Pablita Velarde, of Santa Clara Pueblo, is the matriarch of the only known family of women painters spanning three generations. Both her daughter Helen Hardin, and her granddaughter Margarete Bagshaw, became famous artists creating their own style and color palette. While women were not supposed to paint in the very conservative pueblos of the early twentieth century, Pablita followed her passion and became famous for her paintings of animals, dances and everyday life. Her daughter, Helen, broke away from what was considered 'Indian' art and adopted the more modernistic style that was taking hold among young Native artists in the 1970s-80s. Margarete, on the other hand, bridged the two by creating large-scale colorful works that were heavily influenced by her deep Native American roots and Modernist painter Raymond Jonson. Margarete, like her grandmother and mother, liked to break the rules and often incorporated mathematical formulas, such as, the 'Fibonacci grid' into her backgrounds.

Dr. Shelby Tisdale, director of the Center of southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College, will present on these three artistic women. Dr. Tisdale has over thirty-five years of combined experience in museums, university teaching, and anthropological, tribal museum and cultural resource management consulting. She has published forty articles and book chapters relating to American Indian art and culture, repatriation, and women in the West. Her last book, 'Pablita Velarde: In Her Own Words' (Little Standing Spruce Publishing, 2012), is a full-length biography of this famous American Indian painter.

This lecture is free to the public.