Bathing in creativity

Taos Pueblo artist Dawning-Pollen Shorty

Bathing in creativity Dawning-Pollen Shorty carries on artistic legacy, her way

By Jim O’Donnell T here were no electric lights in her house when she was a child.

“I grew up out at the Pueblo. We only had natural light in the day. At night, we lit candles and kerosene lamps. My father brought out his sculptures and placed them so they created shadows that grew and danced on the soft walls of our home.”

Dawning-Pollen Shorty grew up bathing in creativity. “That’s all I saw,” she says. “I didn’t know another way to be.”

Shorty, an award-winning sculptor of Taos Pueblo, Lakota and Navajo heritage is the inheritor of an artistic legacy enshrined for generations. Her father, Robert Shorty, is himself an award-winning sculptor — and a painter, an actor, a dancer and a jeweler. Her mother, Bernadette Track, studied ballet and modern dance at Juilliard and is a celebrated ceramics teacher. “She still does acrylic paintings. And she cooks. She loves to cook, and she is good at it,” Shorty smiles. “Oh. And that’s one thing to know about me. I may not drive a nice car and I don’t have fancy shoes, but I do eat well. I love good food.”

Dawning-Pollen is a direct translation of her Tiwa name. Or as close as you can come to rendering something along the lines of “gets corn pollen at first light” into English. “It’s more like a story,” she says. “It is the prayer-action at dawn when the corn is first opening and you can collect the pollen. The act is a prayer in itself. It isn’t a hippie name.”

Shorty finds inspiration in her culture. It’s in the difficulty of the Pueblo ceremonial life, in

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the physical exertion of it that she finds splendor, she says. “I hear that beauty; see the colors, experience nature, feel the wonder of my people.”

As a kid, Shorty was fond of science and archaeology and anthropology and old portraits of Native peoples. Not the Edward Curtis shots, mind you, she found those much too staged. Instead, she gravitated toward the candid, immediate captures that documented what was real. She took to the camera herself at a very young age.

“You can’t get that light and

SHORTY continues on Page 48

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‘While Shorty finds her inspiration in her culture, she doesn’t see herself as an Indian artist.’

SHORTY continues from Page 46

those shadows like we have at the Pueblo anywhere else. I wanted to document life there and the people passing and living. But, you know, we have a history of problems with photography at the Pueblo.” She felt uneasy about her project possibly being seen to exploit her own people and she set that aside. Still, photography, as an art form, continues to influence her work.

When asked how she would describe her work, she says: “Its aesthetics. Non-utilitarian. Not bowls. Sculpture. And then there is the political stuff. It’s cathartic. For me. I’m not going to tell you about that now.” And she smiles.

“Her art work is unique,” says Kathleen Michaels of the Millicent Rogers Museum. Shorty, she says, “has an amazing ability to take clay and with it produce very beautiful, whimsical, refined masks and figurines that are stunning.”

As a teenager, Shorty opened the Red Rain Gallery at Taos Pueblo, where she displayed her early micaceous clay pieces. In the early ‘90s, she attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Photography and archaeology then took her to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The 1990s also found her traveling in Europe, showing her work at Denmark’s Roskilde Festival and traveling to France, the Low Countries and east to Prague.

In the mid-2000s, she seemed to hit her stride. Her work appeared at the Millicent Rogers Museum, Indian Market, the Eight Northern Pueblo Juried Art Show and at Colorado State

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University in Ft. Collins. Starr Interiors hosted Shorty’s first solo show in Taos in 2011, and her work can now be found in several private collections.

While Shorty finds her inspiration in her culture, she doesn’t see herself as an Indian artist. “My work is universal, not stereotypical.” Michaels of the Millicent Rogers Museum agrees. “It is a struggle faced by all Native American artists. If you get categorized as ‘Indian,’ people expect you to produce a certain type of art. DawningPollen transcends that.” Her art may be influenced by her culture, “but she is much more than that. Her art is not typical. Not a stereotype.”

Dawning-Pollen Shorty is on a roll. From March 11-13, 2016, Millicent Rogers will host the Fourth Annual Taos Pueblo Artist Winter Showcase — an exclusive, invitation-only event. Shorty’s newest creations, masks, miniatures and sculptures will be on display alongside the work of her uncle, John Suazo. One of her miniatures was also on view during the Millicent Rogers Annual Miniatures Show & Sale, which ran Feb. 5 to March 6. Perhaps most surprising to her was a recent call from the soon-to-open Detours in the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe. The new contemporary art gallery selected Shorty as one of only 10 artists they will host. She is also teaching art nearly full time in the Taos schools.

“I think I have a lot of energy,” she laughs. “I take all that power and craziness and put it into art!”

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