Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

Brian Vallo, director of the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, touches up the wall around a painting by Tonita Pe¤a of San Ildefonso and Cochiti pueblos. Each of the eight female artists represented in the center's "Timeless Beauty" exhibit left a distinctive mark in the world of Pueblo art.

Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

This piece is a good example of the work produced by San Ildefonso Pueblo's Blue Corn, an artist best known for re-energizing the craft of multi-colored pottery for which her pueblo is known.

Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

Indian Pueblo Cultural Center employees Felipe Estudillo Colon and Amy Johnson measure a wall while setting up "Timeless Beauty," an exhibit of art by eight Pueblo Indian women. Johnson is curator of the exhibit, which opened Sunday and continues through June 14.

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Pablita Velarde's painting "Deer Dancer" grabs you as soon as you walk into the "Timeless Beauty" exhibit at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.

Velarde's 1981 work, vividly colored with natural pigments and faithful in detail to the Pueblo ceremony it depicts, almost jumps off the wall at you.

It's the first thing you see in this display, a collection of works by eight female Pueblo artists of the 20th century, all of whom are deceased.

The second thing you see, the untitled, undated work next to Velarde's painting, is an amalgamation of Pueblo designs and symbols, as colorful, maybe even more colorful, than the Velarde work but as abstract in presentation as Velarde's is true to life.

It is by Helen Hardin, Velarde's daughter.

Velarde (1918-2006) and Hardin (1943-'84) are connected by blood and their Santa Clara Pueblo heritage. Both tell the story of their lineage through their art, but in ways distinctive enough to stamp their work with their own personalities and unique creative impulses.

The same could be said for all the artists represented in this show. They either revitalized or advanced elements of their ancient cultures or contributed something completely fresh to them.

• Helen Cordero (1915-'94) of Cochiti Pueblo created the storyteller, a now familiar and very popular motif in figurative pottery.

• Blue Corn (1921-'99) of San Ildefonso Pueblo is known for revitalizing the craft of polychrome, or multi-colored pottery, for which San Ildefonso is known.

• Margaret Tafoya (1904-2001), Santa Clara, perfected the increasingly rare skill of creating large water storage jars. She is famous for beautifully polished pieces of exceptional size and form.

• Lucy M. Lewis (1898-'92), Acoma Pueblo, took pottery to new levels of sophistication, a fact evident in subtle curves, thin walls, black-on-white themes and lissome polychrome designs.

• Maria Martinez (1884-1980), San Ildefonso, probably the most famous of Pueblo potters, worked with her husband, Julian, to develop difficult firing techniques that led to her renowned black-on-black pottery.

• Tonita Peña (1893-1949), San Ildefonso and Cochiti pueblos, was a potter, a painter and a teacher. She is best known for her paintings, so fluid, elegant and filled with refined detail that it's said you can almost hear the drums and the singers in her works depicting Pueblo ceremonies.

But Peña's greatest contribution to Pueblo art and culture may have been as a teacher. She taught painting and pottery-making at the Santa Fe Indian School, and one of her students was Pablita Velarde.

Peña inspired Velarde as surely as Velarde inspired her artist daughter, Hardin.

That kind of passing on is a common theme in the Pueblo art community, said Amy Johnson, collections manager for the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center and curator of the "Timeless Beauty" exhibit.

She said extended family members often played a role in the creation of an individual artist's work.

For example, Maria Martinez's husband, Julian, painted the pots she created, and after Julian died in 1943, Martinez worked with her son, Popovi Da.

"They had all sorts of family members helping them," Johnson said during a phone interview this week. "I'm pretty sure it continues that way today. There are great-great grandchildren (of the exhibit's eight artists) who are artists now."

In the case of Velarde and Hardin, it was more a matter of stimulation than collaboration. Hardin, no doubt, was prompted by her mother's successful career to become an artist. But mother and daughter followed different paths to the same end.

Velarde painted scores of scenes from legends and stories she heard from her grandfather and great-grandfather during her childhood at Santa Clara. She painted them with charming simplicity and clarity of vision.

Her work was so faithful to its origins that it upset some of the older Pueblo people.

"They said these were our stories, and I shouldn't be spreading them around," Velarde told The Tribune in a 1990 interview. "But now, I think they are glad I did because at least they have something to show their children."

Velarde's paintings became a fortunate substitute for a storytelling tradition that pretty much died out with her grandfather's generation.

Hardin, seeking a voice of her own, purposely forged a style different from her mother's. She put an abstract twist in old Pueblo themes.

She worked in acrylics, inks, acrylic washes, acrylic varnishes and copper-plate etchings.

In addition to brushes, pens and sprays, traditional tools of the artist, Hardin used compasses, protractors, rulers and French curves, tools usually associated with architects.

Hardin was just 41 when she died after a battle with cancer in 1984, more than 20 years before Velarde's death. But both left indelible marks in the world of Pueblo art.

Of the eight artists represented in the "Timeless Beauty" exhibit, curator Johnson, 39, met only Velarde.

"She was a very feisty woman, a wonderful conversationalist who would talk about any and everything," Johnson said of Velarde. "She had a sense of humor, very sharp-witted. I wish I had been able to know the others."

But Johnson, who is of Isleta Pueblo and Navajo descent, feels a connection to all eight artists. And she and other members of the cultural center staff have assembled biographies of the artists — facts gleaned from books, magazine articles and newspaper clippings — that give fascinating glimpses into their lives and their culture.

We learn that Acoma potter Lewis was a shy and modest woman who got her start in ceramics by selling ashtrays to tourists along old Route 66 in the 1920s.

We find out that Peña, who was born at San Ildefonso, was able to draw on the traditions of two pueblos because in 1905, when she was 12, she went to live with relatives at Cochiti after her mother and younger sister died during a flu epidemic.

We discover that the bear paw design is common in Santa Clara pottery because, according to pueblo legend, a bear led the Santa Clara people to water during a severe drought.

We are informed that Helen Cordero's first storyteller figure was inspired by her grandfather, whom she remembers telling her stories when she was a child, and that her storyteller figures have eyes that are shut and mouths that are open.

In the text accompanying a Cordero turtle storyteller — six children on the back of a large turtle — we learn that, according to Pueblo tales, turtle takes the children to a safe place and cares for them during times of conflict.

Viewers might wish the exhibit had more examples of a particular artist's work, but most are represented by enough pieces to suggest their range of interests and styles.

Johnson's favorite work in the exhibit is a Margaret Tafoya black jar, not one of her signature larger pieces but a smaller one in the shape of a vase and decorated with bear paw designs.

"The sheen on it is gorgeous," Johnson said. "It's just spectacular."

Her second favorite is a 1980 aquatint etching by Hardin, titled "Contemplation."

It's a departure from Hardin's abstract tendencies, a more realistic depiction of a figure wrapped in a blanket and sitting quietly.

"It is very different from most of her work," Johnson said. "It's so simple it stands out. It's just someone thinking about something. It's very quiet. I think that's why I like it."