Event Details

Join the Friends of Coronado and Jemez Historic Sites for their free monthly lecture series held at Martha Liebert Public Library in Bernalillo. This month, journalist Kate Nelson presents "Three Women - One Story: 1,000 Years of Native American Art.

For three generations, Pablita Velarde, Helen Hardin, and Margarete Bagshaw charted a course as remarkable Native American painters.  Velarde broke traditions and tangled with her community’s elders to pursue a career painting. Hardin, Velarde’s daughter, the "It" girl of the 1960s, expanded traditional images but died of cancer as a young woman. Both used traditional imagery. Bagshaw, Velarde’s granddaughter, broke the "traditional" mold by residing in the Caribbean for a while and used a tropical color palette when she returned to New Mexico. Together they pulled the artform into abstract realms that continue to inspire artists today.

Kate Nelson, a longtime New Mexico journalist, worked at the Kansas City Star and The Albuquerque Tribune. She earned a spot in the Scripps Howard Hall of Fame for her political reporting, column writing and editorials. As the managing editor for New Mexico Magazine, she won several Writer of the Year honors from the International Regional Magazine Association. Kate also authored a 2012 biography, Helen Hardin: A Straight Line Curved.