Nora Naranjo Morse (born 1953) is a Native American artist and poet. She currently resides in

Española, New Mexico Española is a city primarily in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, United States. A portion of the central and eastern section of the city is in Santa Fe County. Founded as a railroad village some distance from the old Indian town of San Juan de lo ...

just north of Santa Fe and is a member of the

Santa Clara Pueblo Santa Clara Pueblo (in Tewa: Khaʼpʼoe Ówîngeh ɑ̀ʔp’òː ʔówîŋgè ″Singing Water Village″, also known as ″Village of Wild Roses″ is a census-designated place (CDP) in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, United States and a federal ...

. Her work can be found in several museum collections including the

Heard Museum The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitio ...

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1 ...

, the

Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the largest art museums in the United State ...

in Minnesota, and the

National Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. The museum has three ...

in Washington, DC, where her hand-built sculpture piece, '' Always Becoming'', was selected from more than 55 entries submitted by Native artists as the winner of an outdoor sculpture competition held in 2005. In 2014, she was honored with a NACF Artist Fellowship for Visual Arts and was selected to prepare temporal public art for the 5x5 Project by curator Lance Fung.

Early life and education

Nora Naranjo Morse was born in 1953 in Santa Clara Pueblo, in Northern New Mexico. She is the daughter of potter Rose Naranjo, and a member of the Santa Clare Pueblo Tribe. Morse graduated from Taos High School in Taos, New Mexico in 1971 and received a bachelor's degree in university studies from Santa Fe College in 1980. She received an honorary Doctorate from Skidmore College in 2007.

Work

Morse's earlier sculpting work was made using

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

. Inspired by the ancient traditions of making Pueblo Clowns, she created her own character named "Pearlene". She wrote adventures about this character in "Mud Women", a book of her own poetry. In her later work, Morse commented on Indian Stereotypes as well as raising questions within her own community. Some of her most well-known installations include ''Sugared Up: A Waffle Garden (1999); I've Been Bingo-ed by My Baby!: A story of love lust, and loss on the rez... (2009); and A Pueblo Woman's Clothesline (1995).''

Collections

Morse's earthwork project, ''Numbe Wahgeh'', is in the collection of the 1% for Art Program of the city of Albuquerque. Her work, ''Our Homes, Ourselves'', is in the collection of the

. Other works by Morse are in the collections of the

Albuquerque Museum The Albuquerque Museum, formerly known as the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, is a public art and history museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The museum is located in the Old Town area and is operated by the City of Albuquerque Department of ...

, the

, and the

of the Smithsonian Institution.

Quote

"There is no word for art in the
Tewa language Tewa is a Tanoan language spoken by Pueblo people, mostly in the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico north of Santa Fe, and in Arizona. It is also known as Tano, or (archaic) Tée-wah. Dialects and usage The 1980 census counted 1,298 speakers, a ...
... There is though the concept for an artful life, filled with inspiration and fueled by labor and thoughtful approach."

Exhibits

Morse's work was featured in the ''Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists'', (2019),

, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. She has also shown at the Heard Museum, the

Wheelwright Museum The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian is a museum devoted to Native American arts. It is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was founded in 1937 by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, who came from Boston, and Hastiin Klah, a Navajo singer and medic ...

, the White House, and the

Canadian Museum of Civilization The Canadian Museum of History (french: Musée canadien de l’histoire) is a national museum on anthropology, Canadian history, cultural studies, and ethnology in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. The purpose of the museum is to promote the heritage of C ...

Honors and awards

In 2003, Morse received a Contemporary Art Fellowship for her project Path Breakers from the

Eiteljorg Museum The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is an art museum in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The Eiteljorg houses an extensive collection of visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as Western Ame ...

of American Indians and Western Art. In 1993, she received a Dubin Fellowship from the

School of American Research The School for Advanced Research (SAR), until 2007 known as the School of American Research and founded in 1907 as the School for American Archaeology (SAA), is an advanced research center located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. Since 1967, the s ...

. In 1982, she was awarded a fellowship from the Southwestern Association on Indian Affairs.

References

External links

Morse Artist’s page on Nativewiki.orgArtNet page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Naranjo Morse, Nora Living people 1953 births Native American potters Artists from New Mexico Santa Clara Pueblo people Native American poets American women ceramists American ceramists American women poets 20th-century American women artists Native American women artists Native American women writers Women potters People from Española, New Mexico 21st-century American women artists 21st-century ceramists 20th-century Native Americans 21st-century Native Americans 20th-century Native American women 21st-century Native American women