Humberto Flores, Untitled (c. 1985), glazed clay, 25 1/4 x 18 3/4 x 7 7/8 in. NHCC Art Museum Permanent Collection. Gift of Van Deren and Joan Coke.

National Hispanic Cultural Center (Albuquerque, NM).

Adult Category Winner

"Sing Out" by Alison Ely

Sing out, "In the beginning!"

The storyteller urged,

For we are nothing without our stories

     Of creation, of conquest,

     Of love, of loss.

Sing out, you feathered flyers,

Cackling at gravity's futile grasp.

Sing out, young warrior, 

     Of blood split, of victories won.

The storyteller gathers tales. 

They split and splinter and

Cast their spell, 

Generations bound together by tales

     Of creation, of conquest, 

     Of love, of loss. 

Sing out. 

 

Adult Category Honorable Mention

"Untitled (Tree of Life)" by Candice Yanez

Tree of Life, stands firm, 

Clay of Puebla sculpted into a story.

Pottery becomes poetry, 

In the artist's humble hands.

 

Rooted deep from earth to the Azure,

Primordial volcanic plains of the blackest basalt—

In remote deserts, magic thrives

Like a pre-Columbian ancestral afterlife, 

Where ancient ancestors commune with the living.

 

Branches reach up in a celestial embrace, and grow—

An evolutionary expanse where the past

And the future meets.

From the depths of Mictl?n

to unending cosmos, 

In a cycle of death and rebirth,

Like butterflies and hummingbirds heralding winter into spring.

 

The jeweled skies cry down in joy,

To the mesa in warm rain, nourishing the Tree of Life to stand firm—

Midwifing mankind into a poem of symbols and color.

Each branch tells a tradition, 

Each flower tells of devotion.

Pajaritos sing to the heavens rejoicing creation and birth,

Grateful for the artist's hands who created them.

Vida in magentas bold, 

In purples and the deepest, darkest blue firmament, 

Vast and empty.

Tree of life, the story's ending:

Even in death, there shines a light,

Even in death, we can celebrate life.