IN 1999, AT THE DEDICATION for the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial, in Washington, D.C., then Senator Barack Obama read a statement inscribed on one of the memorial’s 18 glass panels. Written by Vietnam War veteran Michael Naranjo, the words seem to summarize the experience of any soldier who has questioned whether they’d survive battle wounds.
“When you’re young, you’re invincible,” Obama read, reciting Naranjo’s words. “You’re immortal. I thought I’d come back. Perhaps I wouldn’t, there was that thought, too, but I had this feeling that I would come back. Underneath that feeling, there was another, that maybe I wouldn’t be quite the same, but I felt I’d make it back.”
At age 22, Naranjo was seriously injured by a grenade thrown by a North Vietnamese soldier. He did make it back. But he wasn’t the same.
Naranjo's "Mountain Meadows," 2012.
Photograph courtesy of Nedra Matteucci Galleries.
Blinded and left with an unusable right hand, he began working with clay as a means of therapy during his recovery. Now, at 80, the award-winning sculptor from Santa Clara Pueblo is preparing for a retrospective exhibition in Santa Fe. He says it will be his last.
“I’ll never have another one,” Naranjo says. Although he still sculpts, shoulder surgeries in recent years affected his one good arm. “It’s taking me longer to create pieces.”
The artist’s much-lauded bronzes and stonework have made it into the Vatican; the White House; the Heard Museum, in Phoenix; and the Tia Collection and the New Mexico Museum of Art, both in Santa Fe. His works are loaned to other institutions through the efforts of his wife, Laurie, who handles the promotional aspects of his career. The Naranjos also partner with museums to create touchable traveling art shows for those who can’t see.
"Fountain of Youth Maquette," 2008.
Photograph courtesy of Nedra Matteucci Galleries.
NARANJO’S 80TH BIRTHDAY EXHIBITION, Reflections of a Sculptor: The Life & Work of Michael Naranjo, is on view August 10–30, at Nedra Matteucci Galleries, in Santa Fe. While the show at his longtime gallery does not feature new work, it presents some rarely seen sculptures that are no longer in edition and haven’t been on the market for many years.
Reflections of a Sculptor includes iconic works in bronze such as He’s My Brother, which depicts a soldier, rifle in hand, carrying an injured comrade over his shoulder. As with all Naranjo’s sculptures, He’s My Brother is a reductive yet sinuous take on the human form. Cast in 2001, decades after the war, it exemplifies the love and sacrifice of brothers-in-arms during conflict. The injured soldier is limp and lifeless—his strength gone, giving his trust to the soldier who will carry him to safety.
"He’s My Brother," 2001.
Photograph courtesy of Nedra Matteucci Galleries.
In Naranjo’s hallmark style, the figures lack features that would render them recognizable as individuals. While his figures are generally depicted as solitary, they remain archetypes that embody commonalities of human experience, often expressed through Indigenous subjects such as Pueblo Ram Dancers. It’s easy to assume that the lack of personal details in his subjects are the result of his blindness. But the remarkable consistency of sensuous curves and gestural motion—and an abiding emphasis on quintessential form rather than finite characteristics—renders Naranjo’s body of work uniquely cohesive and undeniably his own.
“Michael Naranjo has made significant contributions to the field of Native American art, particularly through his tactile approach to sculpture and his deeply expressive works,” says Manuela Well-Off-Man, chief curator at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, in Santa Fe. “His art reflects his rich cultural knowledge. Through his sculptures, Naranjo conveys stories and symbols that are integral to his Tewa heritage.”
"Toro and Torito," 2014.
Photograph courtesy of Nedra Matteucci Galleries.
It’s doubtful that anyone would guess that Naranjo is blind when first encountering his art. Torso II, for instance, is an expertly rendered nude of a woman. The sculpture shows just how adept he is in capturing the human form’s muscularity and voluptuousness.
Many of his works contain a serpentine quality that can appear like tendrils of smoke frozen in a solid state. An editioned bronze titled The Native contains that snakelike aspect. The limbs of the figure—holding a fish in one hand, a loose hanging net in the other—stretch out, long, bending, and appearing almost boneless. The figure is at one with the fish and the net, as though they are extensions of his two hands.
