Golden Dawn

Christened Tse Tsan (Golden Dawn) in the Tewa language of her people, Pablita Velarde was born on September 19, 1918 in the Pueblo of Santa Clara some twenty miles north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The people of Santa Clara are descendants of the ancient cliff dwellers of Puye, Shupinna, and other settlements of the Pajarito Plateau, and are owners and custodians of the Puye ruins.

During early childhood Pablita attended St. Catherine's Mission School at Santa Fe, where she first learned to speak English. At seventeen she was graduated from the Santa Fe Indian School where she studied art under the direction of Dorothy Dunn, teacher and pioneer instructor of Indian artists, whose sincere interest in Pablita did much to encourage and develop this great talent. Pablita spent the next two years as assistant art teacher at the Santa Clara Pueblo Day School.

Recognizing Pablita as a person of unusual artistic abilities, Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Thompson Seton took her with them in 1938 on a lecture tour of the midwest and east, intent upon broadening the scope of her endeavors. Although suffering an occasional feeling of homesickness, the experience was most revealing to this shy, sensitive, young Indian girl. Upon her return to Santa Clara, she literally built her own studio—doing everything herself, except the most manual of labor. Perpetuating the traditional art of her people, Pablita continued to paint, satisfying an all-consuming urge which she was unable to resist.

From 1939 to 1941 Pablita was employed by the Government in a CCC project to paint murals for the museum at Bandelier, where duties also included guiding tourists, and explaining her murals to them. The paintings she did at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico might well be considered among her greatest, achievements. Much detailed knowledge and depth of vision was required in these composite pictures, portraying vividly the daily life and crafts of the Puebloans of the Rio Grande.

Pablita Velarde's art reveals a work that expresses basic integrity, a faithfulness to her people and to her culture. Knowing her material most thoroughly, this versatile Indian woman set down with conviction and originality the deep, rich symbolism of pueblo life, handling styles from naive realism to the most esoteric abstract. By intensive study and exploration of the legendary and mythological aspects of her Pueblo, Pablita contributed not only to art, but also did a service of enormous value to ethnology. Perhaps that is why her art is hung in the Hall of Ethnology as well as in the Art Gallery of the Museum at Santa Fe. Through ingenious composition, her painting, “Old Father, the Story Teller,” is predicted to go down in history as a great American painting because of its profound concept and illusion so convincingly produced by the artist. It is a new, yet related, version of the old life-linked legends and beliefs of people everywhere.

Skilled in media such as casein, tempera, and oil, Pablita also used earth colors, a technique employed by her ancestors, whose kiva murals were actually earth paintings. Hand-ground rock and earth, mixed with water and glue, Pablita's earth paintings convey an impression of endless source material at this artist's facile brush tip. Using design forms taken from pottery and pictographs for basic themes, she produced some outstanding abstracts, such designs being peculiarly suited to this native earth color medium.

Many honors have been bestowed upon Pablita Velarde by the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonials, the Philbrook Art Center and the New Mexico State Fair. In 1953 she won the Philbrook Art Center's Grand Purchase Prize. At the Gallup Ceremonials in 1954 she was presented the French Government Award, Palmes de Academiques, for outstanding services rendered in art. In 1955 she swept the entire Inter-Tribal Ceremonials with her numerous awards, and during that year she received special recognition from the Twentieth Century Art Club of St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1956 Pablita was commissioned to do a Corn Dance mural for a building in Houston, Texas, and in 1959 she did an excellent earth painting mural for the new Western Skies Hotel in Albuquerque. Inspired by a Navajo sand painting, this mural depicted the legend of the “Buffalo Who Never Die.”

Pablita was commissioned in 1960 by New Mexico Magazine to do three interpretative Indian paintings of the Nativity Story for the Christmas issue. These inspiring renditions received many favorable comments, and are now owned by the State of New Mexico. During 1960 Pablita also completed a large oil painting mural of the Santa Clara Buffalo Dance for the First National Bank at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Pablita's paintings are in the permanent collections of the Gilcrease Foundation, Philbrook Art Center, Santa Fe Art Gallery, the Ethnology Department of the Santa Fe Museum, the De Young Museum in San Francisco, and the Denver Museum, as well as in many private collections throughout the country. One of Pablita's most significant achievements is the writing of an extraordinary book of tribal legends entitled “Old Father, The Story Teller,” which is beautifully illustrated in color with her paintings. These famous paintings, characterizing Pueblo life, have brought wide acclaim to Pablita, and were the inspiration for her book. One of the legends, “The Stars,” is a migration myth of the Santa Clara tribe, and its illustration is the title painting, “Old Father, The Story Teller,” never before reproduced in color. Intriguing to both adults and children, this handsome, large book is simply and charmingly written and opens to view events and ideas heretofore unknown outside the Tewa world.

Pablita Velarde led a very active life with her painting, lecturing and writing, and lived in Albuquerque where her children, Helen and Herbert, and granddaughter, Margarete, also resided. She was a member of the Corrales Branch of the National League of American Pen Women, the New Mexico Art League, the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonials Association, Council of American Indians, Kachina Branch of Toastmistresses International, and is mentioned in “Who's Who of New Mexico.”

Regarded as one of the most outstanding Indian woman artists, Pablita was the subject of many magazine articles. Her warm personality was reflected in her wide smile, keen wit and fine sense of humor, but underneath she was modest and retiring. Always striving for improvement through long and hard work, Pablita was most deserving of the fame and éclat that came her way.

—From an article in a pamphlet published by Enchanted Mesa; a gallery owned by Margaret and Fred Chase which was located on Central Avenue in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The gallery is no longer in business but was touted as being “Albuquerque’s Most Distinctive Indian Shop”

Another Exhibit Also Worth Seeing: “A New Deal for Tse Tsan: Pablita Velarde at Bandelier” opens at the Museum of Indian arts & Culture (Museum Hill in Santa Fe) on Sunday, Feb 18th. The exhibit features almost 70 of the more than 84 paintings that Velarde made for the part the Works Projects Administration between 1939 and 1945. The exhibit will continue through Jan 6, 2008.