Glenda Loretto - Jewelry

Biography

Glenda Loretto was born into an artistic family from Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico. Her mother Albenita Loretto was a potter and her sister, Estella Loretto, is a well-known artist. Glenda graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1993 where she received her Associates Degree in Fine Arts.

While attending IAIA in 1993, Glenda had the opportunity to attend a two- week program at the Penland School of Arts in North Carolina to study jewelry. Glenda began as a potter but in 2000 she changed her medium to jewelry. She attended the Poeh Arts in Pojoaque, New Mexico where she studied jewelry and Lost Wax Casting under David Gaussoin and Fritz Casuse which both are well-known Navajo jewelers.

She has exhibited her work at the Annual Santa Fe Indian Market; the Heard Museum Indian Market in Phoenix, Arizona; Garland’s Indian Jewelry in Sedona, Arizona; Shiprock Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Museum of Indian Arts and Cultural (MIAC) in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Denver Art Museum and Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, NM. In 2009, Nancy N. Schiffer published her work in the “Masters of Contemporary Indian Jewelry”.

In 2011 she received her Bachelors degree at IAIA in Studio Arts. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has two grown children, her son is a Physical Education Teacher and an Athletic Trainer at Rio Grande High School in Albuquerque. Her daughter is attending her second year of college at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA.