Naranjo-Morse, Nora, 1953-

During the summer of 2007, artist Nora Naranjo-Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo) built a family of clay sculptures, entitled Always Becoming, on the grounds of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. A public dedication of the sculptures took place on September 21, 2007. Naranjo-Morse's sculpture concept was selected unanimously by a selection committee from more than 55 entries submitted by Native artists from throughout the Western Hemisphere.
The five sculptures, ranging in height from seven and a half to sixteen feet tall, greet visitors from among the tall meadow grasses on the south side of the building. Nora worked side-by-side with her niece, Athena Swentzell Steen, and husband Bill Steen, who are experts at building structures with natural materials such as straw bale.

artist; ceramicist; potter; installation artist; printmaker; sculptor; mixed-media artists; poet

Nora Naranjo Morse (born 1953 in Santa Clara Puelbo in Northern Mexico) is a Native American artist and poet. She currently resides in Espanola, New Mexico just north of Santa Fe and is a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo. Her work can be found in several museum collections including the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minnesota, and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, where her hand-built sculpture piece, Always Becoming, was selected from more than 55 entries submitted by Native artists as the winner of an outdoor sculpture competition held in 2005. In 2014, she was honored with a NACF Artist Fellowship for Visual Arts and was selected to prepare temporal public art for the 5x5 Project by curator Lance Fung.
Morse's earlier sculpting work was made using clay. Inspired by the ancient traditions of making Pueblo Clowns, she created her own character named "Pearlene". She wrote adventures about this character in "Mud Women", a book of her own poetry. In her later work, Morse commented on Indian Stereotypes as well as raising questions within her own community. Some of her most well-known installations include Sugared Up: A Waffle Garden (1999); I've Been Bingo-ed by My Baby!: A story of love lust, and loss on the rez... (2009); and A Pueblo Woman's Clothesline (1995).