Blue Corn

San Ildefonso

Blue Corn was born Crucita Gonzales in 1921 into the San Ildefonso Pueblo. She was encouraged to start making pottery by her grandmother at the age of 3 but it was not until she was grown and had her first child with husband Santiago “Sandy” Calabaza (Santo Domingo) that she quit her housekeeping job (for J. Robert Oppenheimer) and started making pottery full time. Blue Corn is best known as a leader in the polychrome revival and for her highly polished surfaces, which she said she achieved by polishing very slowly. Blue Corn was masterful with her polychrome pottery.