May 2006

Interview by Reaghan Tarbell (Mohawk), Film and Video Center, NMAI

RT: Could you introduce yourself briefly and tell me where you are from?

NN-M: My name is Nora Naranjo-Morse and I'm from the Santa Clara Pueblo reservation, between Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, and Taos, the art capital of New Mexico. The reservation where I live has about 3,000 people living there. It's well known for pottery making. I basically learned how to make pottery from the people living there, my aunts and my mom. So that's where I come from, that's where my art career or art education came from.

RT: Could you tell me a little bit more about that and about your inspirations for creating pottery and art?

NN-M: Well, I think what happens is that clay work is not separated from your daily life; it all just flows right into the other. It was really common for me to go to my aunt's house, help her sift clay or gather clay, and in the same hour also make tortillas or plaster the outside oven. It was just integrated into this whole act, during the day, of making things. There was always this knowledge that it wasn't like in dominant culture, where art is sort of separated from everything else. I got a lot of information at an early age that art wasn't separated from anything else. In fact, you were inspired by all of those things you did on a daily basis and incorporated it into your process of creating. So that was one of the seeds that was instilled in me.

I was inspired by these women who were just incredibly strong and passionate about what they were doing, and they had to do it right and they had to follow this process. In all of this there was also this spiritual element, where if you went to get clay, you prayed before you gathered it, because you were actually gathering something that was alive and incorporating it into this process. The religious aspect was really important as well. And these women knew that, that was their life and they were passing that on to me.

RT: What prompted you to incorporate video into your art?

NN-M: Well, my father had been really ill and he passed on at a very pivotal time in my life. In the process of grieving I was also looking for ways to process. I think, when he passed on, many things changed. I became really aware of the time I had left for myself, how people were leaving and passing, and what did I do with all of that information?

I became really cognizant of the fact that as beautiful for me as creating a figure out of clay is, it was not really helping me reach other people with what I was going through. I was wanting to share that process or that information that I was learning from grieving and from understanding life in a completely different way. I have no clue what made me gravitate to the idea of picking up a camera. I think it was very serendipitous in that way.

I also knew—when I heard stories when I was young these stories were so textured and full of color and human foibles and all of these things that were just wonderful—that I wanted to tell these stories that were happening to me and that were happening to my community. So it just all fell into place, I think, during that period of time. I picked up a camera and just started shooting information wherever I was, whatever I was doing. I was just looking through the lens and seeing a really different perspective of where we were as Native people living in this community, what we were doing with that information and how we were reacting to it.

These events sort of led me to this place, and from there I opened up this other door and was very eager, at this point, to walk through it. I'm still, I think, in some ways, walking through it. I don't do a lot of film work, but when I have an idea about telling a story then it just starts fitting into place. What's happening now for me is the other projects that I'm doing that have to do with more public art sculpture or earth work projects need to be looked at. I know that I have a new skill and I start using that skill of film and video to tell the story and document what I've been looking at in this particular creative art project.

RT: I imagine with video you're bound by budget and working with others, and with your sculpture, it's more of a personal process?

NN-M: When I'm in a studio and I'm working with clay, I'm totally by myself; there are no rules, there's just a lot of music and there's a lot of free thinking, nothing is diagrammed or documented or anything like that—it's just this release. Whatever is happening to me, whatever I've stored, it's just getting released. I really love that process.

What is also happening is that I'm starting to do larger pieces, like I did this 60-foot by 60-foot art installation that's an earthwork, in front of an Albuquerque museum. That process took me seven, well, going on eight years…a huge amount of time to be dealing with a creative process. It was such a big process, so controversial and so public that I had to draw in other people. And because it was controversial and demanding, I had to start filming this and looking at what people were saying, how they were reacting. Then I started thinking, "If it's interesting to me, then it's got to be interesting to someone else." That's when I made the decision that I needed to start documenting all of this.

A friend of mine helped me film when I was actually doing work on the project; he helped me get information from the news stations—they were documenting the project itself. And then we sat down and we edited. I think if I didn't have this sense of storytelling, if I didn't have that sense of drive that I think these aunties and mom gave me, I wouldn't have been able to carry through this sort of passion that I have when I work, whether it's making an art piece that's small or making something really large.

When I'm working on larger projects I'm working with a lot of people, and of course that really directs everything, gives it a lot more texture. And of course it makes me look at the process of documenting. Whether it's writing or filming, still photographs, I get all of that information, and I start laying it out to tell the story, and then it becomes pretty exciting for me. I feel like I'm the idea person, and what I don't know technically I'll go find it. I really rely on people who are much smarter than me, who are much more experienced than me, to guide me, especially to make films. I'm asking questions—and I watch a lot of films, especially recently—"How does this work? How do you set up this story? What kinds of things…will help communicate the gist of it?"

