.

Sources: Santa Fe New Mexican article upon Velarde's death in 2006

Bandalier National Monument (includes slideshow of her Bandalier artworks)

Adobe Gallery