Elizabeth Toya Medina (born November 30, 1956, Jemez Pueblo) is a Pueblo potter. She married into the Zia tribe in 1978 and, as is traditional, gained tribal permission to use Zia designs in her work. Her first pots were in the Jemez style. In some instances she has collaborated with her mother-in-law, Sofia Medina, whom she cites as her inspiration. [1]
Medina has been recognized widely for her work. She has been featured in numerous publications (including New Mexico Magazine , August 1994:36, and SWAIA Quarterly Fall 1982:10), galleries (Native American Collections in Denver, CO; Adobe Gallery and Agape Gallery in Albuquerque, NM), and museums (Wright Collection, Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). She has received many awards from 1984 to the present. [1]
Medina is particularly known for her polychrome ollas and jars, featuring cream-colored and tan slips that her mother-in-law also uses, as well as rose-red and orange slips. [2] Her favorite designs include roadrunners, robins, berry bushes, flowers, rain clouds, rainbows, fineline hatching, and turtle effigy lids. [1] Occasionally she produces plain pots for her husband Marcellus to paint with designs of Zia dancers. [2]
She uses a combination of sheep and cow manure to fire her pots. To achieve a white background color instead of blue, the manure must be completely dry. One way to protect the pots from fire smudges is through the reuse of everyday objects such as old bedsprings and auto shock absorbers.[ clarification needed ] [3]
Zia pots are unique in that they are tempered with basalt, a hard volcanic rock. Medina has been known to bury the rock in sand for a full year in order to soften it for grinding. [3]
Pueblo refers to the settlements and to the Native American tribes of the Pueblo peoples in the Southwestern United States, currently in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. The permanent communities, including some of the oldest continually occupied settlements in the United States, are called pueblos (lowercased).
Nampeyo was a Hopi-Tewa potter who lived on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. Her Tewa name was also spelled Num-pa-yu, meaning "snake that does not bite". Her name is also cited as "Nung-beh-yong," Tewa for Sand Snake.
The Zia or Tsʾíiyʾamʾé are an indigenous nation centered at Zia Pueblo (Tsi'ya), a Native American reservation in the U.S. state of New Mexico. The Zia are known for their pottery and use of the sun symbol. They are one of the Keres Pueblo peoples and speak the Eastern Keres language.
Maria Poveka Montoya Martinez was a Puebloan artist who created internationally known pottery. Martinez, her husband Julian, and other family members, including her son Popovi Da, examined traditional Pueblo pottery styles and techniques to create pieces which reflect the Pueblo people's legacy of fine artwork and crafts. The works of Maria Martinez, and especially her black ware pottery, are in the collections of many museums, including the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, and more. The Penn Museum in Philadelphia holds eight vessels – three plates and five jars – signed either "Marie" or "Marie & Julian".
Lucy Martin Lewis was a Native American potter from Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico. She is known for her black-on-white decorative ceramics made using traditional techniques.
Crucita Gonzales Calabaza, also known as Blue Corn, was a Native American artist and potter from San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, in the United States. She became famous for reviving San Ildefonso polychrome wares and had a very long and productive career.
Maria Margarita "Margaret" Tafoya was the matriarch of Santa Clara Pueblo potters. She was a recipient of a 1984 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
Anita Louise Suazo is a Native American potter from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, United States.
Nathan Youngblood is a Native American potter from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, United States.
Helen Cordero was a Cochiti Pueblo potter from Cochiti, New Mexico. She was renowned for her storyteller pottery figurines, a motif she invented, based upon the traditional "singing mother" motif.
Lisa Holt and Harlan Reano are a husband-and-wife team of Pueblo potters and artists from northern New Mexico. They have been making pottery together in 1999, they use traditional Cochiti pottery techniques and create modern work.
Tammy Garcia is a Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor and ceramic artist. Garcia translates Pueblo pottery forms and iconography into sculptures in bronze and other media.
Angela Tafoya Baca was a Native American artist who was known for her redware and blackware pottery, especially melon bowls and bowls featuring a bear paw design. She had one of the longest careers of the potters in Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico. She was a member of the Tewa and a resident of Santa Clara Pueblo.
Christine McHorse, also known as Christine Nofchissey McHorse, was a Navajo ceramic artist from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Mary Ellen Toya (1934–1990) was a Jemez Pueblo potter of the Water Clan. She was active ca. 1950–1990, and was known for creating some of the largest Storyteller figures.
Joy Navasie was a Hopi-Tewa potter. Her work has been recognized globally.
Juanita Inez Ortiz, also known as Inez Ortiz was a Native American Cochiti Pueblo artist, specializing in pottery. She is of the Herrera family of Pueblo potters in New Mexico, whose work is often found in art collections and in art museums. She was from the Cochiti Pueblo in Cochiti, New Mexico.
Susan Folwell is a Native American artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, known for her work in the ceramic industry. Her work ties in Native designs and history and has been used by Folwell to demonstrate her viewpoints on society and politics. Folwell has been described by the Heard Museum as an "innovator in Pueblo pottery".
Black-on-black ware is a 20th and 21st-century pottery tradition developed by Puebloan Native American ceramic artists in Northern New Mexico. Traditional reduction-fired blackware has been made for centuries by Pueblo artists and other artists around the world. Pueblo black-on-black ware of the past century is produced with a smooth surface, with the designs applied through selective burnishing or the application of refractory slip. Another style involves carving or incising designs and selectively polishing the raised areas. For generations several families from Kha'po Owingeh and P'ohwhóge Owingeh pueblos have been making black-on-black ware with the techniques passed down from matriarch potters. Artists from other pueblos have also produced black-on-black ware. Several contemporary artists have created works honoring the pottery of their ancestors.
Pueblo pottery are ceramic objects made by the Indigenous Pueblo people and their antecedents, the Ancestral Puebloans and Mogollon cultures in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. For centuries, pottery has been central to pueblo life as a feature of ceremonial and utilitarian usage. The clay is locally sourced, most frequently handmade, and fired traditionally in an earthen pit. These items take the form of storage jars, canteens, serving bowls, seed jars, and ladles. Some utility wares were undecorated except from simple corrugations or marks made with a stick or fingernail, however many examples for centuries were painted with abstract or representational motifs. Some pueblos made effigy vessels, fetishes or figurines. During modern times, pueblo pottery was produced specifically as an art form to serve an economic function. This role is not dissimilar to prehistoric times when pottery was traded throughout the Southwest, and in historic times after contact with the Spanish colonialists.