Pena Bonita


Pena Bonita with Stalled, photo and oil paint, 64 pieces of 4" x 6" each, 2014.


Detail of several segments from Stalled.


long distances to find work in California, Texas and other areas. “It’s hard to say what most strongly in-


fluenced my development as an artist. Most of my family is talented in artistic crafts. My dad’s mother and sister were constant basket makers. My grandmother’s baskets are in col- lections of Caroline Poole and several muse- ums such as The Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, Calif. Grandmother gave little credit or attention to this. She felt baskets should be used, and to put them on display was wasted effort. My aunt and my mom were constantly


20 AMERICAN INDIAN WINTER 2015


on the Singer sewing machine. The drawings my grandmother and aunt did were devoted to Sears & Roebuck pictures used to design dress patterns.” Her own passion for art started on the


other side of the easel. “In my late 20s a white friend who was a commercial artist used me as his drawing model,” she says. “Often I watched as he worked the drawings. It reawakened an obsession in me to do art. He encouraged me, gave me craft supplies and fostered a new con- fidence in my adventure into oil painting. He encouraged me to go back to art school.”


She started her formal art classes in com-


mercial art at the New York City Community College in Brooklyn, “during the time when New York City colleges were tuition-free. “I had to take remedial English classes


but received a 4.0 grade average, which really surprised me. Two years of commercial art proved to me that advertising booze, cigarettes and pantyhose weren’t for me. I transferred to Hunter College to study fine arts. I went on to get my MFA from Hunter. “My years at Hunter were often a contest of endurance. Most of my professors were male.


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