In the Green Corn Song, Sharp took an opportunity to invigorate his favorite models, Jerry Mirabal (Elk Foot), Juan Gomez (Hunting Son) and Crucita. Their animation is strikingly contrasted with the arranged artifacts on the mantel and hearth as well as in the wall niche — gourds, pots, rain god figurines, and a kachina. This evinces Sharp’s conviction that Indian life and Indian artifacts were distinctly different things. He wanted to prove through his art that his neighbors were very much alive, not relics of the past.
Crucita does all the work, shucking the green corn, while the two men enjoy singing and setting a tempo for the harvest toil at hand. This division of labor is repeated in other Sharp works of the period. (related image 234a)
In the mid-1920s Sharp was much focused on scenes like this that explored, with a brilliant palette and abundant light, themes of corn, the sustainer of life for pueblo people. At his annual fall Cincinnati exhibition at the end of the 1925 season, Sharp offered paintings with such titles as Ceremonial Song, Pueblo Drummer, Indian Corn, Shelling Corn and Hunting Song. This painting, Green Corn Song, was also one of those tendered works.
Peter H. Hassrick
