During her short career Helen Hardin struggled to balance traditional Native American painting styles and ideas she had been raised with and her need to express herself as an individual artist with her own views and style. This piece is an example of Helen's talent of combining two worlds in a way not many other artists have been able to do. The Kokopelli playing the flute is an age old rock art symbol throughout the Southwest, as well as a very common design element on the beautiful red on buff pottery of the Prehistoric Hohokam peoples of Southern Arizona.

Hardin has incorporated this primordial symbol of fertility and prosperity serenading a small bird into a vision that is both ancient and modern at the same time. A deep brown Kokopelli plays his flute in concert for a little Pueblo bird against a splattered background of earth tones. Contemporary, abstract plant motifs play against the ancient symbol of the Hump-backed flute player bringing his joy and abundance to the world. Hardin has captured the past and present in a lively, charming painting that only she could create.