Elicena Cota

Elicena Cota Lopez is a potter from the northern Mexico village of Mata Ortiz. She seems to like making black or gray pots with multi-color slipped designs within sgraffito designs within sgraffito designs... Her motifs tend to be natural: insects, birds, lizards, plants.

Elicena was born in 1979 and, as a second generaton Mata Ortiz potter, grew up watching pottery being made all around her. By the time she was 17, she was already established in the marketplace. A few years later she married Efrain Lucero Jr., another fine potter. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they don't. Elicena's designs and techniques make her pottery stand out from the crowd.

I know she's earned other awards but at the 2013 Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Show she took home ribbons for Third Place in Best of Show and Second Place in the Traditional Black Category.