The Hopi maintain a complex religious and mythological tradition stretching back over centuries. However, it is difficult to definitively state what all Hopis as a group believe. Like the oral traditions of many other societies, Hopi mythology is not always told consistently and each Hopi mesa, or even each village, may have its own version of a particular story, but "in essence the variants of the Hopi myth bear marked similarity to one another." It is also not clear that the stories told to non-Hopis, such as anthropologists and ethnographers, represent genuine Hopi beliefs or are merely stories told to the curious while keeping safe the more sacred Hopi teachings. As folklorist Harold Courlander states, "there is a Hopi reticence about discussing matters that could be considered ritual secrets or religion-oriented traditions."
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.
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.
Fannie Nampeyo (1900–1987) was a modern and contemporary fine arts potter, who carried on the traditions of her famous mother, Nampeyo of Hano, the grand matriarch of modern Hopi pottery.
Elva Nampeyo (1926–1985) was an American studio potter.
Helen Naha (1922–1993) was the matriarch in a family of well known Hopi-Tewa potters.
Art of the American Southwest is the visual arts of the Southwestern United States. This region encompasses Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of California, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Utah. These arts include architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, and other media, ranging from the ancient past to the contemporary arts of the present day.
Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo was a Native American potter and artist. She was in the fifth generation of a distinguished ancestral line of Hopi potters.
Alice Williams Cling is a Native American ceramist and potter known for creating beautiful and innovative pottery that has a distinctive rich reds, purples, browns and blacks that have a polished and shiny exteriors, revolutionizing the functional to works of art. Critics have argued that she is the most important Navajo potter of the last 25 years.
Grace Chapella (1874–1980) was a renowned Hopi-Tewa potter from a Tewa village and of the Bear Clan.
Joy Navasie was a Hopi-Tewa potter. Her work has been recognized globally.
Helen Shupla (1928-1985) was an American potter from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico.
Priscilla Namingha Nampeyo was a Hopi-Tewa potter who was known for her traditional pottery. Namingha mined her own clay and created her own pigments for her large pots. Her work is in the collection of several museums and cultural centers.
Daisy Hooee Nampeyo was a Hopi-Tewa potter. She studied at École des Beaux-Arts. Hooee taught pottery making on the Zuni reservation and helped preserve the traditional techniques she learned from her grandmother, Nampeyo.
Ida Sahmie is a Navajo potter. Sahmie combines Hopi traditional pottery making methods and Navajo iconography in her work. She has work in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.
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.
Paqua Naha, also known as "Frog Woman", was a Hopi-Tewa potter. She worked in the "black-and-red on yellow" style of pottery, which Nampeyo popularized as Sikyátki revival ware. She became well known as a potter by the 1920s and started using a frog hallmark to sign her works. Late in her career, she experimented with white slips and innovated a whiteware technique. Naha was the matriarch of the Naha/Navasie family, and several of her descendants went on to become notable potters in their own right, including Joy Navasie and Helen Naha. Her works are included in the collections of the National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and the Heard Museum.
