“Creating is a part of my everyday experience. Creating articulates itself in different forms and can happen at any given moment. It happens when I drive to the grocery store and I think of an idea while navigating through traffic. Creating blends into the act of living and dreaming. I know this when I see the creative process outlined in an outdoor ramada I dream to build next summer. And for better or worse, I often taste the results of creating when I cook.

“The act of creating has little judgment, no time restraints or fear. Creating suspends limitations but expects full engagement. Nothing is promised, so expectations are loosely based on the beginning and the end of the process of making something, and yet, no matter the outcome, a voice has spoken, a sculpture built, a thought expressed. Creating helps to define the way I look at who I am, where I’ve come from, and in turn, I’m challenged and called to truth — whether I want to be or not. Grounding and unsettling all at once, making something connects me to greater possibilities of self-awareness, articulation and a kind of sincere fearlessness that dreams need.”

Nora Naranjo Morse, Santa Clara Pueblo, b. 1952, is an accomplished potter, sculptor and poet. Like her sister Jody, she learned pottery techniques by helping her mother, Rose Naranjo. Although pottery had been a part of her youth, she did not devote herself to the art form until she was a young adult. She diverged from making bowls, jars and vessels and focused on figurative ceramics, using humor to convey satire. Her early work featured Pearlene, a sassy iconic representation of modern woman. In 1992, the University of Arizona Press published Mud Woman, a book of poems by Nora that included photographs of her figurative ceramics.

Pearlene was quite popular and Nora could have continued to create her indefinitely, but in 1991 she took her clay forms in a different direction and began creating abstract sculpture. In 1997, one of her works, Khwee-seng, was featured in the exhibit Honoring Native America: Twentieth Century American Sculpture at the White House. Most recently, Nora completed a major sculpture, Always Becoming, for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. She documented the creation and installation with a video production and podcasts posted on NMAI’s Web site.