Mary Lowden

Acoma Pueblo

Mary Lowden was a traditional potter from Acoma Pueblo. She is most known for her polychrome jars, bowl, canteens, figures, storyteller figures, miniatures and nativity sets. Virginia Lowden is her sister-in-law.

Born in late 1941, Mary was the last child born in Sky City, atop the mesa Acoma is famous for. Her father built a stand along the side of Route 66 and, as she and her sister were growing up, the girls spent many months at that stand, selling their grandmother's pottery to passing tourists and sometimes posing for pictures with them. In her late teens Mary married Alvin and they relocated to southern Californian for a few years. When that didn't pan out they returned to Acoma. He went to work in the family fields and she learned to make pottery. She made the usual range of shapes and styles that everyone else made but she preferred making figurines. And she really liked making figurines that she could fit into vignettes of daily life around her pueblo. In most of her vignettes she included a dog figure, in commemoration of her brother's dog, Beer Can.