¡Colores!; 506; Golden Dawn: The Pueblo Paintings of Pablita Velarde; PV Int #3

It's nice to fill in some of the history, but there's some kind of general questions I want to get to, try to move us through some of the history a little quicker, but I like the stories, those are the best. Okay, Bonnie, do you need to come back? We were talking about my dad, I think your dad, and he was, I know what I wanted to, what was, was it important for your dad to tell you these stories and for you to carry them on? Well, when I first approached him on the story, helping me with the stories, he turned me down, he said, absolutely not, he says, you're not going to do that, and I said, why not? And he said, because they're ours. And I said, well, it's mine too, I said, why can't I have them? And he said, because you're going to

write it and sell it. And I said, well, what's wrong with that? And I said, how are my kids going to ever read these stories if you don't like me writing? And how are my grandchildren ever going to hear them if I don't write it? So finally, he gave in, he thought, well, he just got me there, I don't want to be guilty of stopping him from doing something like that. So he went along and helped me feel in a lot of the gaps that I couldn't remember. Why was it important to write the book? Because I wanted to save these stories. It was something I wanted to give to all the children, not just my Indian children or my own kids, but to all these kids, and I think I have made a lot of young people happy because they love those stories. And I've sold a lot of books, and so I know the old people like them too. You

think it makes a difference whether it's a Santa Clara kid or an Albuquerque kid? No, you don't make any difference, they love it. And I'm happy for it too, because I painted Old Father way back in the 50s, and I had entered the Old Father painting in New Mexico, artist's museum, exhibit. And I went in to see the exhibit when I was here. I looked through the whole museum, and I couldn't find my Old Father painting in any place, and I knew he was accepted. So I asked the curator that was sitting at the desk, I said, well, of course, my Old Father hanging, I said, I can't seem to find it, that she looked through her catalog, and she said, oh, it's right here, there was a door that swam back, and it was behind my Old Father was hanging behind that door, and I said, no wonder I couldn't find it, I said, it's hanging behind the door, I said, well, they do that to me

for it. And she said, I didn't know, maybe they didn't realize that somebody was going to open the door, and I said, well, I can't take it home if you don't want to show it. And she said, no, well, hang it in another place, and I don't know if they did or not, I never did come back up to check, and I kept it, for some reason, I just kind of had a feeling that Old Father was going to do things for me, and sure enough, he's still working for me. Who is Old Father? That painting over there. The story teller, the Old Father, the real Old Father could be my dad, my grandfather, my great -grandfather, my great -uncle, those are all my Old Father. What are they representing? I mean, they're part of the tradition, or... Yeah, they're all dead now, so now they represent to me as a spiritual symbol, a guide, like a garden angel, you know. Do you think of them often? Mm -hmm.

I talk to them. What do you talk to them about? I just ask them how they're doing, and then I pretend like they said they're doing fine, and then sometimes when I have a problem, I say, what are to come and help me figure this out, you know, and it works. Could you tell me some of the things that you asked them about? Is that too personal? Well, it's a little bit personal, but I think that my problems are my own business. Yeah. I was just sparring. Because when you have certain prayers that I grew up with, I was just kind of curious if you had the same kind of thing. Well, sometimes when I was writing the Old Father book, I had kind of misgivings myself, you know, because I thought I don't want to break traditional rules, and if a lot of the tribal members didn't want

me to do it, then I wouldn't do it. But it turned out that none of them objected, because they couldn't even remember the stories themselves, and nobody was telling the stories anymore that the young people then didn't even hear them. And so when I wrote the book, things began to move again, and most storytellers are telling stories now that they were when I got started. Let's go back up a little bit. Did you get a lot of support when you wanted to be a painter? No. No. Even my dad was discouraging me not to become a painter. He said, I'll never make a living at it. So, he took me out of the Indian school one year and put me in a Spanilla High School, so I could learn how to be a secretary or a typist or a bookkeeper or something like that, an office worker. I lasted till Christmas, and then I had learned the basics, you know, of all this stuff, and then I

