Poeh Cultural Center awarded $50,000 grant for art classes
Nov. 30—Santa Clara Pueblo artist Rose B. Simpson has taken numerous art classes at the Poeh Cultural Center, honing her skills in jewelry-making, beadwork, sewing and embroidery.
The mixed-media artist said Poeh serves as a valuable resource for nearby Native communities, with accessible art studios and a museum that shares a rare and important perspective.
"I believe in the classes they offer, the programming. I feel like they have a lot of potential," Simpson said. "Of the museums that I'm familiar with, I'm invested in that organization."
This investment prompted Simpson to nominate the Poeh Cultural Center for funding from the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, which has selected the center as one of its inaugural core grant recipients.
The grant will preserve the traditional Pueblo arts classes on which the Poeh Cultural Center was founded, Poeh Executive Director Karl Duncan said.
"With these funds, traditional arts from the Pueblo People will continue to flourish into the next generation," Cris Velarde, Poeh's cultural arts specialist, said in a news release. "As an elder, we need to do everything we can to revitalize our culture because it is our identity as Tewa People."
The Ruth Foundation launched in July after Ruth DeYoung Kohler II bequeathed her fortune to support art, artists and their communities, said Karen Patterson, the foundation's executive director. The foundation adheres to an unusual model of giving within the arts: It asks artists to nominate organizations that have affected their lives, careers and art practices, and awards grants largely based on artists' recommendations.
In awarding the foundation's core grants, Patterson said the foundation examined three primary ways in which an organization can change an artist's life: by affecting how the artist lives, how the artist creates and how the artist will be remembered.
After Simpson nominated the Poeh Cultural Center for consideration, Patterson said she and her team realized something: The center does "all three of those things, with their workshops, with their collections, with their archives and with their upholding of traditional ways of life."
With the $50,000 grant, the cultural center, which will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2023, plans to continue its renowned art classes, offered every spring, summer and fall at no cost to Native students.
Although the modern version of the center has expanded into a museum, art studios and a hub of cultural activities, Duncan said that wasn't always the case. Poeh was founded on Pueblo arts classes, teaching students how to make traditional pottery, jewelry, baskets, moccasins, embroidered items and more. The museum, cultural center and Tewa Learning Center — a new building under construction that will eventually house tribal archives and collections and workshop spaces — grew up around these art classes.
"We do what we can to continue these traditional arts that have deeper meaning and value for the tribal members and their communities," Duncan said.
Now, as many Poeh alumni work as professional artists and show their work at markets and galleries across the U.S., Duncan said the grant will also give new artists an opportunity to do the same. The Ruth Foundation grant will ensure some of the Poeh's upcoming art students will be featured in the cultural center's Pathways Native Arts Festival, demonstrating their techniques or serving as discussion panelists.
Patterson said Poeh's commitment to honoring the reason it was founded and empowering artists in the future made the cultural center a clear candidate for the Ruth Foundation's inaugural round of core grants.
"I congratulate them on, of course, receiving the core grant, [and] I congratulate them on the work they're doing," Patterson said.
