Pop Chalee (Merina Lujan)
     The third child and second daughter of a Taos Pueblo man, Joseph Cruz Lujan, and Merla Margherete Luenberger, of predominantly Swiss heritage, Pop Chalee was born on the vernal equinox in 1906. Circumstances brought her to Taos Pueblo in the summer of 1911, where she began to learn about her father’s Tiwa heritage, and then to the Santa Fe Indian School in the fall where she began to learn about the Anglo world. The Indian School at that time was extremely strict, regimented and assimilationist, but its effects appear to have been mitigated in Pop Chalee’s case by the fact that she already, at five, spoke English, as a result of her father’s "progressive" beliefs. Summers were spent back at the Taos Pueblo where she became more and more aware of Tiwa Indian culture and lifeways. She left New Mexico and went to live with her mother in 1920. The relationship didn’t work and Pop Chalee became Mrs. Otis Hopkins in 1922. Otis was a tall, handsome, quiet Mormon of Swedish descent and was an expert wood and metal worker.
     The Hopkins made their home in Salt Lake City from 1922 to 1929. They did make one lengthy trip to Taos Pueblo in 1928, at which time Pop Chalee introduced Otis to her father and her uncles, including Tony Lujan, who had married Mabel Dodge in 1923. T. Harmon Parkhurst, the noted photographer, took numerous photographs of Pop Chalee, revealing her striking beauty (attired in the traditional Taos manta, shawl and folded white deerskin boots). She also got to know her father’s second (Tiwa) wife and Mabel Dodge, with whom she wasn’t all that impressed. From 1929 to 1935 the Hopkins lived in various western cities, wherever Otis could find work during the Depression.
     The September opening of the 1932 school year at the Santa Fe Indian School found a young Chicago Art Institute graduate, who had spent the previous year at Santo Domingo Pueblo, starting work as an art teacher. Dorothy Dunn’s first term was spent working as a "Laborer", next as an "Elementary Teacher" and finally as "Teacher of Fine and Applied Arts". Under that designation she provided art instruction over the next few years that forever changed Native American art and artists. During this period Pop Chalee had begun to capitalize on her good looks and knowledge of Pueblo culture to lecture and make presentations on Native American culture and arts. Her childhood dramatic and musical presentations with her sisters enabled her to gradually become a fine performer and lecturer.
     Pop Chalee, her husband Otis and their son and daughter returned to New Mexico in 1935. When she enrolled the children in the Santa Fe Indian School she met her son’s teacher – Dorothy Dunn – and found herself intrigued by Dorothy’s art classes. Although Pop was over the 21-year age limit for enrollment she used her connections through Tony Lujan and Mabel Dodge to obtain special permission from the Indian Commission’s Washington, D.C., headquarters to begin her studies. Other enrollees in Dorothy’s 1935 class were Navajos: Narcisco Abeyta, Harrison Begay, Gerald Nailor, Quincy Tahoma and Andy Tsinahjinnie; Apaches: Allan Houser and Wilson Dewey; Kiowa: Oscar Howe; and Pueblos: Geronima Cruz, Joe H. Herrera, Tony Martinez, Eva Mirabal, Ben Quintana and Pablita Velarde. When she later reflected on the class Dorthy Dunn noted "… This was the finest year of the studio."1 By the time Pop Chalee graduated, in 1937, paintings by Studio artists, including watercolors, were exhibited both nationally and internationally. That same year the Fine Arts Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe gave studio-trained Allan Houser his first one-man show. Immediately after their May 1937 graduation Pop, Houser and Gerald Nailor established a joint studio called "The Torreon" at 634 East Garcia Street in Santa Fe.
     By 1940 in the famous June 26th supplement to the "Santa Fe New Mexican" (titled "Artists and writers of New Mexico" ) Pop Chalee expressed her views about her art: "… I endeavor to capture through two dimensional forms the grace and beauty of the things I love, things that I have known until they become part of my subconscious. And I find that these elements of nature, whether animate or inanimate, lend themselves to purity of design and form that does not need the embellishment of contemporary civilization to give them a sense of life."2
     Most people are probably familiar with Pop Chalee’s work through the murals she created (on canvas) in 1945-46 for the TWA Lounge at the Albuquerque Airport. Ten of those murals were restored in the 1980’s and are now seen by millions each year in their places of honor at the Albuquerque Sunport.
      In the "Foreword" to Margaret Cesa’s biography of Pop Chalee Theresa Hanlan, then Director/Curator of the C.N. Gorman Museum in the Native American Studies Department at the University of California, Davis Campus, wrote: "Pop Chalee’s ephemeral paintings are much more than decorative woodland scenes; Pop Chalee’s forest has its own presence that is both haunting and whimsical… In some respects the trees seem to be guardians of all the small diminutive animals that abound on the forest floor. Her (Mystical) Forest resembles a portrait of a family as we can see the relationship and kinship between all the entities of the forest… The forest’s own movement and busy work of the animals at its feet accentuate its life force. One would see aspects of every part of the (Mystical) Forest if enough time were spent watching and becoming part of the forest as she had during many childhood days spent there."3
     Regarding the Studio artists generally Hanlan wrote "The work of the Studio artists orginates specifically from a (philosophy) and self-knowledge that is fixed to the land by kinship structures and relationships; … the abstract symbolism of a studio painting may carry and reflect a Native perspective of not only the land, but of the universe"4 With the passage time we can now begin to appreciate Pop Chalee’s instinctive love for the land of her Native American heritage and her compelling representation of those feelings.
     We are particularly pleased to offer one of Pop Chalee’s larger works: "Mystical Forest". The work is undated but was purchased by the present owner from a noted Santa Fe Gallery in the early 1960’s:
Pop Chalee, "Mystical (Brown) Forest", Tempera (poster paint) on paper, dimensions at sight 19" x 25 1/2, conservation matted and backed, $ 12,500

References:
Cesa, Margaret. The World of Flower Blue – Pop Chalee: An Artistic Biography, Red Chane Books, Santa Fe, 1997
Seymour, Tryntje Van Ness. When The Rainbow Touches Down, Phoenix, AZ, The Head Museum, 1988
Bernstein, Bruce and Rushing, W. Jackson. Modern by Tradition, American Indian Painting in the Studio Style, Santa Fe, Museum of New Mexico
Press, 1995

1 Cesa, p. 53
2 Cesa, p. 90
3 Cesa, p.p. x-xi
4 Cesa, pp. xiii, xii

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