RT: As a selector for our festival, have you seen a lot of work that excites you, a lot of up and coming Native filmmakers?

NN-M: I have. I think one of the things that really impresses me is that there's a lot of passion. Filmmaking is so much work, so many details. I see all of these younger people who really have that passion and are expressing it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but the fact is that that they are actually doing it, actualizing their story or their idea about their community, about themselves.

There were a few that stand out [and] I get excited because I think, "Oh, somebody's having fun, somebody's not stifled by the rules, they are just going for it." I admire that so much. I think you do that when you are younger, and, hopefully, as you get older you keep that sensibility of "I want to try it no matter what."

Most of the time when I've done things it's been on a very low budget, so I have to be really creative about the kinds of equipment I use, or how it is that I get this film done. That has really been the impetus for creative storytelling, I think. In some ways I recognize this for the a lot of these younger filmmakers, because they are probably working on a shoestring budget, and they are having to use that creative way of making something happen with very, very little.

RT: Can you tell me what you have in mind for future video projects?

NN-M: I've always had this idea in mind of working somehow with clay, not in terms of documenting someone making a piece, but just having the clay taken from its original place, having filmed that and then having it grow into one of these creatures that I make, or a form I make, and having a life of its own—I like that idea very much. It's really a claymation I'm thinking about. I always come back to this clay thing, right? It's the anchor. So I like the idea of looking at a piece of dirt, or a clump of clay, which in our society is like, sort of like, "What do you do with this?" and then having it grow into a form that walks through a door. In some way that's a metaphor, walking into some other reality or making some kind of statement. I like that idea. That's always been circling somewhere in my head.

The other thing I'd really like to take a look at is the whole idea of transgender in Pueblo community. Historically we'd have these men who would assume a female role in the community, and they were honored, they were naming children and making the most beautiful pottery. Then Christianity came into the communities and they became ostracized, and that, as many things in Pueblo culture, was regarded then as taboo.

There are still people in contemporary Pueblo life who assume this transgender lifestyle. Now it's a very difficult lifestyle; they are not honored or looked at in that way of respect. I want to understand that more, I want to be looking at that, in a way that maybe reminds us that there are these issues of acceptance that we had before we were assimilated into dominant culture, with their designs of what is right and wrong. [I would like to] take a look at these [men] historically and how they affected the Pueblo and what they did, because some of them were just amazing people, and [see] how that compares to men now who have chosen this life.

When I want to tell a big story like that, it keeps coming back at me and nagging at me like "You have to tell this story!" I never know where the money's coming from, I don't know anything, but at some point I know that I have to do it. When it's big, I know it because I feel it in my whole body. So maybe sometime I'll be able to do that.

RT: Tell me a little bit about your some installations, works you've had exhibited at NMAI.

NN-M: I did an installation where I had to plaster a wall that was about 10 feet high and about 20 feet long, and that took me two weeks. What was really interesting about that is: here I am trying to represent this Pueblo wall and we're not using mud at all, we're chimney plaster material, right? So it's all a façade, it's really a façade, but we really needed to do that because we couldn't transport mud, it became too complicated.

But the idea of bringing the message of the piece, which was how Native people are living, how they're creating their homes in their communities versus what the government is creating for them to live in, is really an interesting idea and story for me to tell. Basically I had to do whatever I needed to do to get that message across or that story across. I had to spend two or three weeks here, and by the first week I could really feel my body responding to the noise pollution and to that sense of crowdedness—at home it's a completely different story: I walk from my house to my studio three or four times a day and there's always the sky, the dogs are following me, there's open space. Here there were always people, and that was interesting fodder to have spill into this whole piece. It was a pretty interesting experience.

I was also part of "Continuum: 12 Artists" at NMAI, that was exhibited here about a year or two ago. I think I did an installation called "Gia's Song." It took a look at housing then and now on the reservation in my community. And so every now and then [NMAI] will ask me to do something and it's always different. I'll get a little nervous because I'm always changing, I'm not always going to be fitting into the pottery category, or the film category, but that's what I think is kind of exciting for me—I can kind of do what I want at this point because, well, they keep asking me back. (laughs)

RT: I think we're out of time, but is there anything else you'd like to add?

NN-M: I really like the idea that now Native people are discovering this medium of film and video. I think it's extremely important because never before have we been so capable of using non-Native materials to document who we are and where we are going. I think that is really exciting. I'm in love with that idea.

RT: Thank you

NN-M: Thank you.

Image credit: Nora Naranjo-Morse - courtesy of Zachary Naranjo-Morse