(untitled - woman and child)

As a part of his mural series, Zia Pueblo artist Velino Herrera painted a Pueblo woman carrying her tightly wrapped baby on her back. She wears traditional garb and has her hair tied behind her head. One of the infant’s booted feet kicks out from the bottom of the red wrap. The artist did not title this painting. The woman is dressed similarly to other Pueblo women pictured in Pueblo Girls Carrying Water and The Pottery Makers, but she does not appear to belong to these mural scenes. 

Velino Shije Herrera, also known as Ma Pe Wi, was commissioned in 1939 to create a series of murals at the new Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C. He was one of four Native American artists who painted 2,200 feet of murals for the eighth-floor penthouse, which served as the employee lounge. While Herrera painted the north corridor, Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo covered the south corridor. In the main room, the walls were divided between Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser and Navajo painter Gerald Nailor. The Secretary of the Interior at the time, Harold Ickes, insisted on commissioning artworks by Native American artists. Because of this mandate, the Section of Fine Arts invited Crumbo, Herrera, Houser, and Nailor to participate in the penthouse project and commissioned two Kiowa artists, James Auchiah and Stephen Mopope, to paint murals for the cafeteria.