Grandmother Storyteller with Child, c. 1970
by Helen Cordero (1915-1994), Cochiti Pueblo
clay, pigment
11" high x 5" wide x 8" deep
Helen Cordero was born in 1915 at Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico. At that time, the area's rich pottery tradition was in decline. As Cordero said, "For a long time, pottery was silent in the pueblos." In the late 1950s, she and her cousin, an accomplished potter, began making pottery as an alternative to leather and beadwork. Cordero was never satisfied with her bowls and pitchers, but then her cousin suggested that she try figures instead. In Cordero's words, it was "like a flower blooming." Countless tiny birds and animals and, eventually, people came to life.
One of the traditional figurine forms was a seated female figure holding a child, known as the Singing Mother. When Cordero tried her hand at this form, she "kept seeing my grandfather [Santiago Quintana]. That one, he was a really good storyteller, and there was always lots of us grandchildren around him." When she shaped the first portrait of her paternal grandfather, she used the traditional design but made the figure male and placed more than a realistic number of children on him. She called him Storyteller.
Almost immediately, the figure brought Cordero to public attention. She won awards at the Santa Fe Indian Market and the Heard Museum's Annual Indian Arts and Crafts Show. Her work is in numerous museum and private collections including the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, the Brooklyn Museum, the Carnagie Museums of Pittsburg, and is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Cordero's reinvention of a Cochiti figurative pottery tradition initiated a revolution in contemporary Pueblo ceramics.
We encourage you to watch this wonderful PBS video on the work of Helen Cordero:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec9gL0CGbp4
