Carolyn Concho

Acoma Pueblo

Carolyn Lewis-Concho

Carolyn Lewis-Concho is a potter born in Acoma Pueblo in 1963. She was encouraged to participate in continuing the generations of tradition of working with clay by several of her family members but she says it was her older sister, Marilyn Ray, who helped her make the decision to be an artist who only uses natural materials to construct her work.

Carolyn often paints Mimbres-Revival animals and other designs on her pottery. There is an interview with Carolyn where she talks about how she makes her pottery and what the shapes and designs mean to her. The video was streamed live in August, 2020.

Carolyn uses appliqués of one sort or another on a lot of her pottery. I'm talking butterfly and hummingbird wings, lizard heads and lady bugs, a cloudeater's head and the fish in its throat. If it's a seed pot with a lizard on top, there's probably a painted appliqué of a lizard's tail on the back side of the piece. Many of her pieces have a painted lady bug on the back side, some have fish. It depends on what's on top.

She signs her pottery: "Carolyn Concho, Acoma", usually adding a corn stalk and a lizard hallmark.