Blue Corn

Kirk Richards "Blue Corn" 1996  Private Collection

Crucita Gonzales Calabaza (1921 – 1999), also known as Blue Corn, was a Native American artist and potter from the San Ildefonso Peublo in New Mexico. She became famous for reviving the historic San Ildefonso polychrome style of pottery and was also known for her distinctive red ware and black-on-black pots. She had a very long and productive career.

She was given the name "Blue Corn" in the traditional naming ceremony of the People, by one of the sisters of legendary potter Maria Martinez. Blue Corn's Grandmother, also a ceramic artist, introduced her to pottery at age three. Her grandmother told her granddaughter that her hands "were made for pottery," which was prophetic: Blue Corn continued to make pottery for the next seventy years. 

While she was attending Santa Fe Indian School, a boarding school, as a child, a tragedy struck at home, and both her parents died. She was sent to live with relatives in Southern California. At age 20 she married Sandy Calabaza, a silversmith from the Santo Domingo or  Kewa Pueblo in New Mexico. Like many other Pueblo peoples, the Santo Domingo Puebloans have a matrilineal kinship system: children are considered born into the mother's family and clan, and inheritance and property pass through the maternal line. In keeping with Pueblo tradition the couple settled in Blue Corn's home of San Ildefonso Pueblo.  An interesting though random side note, Blue Corn occasionally worked as a housekeeper or maid, and during World War II she was a housecleaner in the Los Alamos household of physicist Robert Oppenheimer. 

Blue Corn and her husband Santiago had ten children. After her first son, Joseph, was born she returned to pottery making. Her husband quit his job to help her with her pots and by the late 1960s she had established herself as a leader in polychrome styles. After her husband passed away in 1972 her son Joseph began helping her make her pottery. 

While Blue Corn was credited with reviving the San Ildefonso polychrome style, she was also known for her distinctive black-on-black and redware pottery. Art dealer Mark Sublette says the artist "was famous for her unique designs and perfect execution. Her work includes jars, plates, wedding vases, oval blackware lidded boxes, and black-on-black owl figures. Her favorite designs included feathers, rain clouds, turtles and the Avanyu. Her pieces are still much in demand when they come available. Blue Corn was generous with her time teaching pottery and giving demonstrations. Many of her students became award-winning potters themselves."

The artist received critical acclaim for her work during her lifetime. Her pottery is in the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of the American Indian and other major museums throughout America and Europe as well as in important private collections. In1981 Blue Corn won New Mexico's highest artistic honor, the Governor's Award. In 2008 she was posthumously awarded the "Lifetime Achievement Award" by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA.) Blue Corn passed away on May 3, 1999 leaving ten children, eighteen grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.

Painter Kirk Richards (b. 1952) was born, raised and currently lives in Amarillo, Texas. For someone from this area of the country Richards seems relatively uninterested in the usual southwestern subjects. In fact this painting of a young Blue Corn has the most southwestern flavor of any works of his I have seen. In this beautiful portrait Richards has turned his intimist gaze on a Pueblo artist at work, creating an interior with a Vermeer-like calm.  He shows us a moment of absorption in the artist's life, suspended in time for our contemplation.

Richards earned two degrees from West Texas State University and studied privately with the artist Richard Lack. He taught for many years, founding his own atelier of classical realism, and has also written about art for various publications including the Classical Realism Journal.  His work has been exhibited widely, and he is one of the Art Renewal Center's designated "Living Masters."

~Many thanks to Eliza Drake Auth for sending me this image~