told the superintendent her name was Mistru, Clara True, and I said, I'm so back to the Indian school. And so she, I said, if you'll just talk to my dad, maybe you could tell him that I'm better off at the Indian school. And so by that time my dad had married for the third time and had three kids, and they were always underfoot. I couldn't stand in. I was unhappy because those darn kids were always on the way. And so I asked Mistru if she'd help me get back to the Indian school, and so she arranged with my dad, and he planned to let me go back. I saw in the book a little bit of a story about how people didn't want, because you were a woman they didn't want you to... That's true. And because I was a woman, that was another thing that all that an Indian woman at that time should do

was to be a mother, a housewife, and just be a child -bearing person, you know. And those are some of the things I didn't care about. And... What did you care about? Painting, telling stories, going to art shows, socializing with the elite people. Did that drive for your family crazy? Well, I never invite them anymore, anyway, so they don't drive. Well, they like me now, you know, don't like to have me do what I'm doing now, because I bring a lot of trade for them myself by advertising the pottery and whatever they're doing up there. What kind of things were okay for women to do besides be part of that? Well, the only thing they seemed like that they were allowed to do was to

make pottery. Pottery was all right for them to do, but painting was, that was man's work, or it was their privilege to be the painter, and women had no business trying to horn in on that. And I said, well, I don't care if that's the way they feel, I'm going to still be a painter. And so, they had a lot of things that I would be exposing, things that they didn't want me to expose in my art, and I said, no, I wouldn't do that. I said, I paint women mostly anyway, and as time went on, I kind of meets my paintings with the motifs of pottery and murals and other things that had a feeling of art for me, you know, or a feeling of design. Help me a little bit for television, because I didn't get a full statement on you. I asked you about,

and you can be on the closer for this, about what you really loved. If you didn't want to be in the house all at the time, you said painting, but I needed you to say what I really loved was painting, I mean, that's a complete statement. Okay. Well, what I really love is painting, painting pictures and using my imagination to create this painting. And it helps put the time of the picture in the present, my time, you know, and there's a nice switch going back and forth when I'm painting, especially in all scene, because I'm there and there here, and it's kind of worked both ways. Does that kind of bring history alive again, or is that kind of trying to think of how to ask the question, because it seems to me what you're doing is you're being a story. I mean, are you being a storyteller, too? Yeah, I tell stories. I tell all the old father stories and all

the grandmother's how and why, and just a story about myself, if they want to hear about me, and if not, well, more or less tell them what we do in the Pueblos. Are your paintings like storytelling also? Kind of, yeah. I do quite a lot of storytelling pictures. They have some kind of a basic meaning, you know, like a lot of my paintings here, they old chicken pull, they don't do that anymore. That's a memory painting, because I didn't know how to draw horses, and that was a challenge for me to try to make those horses look like horses, and they look like soldiers, you know, standing there stiff like that. And the white horse is coming down, he's going to try to pull the chicken out of the ground. They used to have a contest like that way back when I was growing up, but they don't have that anymore.

For a fact, there were a few people who have horses, they all have pickup trucks. So, and then the old scene up under the porch, that was when I used to paddle my $1 paintings under there, and they were a few domingless, it wasn't crowded, maybe about 30 or 40, sellers are sitting under there trying to sell, make a dollar, or $10, or something like that. And they were very little trade from the actual people that came through anyway, most of them were just lookers. I don't know what to do with it, if I took it home, you know, and so we used to sit there and think, well, I wonder what they could do with it, if they took it home. I want to stop for a second, Chris will take a quick break, I want to just look over. I'm kind of interested, why don't I see you being very

free with your memories and your paintings and the things that you've learned, why is that? Well, I used to be a very shy person when I first moved to Albuquerque. I was teammate, I was bashful, I was, didn't know how to communicate with people, then I had a good friend that farmed me somehow through a club that we were called Penn Woman, and Mrs. Warner, well, they know Warner, she was in that Penn woman group, and one day she was talking to me, and I was talking back to her, and she said, Pablo, you want to join the toast mistress? I said, what's that? And she said, they'll help you with your speaking. And I said, I don't know, I said, I'm too bashful. And she

