THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 15, 1995 TAG: 9510130073
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 132 lines
IN HER OWN WAY, Nora Naranjo-Morse is living evidence of cultural continuity.
A member of the Santa Clara tribe, the New Mexican mother of twins digs for clay with her bare hands. She mixes clay and volcanic ash with her bare feet.
Just like her mother and many of her relatives.
And just like the Native Americans represented in the Southwestern pueblo pottery show opening today at The Chrysler Museum of Art.
Though she is not represented in the exhibition, Naranjo-Morse spoke here Saturday night for the membership preview.
There is a reason she's not in the show: Naranjo-Morse does not make the famous red or black clay vessels traditional to her tribe. And the Chrysler exhibit's purpose is to show how pots from various tribes looked about the same in the 1880s as in 1994.
But Naranjo-Morse makes contemporary figurative sculptures. Her work is political and reflects the spirit of the comic trickster. She shows in galleries and gets written up in national art magazines.
Yet Naranjo-Morse considers herself a traditional pueblo woman whose art follows the cultural continuum.
As a writer and poet, she is articulate on her subject of pueblo pottery. She speaks from inside the experience.
Though her work is atypical, ``it's still the same clay,'' said Naranjo-Morse, speaking recently from her home on the reservation in Espanola, N.M., northwest of Santa Fe. ``The clay comes from the same place my mother gathers her clay from.
``Those basic elemental threads are there - appreciating where I got it, enjoying the process and having that cultural connection.
``Those threads are good. If people understand it, that's good. If they don't, I will still make it.''
A major point of the show - ``Singing the Clay: Pueblo Pottery of the Southwest Yesterday and Today'' - is to show the continuation of the traditions: of finding and processing the clay, hand-building and then painting the pots and, finally, firing outdoors with wood and dung.
As of last week, Naranjo-Morse had not seen the exhibit, but she knew a few of the potters and was aware of the show's concept.
``Well, I think it's good. Because the people who come to see the exhibit will get some important information about this beautiful tradition.
``They will see that it's still going on, and how it's being manifested at this point in time.''
In many museums, Native Americans are presented in the past tense, she said.
``You know, there are these dioramas with scenes from the past, with native people frozen in time.
``But this exhibit brings you into what's happening now, and how we're still alive, and making clay.''
Singing the Clay'' was organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum, which began collecting Native American pottery as early as 1881. The museum was among the nation's first to exhibit the pots as art.
By now, Cincinnati's collection has grown to more than 300 examples of pueblo pottery. (A pueblo is a Native American village, on a tribal reservation.)
Cincinnati added to its collection in various ways. In 1885, an exchange with Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History brought to the museum a few dozen pots dating from the 1870s into the early 1880s.
The next year, 82 micaceous pots from Tesuque Pueblo were given to the museum by a railroad company. Then, in 1937, dealer Amelia Elizabeth White gave 23 clay vessels after she closed her Gallery of American Indian Art in New York.
The last major addition came in 1994, when the museum commissioned and purchased 38 works from artists from 11 tribes, with the ``Singing the Clay'' exhibit in mind.
The tribes represented are Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Laguna, Zia, Santo Domingo, Tesuque, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Taos and Picuris.
The quality of the clay vessels ``is just super,'' said Mark Clark, the Chrysler's curator of decorative arts. ``For a lot of people in this area who haven't been around the Southwest, it's going to be something new.''
For Naranjo-Morse, Native American pottery is something old.
She grew up near Taos Pueblo with her parents, six sisters and two brothers. ``My mother always worked with pottery. And it was natural for us to be part of that process - working near her, and going with her to get the clay.
``And in that process of gathering the clay, and taking the rocks out and mixing it with volcanic ash, I began to realize some really important things,'' she said.
``And those important things are what really brought me back to making clay.''
The urge to make clay forms came to her after she earned a liberal-arts degree from the College of Santa Fe. Working in clay ``is familiar,'' she said. ``It's comfortable, it's real.''
But it is the spiritual aspect of working in clay that holds her, she said.
``It is hard to express exactly what that is. I don't want to come off as being phony. A lot of people talk the talk. But it's something that is really important to me,'' she said.
The clay ``helps you reconnect to some very important relationships. I think that's what my culture understood and passed on to the children.''
To begin with, the finding and digging of the clay is a sacred activity. As with divining for water, locating the clay requires intuition as well as knowledge, she said.
She described her current clay pit as ``such a beautiful place. When I go, I'm really excited. Once you get to the place, you start looking for the way it feels.''
Pueblo women learn to create a flow in their lives, she said, so that one inspired activity leads naturally to another.
She explained the philosophy: ``For instance, a clay vessel is similar to an adobe house. You live in this large vessel. Even physically, they're both made of the same material.
``If you see it in that context, when you are plastering the house, you're just making a very large bowl. And you can translate that into making a happy, healthy child.''
All of these activities are undertaken with a spiritual consciousness, she said.
``If you see that as a continuum, then all of these things combine as part of your life. That's part of that cultural thread, the flowing of one thing into the next.
``Being easy, and confident and conscious.''
For a Native American clay artist like Naranjo-Morse, there is no word for art. ``The whole idea is to have a balanced and artful life.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
A major point of the Chrysler exhibit is to show the continuation of
traditions: of finding and processing the clay, hand-building and
then painting the pots and, last, firing outdoors.
Photo
THE CHRYSLER MUSEUM OF ART
These clay vessels, made in 1994 by members of the Zia tribe, are
included in ``Singing the Clay.''
by CNB