The artist Rose B. Simpson explores the rich visual culture of her ancestral homelands in and around Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. She draws on a wide range of influences, from her maternal lineage of Pueblo potters to New Mexico’s customized lowrider car scene.
Maria merges these diverse aspects of Simpson’s work. It depicts “Maria,” a 1985 Chevy El Camino (a car-truck hybrid) that the artist found for sale on a roadside in 2014 and named after the Puebloan artist Maria Martinez (1887–1980). Simpson, who has been buying and fixing up cars since she was 12, painted the car’s exterior in a black-on-black design based on Martinez’s pottery glaze style. In 2021 she created this lithograph, one of her first prints, adopting a diptych format to showcase both sides of the car. Having grown up in Española, known as the “Lowrider Capital of the World,” Simpson recalls that the community there gave her an understanding of “how cars build identity and create empowerment in disenfranchised peoples.”
Organized by Starr Figura, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, with Lydia Mullin, Manager, Collection Galleries, Department of Curatorial Affairs, and Elizabeth Wickham, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture.
