What to say when you are "allowed" to offer a shining example of a truly accomplished artist's work?

This painting was purchased sometime between 1974 and 1976 from a gallery in Colorado. The gallery had the opportunity to sell Corn Pollen Gatherer because of the owner's friendship with Richard Spivey, dealer and friend to Helen Hardin.

Helen's contribution to American Indian painting had to do with her morphing traditional subject matter into an elegant level of abstraction.  Her choice of color leaned toward the secondary colors heightened with extremely strident saturated accent color, which in this case is turquoise.

Confident well orchestrated design Helen married to a sophisticated choice of color. Corn Pollen Gatherer epitomizes Helen's contribution. We are proud to offer such a major painting by Helen Hardin.

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.

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