'Reflective Presence': Indian Pueblo Cultural Center highlights work of Jesse Littlebird, Jonathan Loretto

When Michelle Lanteri began as head curator at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in late October, her first mission was to make some change.

“I was really eager to get out in the community of pueblo artists and highlight those who hadn’t been exhibited at the center before,” she says. “I wanted artists that were finding another angle of pueblo art.”

Lanteri then became acquainted with the work of Jonathan Loretto.

'Reflective Presence': Indian Pueblo Cultural Center highlights work of Jesse Littlebird, Jonathan Loretto

“He has his own unique way of carrying on the Cochiti storyteller tradition,” she says. “He’s all about moving the tradition to a current space. He paired his bobblehead storytellers with photographs. It’s all curated together.”

Lanteri then searched for a painter who would complement Loretto’s style.

Enter Jesse Littlebird.

“I showed Jonathan some of Jesse’s work and he immediately wanted to be paired with him,” Lanteri says. “Jesse’s landscapes are the stories of the land.”

After some conversations, “Reflective Presence: The Art of Jesse Littlebird & Jonathan Loretto” was born.

The exhibit is currently on display at the Artists Circle Gallery at the IPCC through June 23. There will be an artist talk at 6 p.m. Friday, March 15, and then a public reception runs from 6-8 p.m.

Lanteri says the exhibition focuses on the artwork of Littlebird (Laguna/Kewa Pueblos) and Loretto (Walatowa/Kotyiti Pueblos) and their processes of traversing home to find new views and understandings of Pueblo places and people.

She says the exhibition grounds itself in visual narratives that transport viewers through different layers of consciousness through site-specific bodies of work created by the artists.

The exhibition offers a firm footing in the present moment, with the present moment being different for everyone but connected between each person entering the gallery.

In exchange, Littlebird and Loretto’s artworks give viewers the opportunity to reflect while in the present.

Littlebird uses abstraction and connections to ancestral sites to tell painted, layered stories of the land on fabric and in mural-inscribed elements. Loretto creates bobblehead clay storytellers, charcoal drawing, and black and white photography to shift viewers into reminiscent and reflective spaces of land-based narratives.

Lanteri says Littlebird and Loretto’s artworks offer layered perspectives that transport viewers into new landscapes of personas, memories and places of being.

She says both artists locate their work in symbols, movement, narratives and depth rooted in pueblo understandings — all to give viewers a nuanced experience of traveling through artistic portals.

“Through clay, photography, drawing and painting, these artists channel their work with energy that, in effect, shifts viewers from one state of presence to another,” Lanteri says. “Through these shifts, onlookers pause to consider making the leap from their present state of mind to inventive places of consciousness created by the artists in their two and three-dimensional expressions.”