Blue Corn

Career After her first son, Joseph, was born, she returned to pottery making. Santiago quit his job to help her carve, paint, and design her pots. By the late 1960s she had established herself as a leader in polychrome styles. After her husband died in 1972, her son Joseph began helping her with her pots. During the 1960s and 1970s, she led many workshops on pottery making in both the U.S. and Canada. Although Blue Corn also made redware and blackware, she is especially noted for her finely polished slips and exhaustive experimentations with clays and colors, producing cream polychrome on jars and plates. She is particularly well known for her feather and cloud designs.

Blue Corn is known for the reintroduction of polychrome fine whiteware and has received critical acclaim from several publications including The Wall Street Journal. Her pottery can be found in the Smithsonian Institution and other leading museums throughout America and Europe as well as in private collections. She won more than 60 awards including the 8th Annual New Mexico Governors Award in 1981. This is New Mexico's greatest recognition of artistic achievement.

Death Calabaza died on May 3, 1999, leaving ten children, 18 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.