Joe Hilario Herrera (Cochiti Pueblo) was born in 1923 to Felipe Herrera and pioneering Indigenous artist, Tonita Peña. Herrera, also known as See-Ru, grew up surronded by art. He studied figural style (also known as the Studio Style) artwork at the Santa Fe Indian School under Geronima Montoya (San Juan Pueblo) (who took over the the program from Dorothy Dunn). After serving in World War II, Herrera studied art education at the University of New Mexico, where he also worked at the Laboratory of Anthropology, where he sketched Pueblo pots. One could argue that this experience, combined with the mentorship of Raymond Johnson at UNM and exposure to modernism, inspired him to explore a new genre of Indigenous art-making. Herrera passed away in 2001. His art continues to be exhibited all over the world, most recently with a show curated by W. Jackson Rushing III called “Generations in Modern Pueblo Painting: The Art of Tonita Peña and Joe Herrera” (2018) at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Oklahoma, and “Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting” (2019–2021) at the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center, New York.