White Buffalo Dance

A turning point in the development of Helen's art-making style, this painting diverges from the limitation of being Pablita Velarde's daughter.  White Buffalo Dance signals the beginning of Helen Hardin's career as a modernist Pueblo artist.

(1943-1984) Little Standing Spruce (Tsa-Sah-Wee-Eh) is the name the artist was given a month after her birth at the Santa Clara Pueblo reservation. Her mother, Pablita Velarde was highly recognized as a painter of the earlier generation. Helen succombed from cancer at the age of 41 in 1984.

She worked as an independent artist from the middle 1970's until her death.

Her work has been exhibited at many major museums both before and after her passing: the Institute of American Indian Art and the Wheelwright Museum (solo) plus the Heard Museum, Philbrook Art Center, Joslyn Art Museum, National Museum of Natural History and the Mitchell Indian Museum (group exhibitions).

The hardback volume Changing Woman: The Life and Art of Helen Hardin was published in 1989. In 1975 Hardin was the only woman artist in a PBS film series about Native American artists. Helen's art contribution is marked by her transition from realism to abstraction. This transition is identified as just after 1968 when she was introduced to using drafting tools such as a compass, protractors and plastic curves. These tools were conducive to an orientation toward more linear compositions.