Helen Hardin
From NativeWiki
Helen Hardin (May 29,1943, Albuquerque, New Mexico - June 9,1984) (also known as Tsa-sah-wee-eh, meaning "Little Standing Spruce") was a Santa Clara Pueblo painter. She was the daughter of an Anglo-American man and a Native American woman artist, Pablita Velarde of Santa Clara Pueblo. She and her family moved away from Santa Clara Pueblo when she was 6.
Hardin became known for painting complex works that combined colorful images and symbols from her pueblo heritage with her own sophisticated, dynamic designs. . Hardin's style, so distinctive and compelling, began to emerge in the 1970s with a series of Katsina figure paintings. These and later works are immensely complex works of depth, energy, and gorgeous, compelling surfaces. Her personal explorations led her into the deeply affective works of the Woman Series, "Changing Woman," "Listening Woman," and "Medicine Woman." Her work is concerned with the intellectual and physical struggle of her very existence, the struggle of woman versus man, patron versus artist, tradition versus progression, an art of complexity and timeless beauty, a forward looking art remaining firmly rooted in the ancient past.
In 1982 it was discovered that Helen Hardin had terminal cancer. A truly intriguing woman and indeed one of the preeminent American Indian painters of the twentieth century, was lost long before her time, dying of cancer in 1984. While her paintings are quite different from those of her mother, her own daughter, Margarete Bagshaw-Tindel, paints in a style similar to that of her mother.
[edit] Awards
- First Prize for innovation, Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, 1969.
- Cover of New Mexico Magazine,' March, 1970.
[edit] Books
Changing Woman: The Life and Art of Helen Hardin, Jay Scott, Northland Pub., 1989.
[edit] See Also
- Helen Hardin biography and discussion of the Woman Series
- Helen Hardin 1943–1984 A tribute to Tsa-sah-wee-eh, "Little Standing Spruce"
- A transcendent journey through the motherline: a voyage with Helen Hardin, southwest artist by Kate Donohue, published first in The Arts in Psychotherapy and reprinted on the California Institute of Integral Studies website.
- A film on Helen Hardin in The Native American Artists Series
