For most of her 75 years, Trinnie Chavez's hands have been working the fields, gathering firewood (with a horse and wagon) and making pottery and jewelry. "My hardworking ... old-age hands," she calls them.

Chavez practically grew up under the portal at the Palace of the Governors. When she was about 3, she began coming there from Santo Domingo with her grandparents, who were potters. In 1952, a year after her marriage, she started her own business and began selling jewelry on the Palace's porch. Her own arms are decked with exquisite bracelets made for her by her husband.

Chavez raised all seven of her children on her earnings from jewelry sales and today two of them have joined her in the portal vendors program. "It's the only place you can come for income," she said.

When portal artisans were invited to help produce an exhibit for the new History Museum, Chavez didn't hesitate. "I wanted to do something for the museum," she said.

In March, Chavez was one of 31 vendors who offered to provide their handprints to the exhibit designers. They simply made Xerox images of their palms on the copy machine in the portal program office. Some of these images were then painted on the curved wall of the museum's permanent exhibit, "Beyond History's Record."

The gold-colored handprints on the dark red and ochre walls evoking the New Mexico landscape are meant to remind visitors of rock art, the symbolic images of people, animals, tools and elements of the natural world incised in stone by prehistoric peoples of this region.

Petroglyphs, said Sujit Tolat, Gallagher & Associate's lead designer on the project, are "always about leaving your mark" and the portal artisans will "be able to tell their children they've left their mark."

The making of the handprints was a "joyous event," recalled Carlotta Boettcher, coordinator of the Native American Artisans Program at the Palace. The vendors were happy to have a role to play in the creation of the new building.

In addition to the handprints, the exhibit designers wanted to incorporate bronze castings of the hands of the descendants of the early people of the region. Tom Coriz, Geraldine Garcia and Garcia's granddaughter, Winter Valencia, all agreed to help.

Coriz said he washed his hand, then sank it into a rubbery, pinkish material similar to a dental casting, which hardened quickly, preserving all the lines and details of his palm. The impression was used to cast a bronze copy that is now mounted, with the others, on the exhibit wall. Visitors can press the bronze impressions to trigger oral histories from the collection of Jack Loeffler, historian, writer and sound collage artist from Northern New Mexico. They'll be able to hear Roberta Black Goat talk about the Navajo sacred homeland, José Lucero on Santa Clara beliefs about water or Roy Kady on sheep creation.

"It was an honor to do that for the museum," Coriz said, adding that he wanted to represent his tribe of Santo Domingo and the "people who have passed on."

Coriz followed his mother to the portal as a jewelry vendor. He started helping her at age 12, grinding and polishing the stones. In the late 1980s, he went to the Institute of American Indian Arts to learn metalworking. He's been at the portal for about six years and specializes in reversible pendants, necklaces, earrings and inlays. His older sister also sells under the portal and he hopes one of his children will follow him into jewelry-making.

His own hands, he said, are "loving ones, for my people and my family." And, he added, "for making beautiful jewelry for all my customers."

For many of the vendors, who occupy a little but significant piece of Santa Fe Plaza space reserved only for Indian artisans, helping out with the exhibit was kind of like "stamping their identity on the building," Boettcher said. "Somehow their ties to the museum are well preserved and visible forever."

By providing their handprints, "They are making sure their identity— who they are, who they've been — is always present in this new building added to Palace," she added. "This is very meaningful."

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.

Portal artisans who provided photocopied images of their hands:

Priscilla Loretto, Jemez Pueblo

Henry Calladitto, Navajo

Jackie Platero, Diné

Mary Eustace, Zuni-Cochiti

Jeannie Rockwell, Santo Domingo

Sylvia Secatero, Diné

Samuel Burnside, Diné

Kenneth White II, Diné

Virginia Nelson, Navajo

Cheryl Arviso, Navajo

Christina Eustace, Zuni-Cochiti

Frances Toledo, Jemez Pueblo

Marilyn Yazzie Tenorio, Navajo

Randy Hoskie, Navajo

Everette Toledo, Navajo

Stella Platero, Navajo

Crystal Tohee, Otoe-Missouria/Diné

Nellie Vandever, Navajo

Reginald Eustace, Zuni-Cochiti-Northern Cheyenne-Oglala Sioux

Benjamin Toya, Jemez Pueblo

Trinnie Chavez, Santo Domingo

Ruby Toya, Zuni-Jemez Pueblo

Carol Lee Guerro, Diné

Karen Paquin, Jemez-Laguna

Dorels Tosa, Jemez Pueblo

Phyllis Coonsis, Zuni Pueblo

Lucille Bah Hayes, Diné

Matilda Tenorio, Santo Domingo

Michelle Slim, Navajo

Eileen Rosetta, KEWA-Santo Domingo

Leo Calabaza, Santo Domingo