Horse-mounted men, water-bearing maidens, and a sculpture depicting a buffalo hunt are among his Indigenous-themed works at the gallery. Other subjects include Santa Claus in his sleigh, pulled by a team of reindeer, a horse-dragon with the Japanese name Ryoma, and Justice, shown blindfolded with scales in hand.
"Earth, Fire and Wind," 2022.
Photograph courtesy of Nedra Matteucci Galleries.
“I’M THE ONLY ONE IN MY FAMILY WHO never finished college,” says Naranjo, who comes from one of New Mexico’s most high-profile artistic families—including his mother, Rose; his sisters Nora Naranjo-Morse and Jody Folwell; his niece Roxanne Swentzell, and Swentzell’s daughter, Rose B. Simpson. Largely self-taught outside of his childhood education, Naranjo still sculpts with his mother’s clay. It’s remarkable to consider that the only art he saw with his own two eyes came before the war.
He is familiar with major works from art history—not just from memory, but by touch. Whether his own artworks are in museum collections or on public display, Naranjo insists that the public be able to touch them. Blind sculptors may be rare, but approximately 12 million individuals in the U.S. have vision impairment, with about one million of those being legally blind. They have a right to look at art, too, and to come away enriched and inspired by a museum or a gallery.
Michael Naranjo with Michelangelo’s "David," 1986.
Photograph courtesy of Nedra Matteucci Galleries.
A documentary film currently in production, Dream, Touch, Believe—directed by Naranjo’s daughter, the television producer and journalist Jenna Winters—captures the moment when he was invited to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, in Oklahoma City, in 2019. There, since Naranjo often says he “lives in a world of touch,” he experienced James Earle Fraser’s monumental sculpture End of the Trail firsthand. The special moment, as Naranjo pain-stakingly traced the curves and angles of another sculptor, is a highlight of the forthcoming documentary. (See a clip at dreamtouchbelieve.com.)
“To be able to do that, and be given permission, is an enormous honor,” he says. “I saw a sketch of End of the Trail many years ago, when I could see, and that was it.”
He has advocated for other touchable works of art in museum collections, and End of the Trail wasn’t the first time Naranjo was invited to connect with a masterpiece. In 1986, at the invitation of Pope John Paul II, he experienced Michelangelo’s David in Florence, Italy. Atop a scaffold, he was allowed to commune with the Renaissance artwork in a way that’s afforded to almost no one else in the world, not even curators: He got to touch a Michelangelo. “It was incredible,” he says.
Other opportunities followed, including a private tour of the Louvre on a day when the famous Paris museum was closed to the public. “My wife and I were the only ones in there,” he says. “I was looking at sculptures.”
from left
"The Native," 1971; "Daydream," 2005.
Photograph courtesy of Nedra Matteucci Galleries.
Curators led him through with ladders at the ready. “What more can any one artist ask for, if one doesn’t have sight, but is simply touching with those three fingers of the left hand—the thumb, the pointer, and the index—which do all of my work?” he says. “To give that kind of freedom to an artist is unknown, just about.”
His inclination is to give others the same opportunities. His legacy extends to workshops for elementary school children as well as other disabled veterans, whose representation he’s spearheaded as one of 25,000 blind veterans who’ve benefited from Veterans Affairs department programs. “His success as an artist has broken stereotypes and demonstrated that physical limitations do not preclude artistic excellence,” Well-Off-Man says.
Since losing his vision, Naranjo says his perspective has expanded over the years to acknowledge “what time brings to what you feel passionate about.”
“If you nourish your passion and work at it, you become better. I saw that when I first came home from the war as the days and weeks went by, and I started working seriously on sculpture,” he says. “But there’s an acknowledgment that it’s going to take some doing.”
Read more: Curator Bill Shapiro discusses the new MoMo Gallery exhibition, "In the Time of Spirits," the power of photography, and more.
