Horno Building at the Santa Fe Indian School

Santa Fe Indian School Horno Build

Eye of the Horno was called out to the Santa Fe Indian School to replace an old horno on campus that had fallen into disrepair. The new one is considerably bigger than what it replaced — and this time it came with a banco built alongside it and a low adobe wall wrapping the working area.

The project was built with the school's language program, guided by Lee Moquino. Santa Fe Indian School has been tribally controlled for the past 50 years, and in recent years has leaned further into weaving Native culture through every part of its curriculum. As Moquino put it in a recent NPR interview, "there's ways to incorporate any aspect of our culture into the western education system." A horno — hand-built, wood-fired, used to cook the same foods it's cooked for generations — fits that mission about as well as anything can.

Students took part over several weeks leading up to the school's language fair, working alongside the Eye of the Horno team a little at a time. Everything came together on one intensive build afternoon timed to the fair itself, when the group finished raising and closing the dome.

The design carries its own detail, too. The wall includes a circular arch cut straight through it, echoing circular forms found elsewhere across the SFIS campus. The whole design — horno, banco, wall, and arch together — was inspired by Robert Montoya (Soe Khuwa Pin), the Pueblo painter and architect from Sandia and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblos who took Best of Show at Santa Fe Indian Market in 1973 and studied architecture at the University of New Mexico. There's a fitting circle in that reference: his mother, Gerónima Cruz Montoya, taught generations of Native artists at the Studio School right here at the Santa Fe Indian School.

Since then, the horno has been put to work. The language program has used it to cook bread, chicos, and fry bread — turning a building project into something the students can taste, not just look at.

Eye of the Horno would like to thank Mark Lee Moquino and the students of the Santa Fe Indian School language program for such a meaningful project. We look forward to seeing what comes out of that oven next.