About This Site

This website is not made for the selling of pottery and I offer nothing for sale on it. This website is about my learning journey: stories about the potters (and photos of their pottery) who have made Native American Pueblo pottery such a vibrant modern art form. I do know there is no possibility that I will ever catalog all the pottery made in the Pueblo world, I can only hope to show enough to help people get an idea as to the styles and shapes of pottery being made and the plethora of designs being added to those basic clay forms.

It's easy enough to meet the potters but it's hard to get more than a couple lines of their stories as they tend to be a pretty humble and self-effacing group of people. Every now and then, though, a story comes out and I discover that some of these potters have gone to some of the finest art and ceramic schools in the world before returning to their roots and working with clay the way their ancestors have for a thousand years and more. Others began learning their art as young children, working side-by-side with parents, cousins, aunts, grandparents and great-grandparents. Still others are completely self-taught. All have one thing in common: a direct personal experience of working with the clay and allowing that clay to express through them in the process of that creating. As Hopi potter Al Qoyawayma put it in A Measure of Harmony (1982): "During the creative process I am privileged to be present, watching as the unseen hands and the gift of the Creator's energy flows into my work. For this I am deeply thankful. Do I pray when forming pots? Certainly."