Kramer, Barbara 1926–

PERSONAL: Born February 11, 1926, in Floral Park, NY; married James Kramer (an architect and artist); children: Susan Erickson, Joan Goodwin. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Attended University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Berkeley, A.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—78-861 Runaway Bay Dr., Bermuda Dunes, CA 92203. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer. Teacher at private schools on Monterey Peninsula, CA; independent scholar, 1976–. New Mexico state legislature, Santa Fe, senate historian, 1979; School of American Research, Santa Fe, lecturer, consultant, and coordinator for Hopi pottery.

WRITINGS:

Nampeyo and Her Pottery, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1996.

Contributor to books, including An Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century North American Women Artists, edited by Jules Heller, Garland Publishers (New York, NY), 1995; The Dictionary of Art, edited by Jane Turner, Grove's Dictionaries (New York, NY), 1996; and Legacy: Southwest Indian Art at the School of American Research, edited by Duane Anderson, School of American Research Press (Santa Fe, NM), 1999. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Persimmon Hills, ABQ Arts, Book Talk, Southwest Art, Focus/Santa Fe, and American Indian Art.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Memoirs of her husband, artist James Kramer.

SIDELIGHTS: Barbara Kramer told CA: "A writer need not have academic degrees to write about a subject of interest to him or her. Curiosity and persistence can produce a remarkable tome. My interest was Nampeyo, ca. 1860–1942, important Hopi potter to Fred Harvey and the Southern Pacific Railroad in luring visitors to the early Southwest. I could find only brief information about her, even though her work, which revitalized prehistoric Hopi pottery, was collected by museums in the late 1800s and early 1900s both in this country and in Europe.

"My archival research included original records of Indian agents and government representatives; correspondence of Indian traders; firsthand reports of anthropologists, artists, and photographers; other sources such as newspaper reports; studying documented collections of her work in museums; and a close relationship with descendants of Nampeyo still living on the Hopi Reservation. I submitted my manuscript, Nampeyo and Her Pottery, to University of New Mexico Press, which published the book in hardback in 1996. It was reissued in soft cover by University of Arizona Press in 2003 and has become the 'bible' about Nampeyo and the Hopi Reservation to which all further studies of the potter refer."