I’ve wanted to write about Pop Chalee for a while, but I’ve struggled to find images I could include here. I finally decided to write about her anyway. Some of the links below will take you to pictures of her work.
Pop Chalee, born Merina Lujan, was given the Tiwa name that she preferred by her paternal grandmother. I’ve usually seen her name translated as “Blue Flower.” During her childhood, her parents divorced. She spent some of her childhood raised by paternal relatives at Taos Pueblo in New Mexico and attending the U.S. Indian School in Santa Fe. During her teen years, she went to live with her European mother in Salt Lake City; however, she was treated so poorly that she ran away and got married. She didn’t begin studying art until she was well into her adulthood, but once she began painting, she quickly achieved success. There are even suggestions that her deer influenced Disney’s Bambi, because Walt Disney purchased one or more of her paintings before the movie’s animation work started.
I don’t remember a time when I did not know Pop Chalee’s art. I spent part of my childhood in the southwestern United States and had many relatives in New Mexico. Running across her art was almost natural. Several of her paintings, commissioned by Howard Hughes, are in the Albuquerque Airport (or “Sunport,” as they call it), including her prominently displayed horse mural. I must have seen her art other places, too; her unforgettable horses and forest scenes are engraved in my mind.
Pop Chalee is probably best known for horses that stepped straight out of a fantasy world and deer leaping through magical forests, but she also painted several works featuring Native American dancers and hunters. Her paintings are colorful and have a sense of motion.
Pop Chalee also worked as a dorm matron for young scientists working on the Manhattan Project. I was excited to find a video of her while I was doing research for this post; unfortunately, the interview is about her memories of Los Alamos, not her work as an artist. (There’s a wonderful bit toward the end where the interviewer asks about the son of potter Maria Martinez, and Pop Chalee is far more interested in talking about Martinez than about her son.)
You can view Pop Chalee’s art in her biography, at the Albuquerque Sunport, and in various museums, particularly the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico, and the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.