Helen Hardin.

The Artist in a Bicultural Society

Helen Hardin was a bicultural artist with Anglo and Native-American roots. Daughter of the famous traditional painter Pablita Velarde of the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico, Hardin was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1943 and raised as a Catholic. Her father was on the police force and later worked for the federal government. Her mother frantically painted murals to become a professional artist.

Hardin and her brother learned to be independent at an early age. As a child, Hardin was influenced by her mother's techniques and realistic images. At age nine, she exhibited her small paintings with her mother's. Hardin was determined to be different from her mother.

In high school, Hardin took a drafting course that introduced her to architectural tools and templates. Upon graduation, she studied art history and anthropology at the University of New Mexico. At the University of Arizona, she participated in the Southwest Indian Art Project, which was sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Lacking formal art training, Hardin independently studied Pueblo pottery designs, rock petroglyphs and pictographs. Although she fiercely claimed to be "her own person" and nontraditional, she was slightly influenced by the Cubist style of her teacher Joe Herrera.

Her search for identity was woven with her spiritual explorations. She signed her early paintings in her Indian name, Tsa-Sah-Wee-Eh, or Little Standing Spruce, to separate herself from her celebrated mother's reputation. She referred to her painted Pueblo Tewa spirits as saints, which inspired he- he most. They were the invisible life forces or messengers that also guarded such life elements as the rain and the growth of crops.

"A lot of my work has to do with fantasy and spiritual things, with giving a spiritual message," Hardin said.

Although not always intended, she was pleased when her paintings spiritually inspired others. Her work appealed to not one particular religion but to universal spirituality.

Hardin had several notable shifts in her subject matter and painting style: pottery motifs, blanketed chiefs, kachina spirits and female images. Her earlier curvilinear blanketed chiefs were replaced by precise geometric forms and patterns. She died of cancer in 1984 after battling the disease for several years.

Formal and Technical Features

Recurrence is one of the paintings in her kachina series. All the design elements are well coordinated and well balanced. The composition is enlivened by the repetition of line, shape and space. Hardin uses repeated and overlapping geometric forms and patterns made with a ruler, compass, protractor and other drafting templates. She uses a variety of acrylics, varnish, airbrush and ink washes in herwork. Her paintings consist of twelve to twenty-six layers of paint. She filled in large areas with flat opaque paint, spatters (with a coarse toothbrush) and stipples (paints tiny points) paint spots, and adds transparent washes. The spattered texture, formerly used in Anasazi pottery, in the background and foreground harmonizes the images. She applies the dominant lemon and tangerine color tones in both flat and textured layers.

RELATED ARTICLE: Major Themes

Spirituality Elements of spirituality and morality are revealed in Hardin's work and people interpret them differently. Pueblo people see the univerese as a web of relationships of interdependent living things including people, plants, animals, spiritual beings, earth and stars.

Identity Hardin considered herself a wife, a mother and a painter. Her roles as a woman and an Indian were never a driving force in her early work. Towards the end of her life, she finally realized that they were her means of access. Hardin spoke of herlself as changing every six years and "becoming aware of myself as a woman." With the onset of illness, she realized as she was dying, she would always return in her painting. Her husband regards her later work as her most powerful and personal.

Social Issues Since Hardin's father was an Anglo and she married a white man, these life factors put her on the edge of Pueblo culture. Living in two worlds was difficult. Because she was denied access to her Native-American culture as a child, she retreated into Indian spirituality as an adult through her paintings.

Hardin was a young, attractive female artist when she officially entered the art world. She painted in an art world dominated by cowboy landscapes and Indiana pictorial scenes--" cute little Indian pictures" painted for tourists. She wanted to be innovative, the best, and vowed to "try harder."

RELATED ARTICLE: Looking for Meaning

When viewing Recurrence of Spiritual Elements, consider the different meanings resulting from the life experiences and heritage influencing the work. Examine the major themes and technical features to understand what the artist wished to express.

RELATED ARTICLE: Meaning in a Bicultural Context

Questions to Ask:

* Read the title carefully and look closely at the painting. How do the visual elements relate to the three words in the title? What images might be spiritual symbols? (The headdress is called a tablita.) What might the yellow color represent to the Pueblo people? (sun or corn pollen) What animal symbols or parts can you find? (horn or eagle feathers) What lines suggest movement? (zigzag or circular) What shapes suggest recurrence? (circles and triangles)

Recurrence is the repeated return of such things as memories or seasons.

Spiritual refers to deep meanings or ideas about the afterlife. Pueblo people are deeply concerned with hidden spirits embedded in everything in this world and the next. Natural spirits can pass through and guide people in this world. Look also for colors that may represent spiritual things.

Elements are essential things that include living entities such as animals and insects, inanimate things--stones, forces that include weather, and substances of earth, wind, fire or water, and the sun. In art, the basic elements are points, lines, shapes and colors.

* Notice how the painting is arranged. Is it symmetrical, circular, triangular or zig-zagged? If you turn a weaving slighty, it has a diamond or angular arrangement. Use tracing paper to find the webs.

* How does the painting show how others have influenced the construction of her work? How has her mother's work influenced her? (knowledge of painting) What Western art style does she adopt? (Cubism)

* How does the painting show how she feels about her search for identity or her spiritual quest for life's meaning? (Hardin shows a web of pantheistic (multiple gods) images and obligations that influenced her life. She brings her beloved kachina images to life by designing not representing them. She shows the overlapping influences these beings have over her.)

RELATED ARTICLE: Suggested Activities

Elementary

* Paint a large kachina image with repeated tempera colors and patterns. Discuss what the pattern means--lightning, rain, sand.

* Make a small kachina doll in clay based on a special animal or image that guides your life.

* Discuss the meaning of animal spirits, a team mascot or a protector, such as your pet dog.

Middle/Junior High School

* Using rulers, protractors and compasses, construct a tempera painting that communicates your beliefs about the afterlife.

* Discuss the symbols in Recurrence and generate ideas for symbols for contemporary spiritual beliefs or something you care deeply about.

Senior High

* Reflect and write about your spiritual beliefs in your journal.

* Represent them symbolically in a hard-edge painting by using architectural tools, masking tape and spatter/spray paint. [Safety Note: Remember to spray in a well-ventilated place or outdoors.]

* Consider the social/spiritual issues of Recurrence and discuss how artists of other times and places represented their spiritual beliefs.

Resources

La Duke, Betty. "Native American Painters Pablita Velard and Helen Hardin: Tradition and Innovation. " Women artists: Multicultural visions, Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1992.

"Helen Hardin." American Indian Artist Series. PBS video, originally produced by KAET Television, Arizona State University, AZ (197511988).

Helen Hardin, Prayers of a Blue Corn Maiden (poster, 1974) is available at the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Hood, G. A. (1994). "Helen Hardin." Native Peoples 7 (4) (1994): 35-40. Scott, J. Changing women: The life and art of Helen Hardin. Flagstaff, AZ: Northland, 1989.

Mary Stokrocki is Associate Professor of Art Education at Arizona State University in Temple, Arizona.