Nora Naranjo-Morse

From NativeWiki

Nora Naranjo-Morse, Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor & poet

Nora Naranjo-Morse, a Tewa Pueblo Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo, is a sculptor, writer and video producer of films that look at the continuing social changes within Pueblo culture. Her video What Was Taken . . . was screened in the 1997 Native American Film and Video Festival at the National Museum of the American Indian. In conjunction with this festival, her video, I've Been Bingo-ed by My Baby, was screened at the American Indian Community House.

Nora incorporates the various media she works in to make social comment on the lives of contemporary Native women. She is best known for her work in clay. This medium holds special significance not only because of its place within the history of Santa Clara Pueblo art, but also because of the traditional processing it requires. While her forms convey an aesthetic that is non-traditional, the content of her work is always rooted in issues that concern her community. Her work, in fact, often reflects on the tensions of producing art for a Western art market that often praises its innovative approach while, at the same, marginalizes it as "native" art.

She lives in northern New Mexico with her family in an adobe house that she and her husband built. Nora is the daughter of Rose Naranjo, sister of Dr. Rina Swentzell, Dr. Tessie Naranjo, Professor Tito Naranjo, potter Jody Folwell, sculptor Michael Naranjo, potters Dolly Naranjo and Edna Romero. She is the aunt of sculptor Roxanne Swentzell and potters Jody Naranjo, Susan Folwell, Polly Rose Folwell, Dusty Naranjo and Forrest Naranjo.

Awards

Nora was granted an honorary doctorate by Skidmore College in May, 2007.

The CONTINUUM: 12 Artists series at the National Museum of the American Indian contained work by Nora. Nora was one of the artists invited to take part in the International Gathering of Indigenous Visual Artists of the Pacific Rim held at The Evergreen State College in June, 2001. She has served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the magazine Aboriginal Voices. Nora was the 2000 Dubin Fellow at the School for American Research in Santa Fe. She has received a Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art in 2003. Nora was one of 6 artists selected to be included in the 7th Native American Fine Arts Invitational at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ. The transcription of her reading in the first Poetics and Politics series at the University of Arizona is available online.

Nora's bronze sculpture, Khwee-seng (Woman-Man), was included in Exhibition VI of the series Twentieth Century American Sculpture at the White House.

Nora is one of 8 contemporary artists chosen to participate in the Reservation X exhibitions at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Que., Canada. Her work is also represented in the Indian Humor exhibit on the NMAI website and in the Clay People exhibit at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe. She was also a moving force in the Clay Beings: Storytellers and the Reshaping of Ceramic Figures Native American Artist Convocation at the School of American Research.

Writing available online

Preface to Mud Woman

Childlike Enthusiasm

Gia's Song

The Living Exhibit Under the Museum's Portal

The Money Beasts

Mud Woman's First Encounter with the World of Money and Business

There Is Nothing Like An Idea

Towa

Tradition and Change

When Mud Woman Begins

Books by Nora Naranjo-Morse

Mud Woman, Poems from the Clay (Sun Tracks Books, No 20), University of Arizona Press.

Review of Mud Woman by Debbie Reese
Publisher's page

A First Clay Gathering (Multicultural Celebrations), Modern Curriculum Press

Videos with/by Nora Naranjo-Morse

Inspirations (DVD), directed by Michael Apted

Interviews with 7 artists, including Nora, David Bowie, and Roy Lichtenstein

I've Been Bingo'ed by my Baby

Legacy of Generations: Pottery by American Indian Women, the WETA documentary

based on the Susan Peterson book (see above).

Separate Visions, Distributed by the University of California.

Anthologies

Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writing of North America, Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird (Editors), W.W. Norton.

Home Places: Contemporary Native American Writing from Sun Tracks, (Sun Tracks, Vol 31), Larry Evers, Ofelia Zepeda (Editors), Univ of Arizona Press.

I've Always Meant to Tell You: Letters to Our Mothers: An Anthology of Contemporary Women Writers, Constance Warlow (Editor), Pocket Books.

Pierced by a Ray of Sun: Poems About the Times We Feel Alone, Ruth Gordon, Harpercrest.

The Great Southwest of the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railway, Marta Weigle, Barbara A. Babcock (Editors), University of Arizona Press and the Heard Museum.

Interviews & Essays

Reservation X: The Power of Place in Aboriginal Contemporary Art, Gerald McMaster (Editor), University of Washington Press.

Interview with Nora on Native Networks at NMAI

Pottery by American Indian Women: The Legacy of Generations, Susan Peterson, Abbeville Press.

Children of Clay: A Family of Pueblo Potters (We Are Still Here), Rina Swentzell, Bill Steen (Photographer), First Avenue Editions (Library Binding)

Review of this book by Paula Giese

"This Woman Can Cross Any Line": Feminist Tricksters in the Works of Nora Naranjo-Morse and Joy Harjo, Kristine Holmes, Studies in American Indian Literatures, 7, 45, 1995 Spring.

A Separate Vision, Case Studies of Four Contemporary Indian Artists, Linda B. Eaton, Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin 58, Route 4, Box 720, Flagstaff, AZ 86001.

Interview (including Brenda Spencer & Baje Whitethorne) with Linda Eaton in Weber Studies

I Stand in the Center of the Good: Interviews With Contemporary Native American Artists, (America Indian Lives), Lawrence Abbott (Editor), University of Nebraska Press.

Women Artists of Color:A Bio-Critical Sourcebook to 20th Century Artists in the Americas, Phoebe Farris, Greenwood Press.

Nora Naranjo-Morse

From NativeWiki

Contents