said, no, you're not, she said, not when you get to knowing people, you're not that bashful. And I was scared, but she took me anyway, and when they introduced me, I didn't know what to say, and they said, just relax, just say hello to all the girls, and I finally got the word hello out, but it was so hard, my tongue was swollen in my mouth, and I couldn't get that hello out to save my neck. But Marina, she'd never gave up, she kept bugging me, and kept taking me to her home and practicing with me. And then finally, we were going back to the toast mistress, and then they finally made me get out in front of everybody, and had me say something, anything, just to kind of get me used to standing in front of people talking. And then I used to have a bad habit of always putting my hand

over my mouth, you know? And so that was one of their objections, was I wasn't supposed to do that anymore. If I wanted to make gestures with my hand to kind of motion them, but never cover my mouth. Then another thing I did was I twist my neck, because I was nervous, or I'd hang onto a chair real tight, you know, stuff like that, and they got me to a point where I quit doing that, and then I got to a point two where that fear of getting up in front of people was slowly backing off. Do you see yourself as kind of a go -between between, like, a foreblow life and... I felt that way, because the quiet people, whenever I talked in front of them, wanted to know what the Indians did or were like, you know? And then when I go home, they would say, what are the quiet people really like? You're always with them,

and maybe you know them better than we do. And then I tell them, I said, they're real good people. I said, they have sure, they have different ways from ours, I said, but they're generous people, and they're helpful if you let them, but you have to let them first. You can't just shut your world into your own world, like we've been doing. I said, that's not good for us. And so I kind of broke the awkwardness on both sides. I think the Indians are more relaxed now when they're among white people and the white people are more relaxed when they're among Indians. Could you tell me a little bit, I need you to say that I... I see myself as kind of a go -between, because that's part of the question, if you could say that for me, just a... Well, I think you're a go -between between the two worlds that we are in now, and you have a medium that you... Well, I was saying for you, because it was your work with your paintings and stuff. Not me as in the TV camera, but I just needed you to help me

a little bit and say, I saw myself as kind of a go -between. Oh, well, I saw myself as a go -between between the two worlds, you know, and is that enough? Perfect. See, we just edited it all together, isn't it? But sometimes if you don't preface my question, then I'm going, oh, I've got to go back and get that. Yeah. It should be different for Indian artists or white artists, or is it the same, or what are you trying to do? Well, I kind of have a feeling that it's going to mix all together one of these years when the younger ones, right now it's already getting a lot of European influence in Indian art, and a lot of Indian art is transferring over to the Anglo -Art. So

it's kind of integrating now on both sides, and I think one of these years you couldn't tell which one was painted by an Indian, or which one is painted by a white man. So I kind of have that feeling. Now that you're a little older, are you any wiser? That's a dumb question, I don't know if I'm any wiser or not, but at least I feel a little bit more educated, because I've had to learn the hard way, mostly on my own, and force myself to do the things I do, but not that I'm getting so old, I don't travel as much, so that's taking the fun out of doing it. I used to like to travel a lot with my artwork, but now I don't do that anymore. Let's do the coffee. What do you appreciate

better now? Staying home. Well, I appreciate my home life. I'm slowing down a lot, and taking life a little bit easier, although lately it hasn't been that easy. We had three shows this spring, and two this summer, and then now I'm just getting ready for that miniature show, which we have three to enter anyway, and they're ready. And then they're the orders that are promised to paint by Christmas, I have to do those. I guess really what I'm asking you is because you are older and you've seen so much and you've worked so hard, what were the kind of lessons or those kind of things that you would appreciate? Well, as long as you're able and still in good health to do it, you might as well do what you like best, and that's what I'm doing is trying to keep my health in good shape and to do the kind of work that I'd like best.

My house is a mess because I don't like that kind of work, and so the boys get fat once a day with my lousy cookin' and the rest of the time they're at work, so I don't have to worry about that. How's your art helped support your whole family beside yourself? Now it's doing that. Yeah, I raised my two kids myself and put them through good schools, and they had a nice city life growing out, and of course my Helen's gone now, and she became a pretty well -known artist before she died, and her is now getting into the sculpture field, so I'm glad for him that he's finally got into the art world, and my grandson and granddaughter are both paining, so I think I'm going to leave them all doing the

kind of work I'd like, so I'm happy. Okay, let's take a little break, there's a couple questions.