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Pop Chalee was born to a Taos Pueblo
Indian father and a European mother. As a young girl, she moved between the two worlds of her parents, but
identified most with her father's heritage and life on the pueblo. Influenced by two important women, society
matron Mabel Dodge Luhan, wife of her uncle Tony Lujan, and art teacher Dorothy Dunn, Pop went on to become a
major force in Native American art.
Pop Chalee was almost 30 years old when she met Dorothy Dunn, a teacher who came from Chicago to the Santa Fe Indian
School in the early 1930s. Dunn's unique style of teaching influenced the direction and careers of many aspiring Indian
artists. She encouraged her students, both women and men, to paint what they knew: ceremonies, dances, costumes, animals,
and plants, in a style that had historically been done only by men on rock walls, teepees, and buffalo hides.
Pop Chalee transformed a traditional style of painting to create magical, idyllic images of wide-eyed animals,
ceremonial figures, and woodland settings. Museums and galleries sought her exotic and captivating works and she was
frequently requested to make personal appearances. Chalee attributed her success as an artist to the encouragement
of Mabel Dodge Lujan and the instruction of her admired teacher Dorothy Dunn, to whom she paid tribute throughout her life.
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