Collection Exhibitions
To Know the Fire: Pueblo Women Potters and the Shaping of History
Completed1/27/2022 - 9/3/2022
Organizing institution: Krannert Art Museum at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Primary Curator: Allyson Purpura
This exhibition brings together a selection of earthenware vessels from the Pueblo communities of New Mexico and Arizona generously gifted to KAM by the late George Ogura. Taking its title from the words of Laguna Pueblo potter Gladys Paquin, recalling the precarious art of ground-firing pots with kindling and manure, To Know the Fire explores the history, sociality, and poetics of Pueblo vessels and their makers. Handed down through the generations, pottery making in Pueblo communities has long been associated with lineages of renowned women potters. Many potters today view their work as a spiritual act, connecting them to their extraordinary predecessors. The Ogura gift includes, among others, works dating between the 1930s and 1980s by artists from the acclaimed Nampeyo (Hopi-Tewa Pueblo), Navasie (Hopi Pueblo), Lewis (Acoma Pueblo), and Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo) families. A selection of more recent miniature vessels also demonstrate the potters’ virtuosity, producing exquisitely detailed, minute replicas. The exhibition will explore the gendered, sensorial nature of the vessels’ materiality, the artists’ improvisational play with ancestral designs and forms, and the connections their practices enact between Pueblo lands and communities. Harvesting clay involves acts of reciprocity and gratitude to the Earth Mother that have cycled through generations of potters’ hands. To their makers, pots are vibrant things that they have brought into the world. Exclaiming themselves through form, color, and surface design, their aesthetic is also animated through sound—when tapped on its surface, a Hopi pot is thought to sing. While innovations in forms and designs testify to the inventiveness of individual artists, the sharing of knowledge, labor, and resources—sourcing and preparing the clay, harvesting and mixing natural pigments, making yucca fiber brushes, coiling, smoothing, sanding, polishing, and painting the vessel body, and finally, the firing—reveals the sociality of potting and the importance of collaboration in the artmaking process. The exhibition will also offer critical reflection on the history of the Pueblos that places the creativity and resilience of women artists front and center. In the late nineteenth century, with archeologists, tourists, and amateur photographers converging on Pueblo lands, commercial pottery became a significant means of livelihood and self-determination that has sustained many families to this day. That the vessels were created for sale on a global market does not compromise the personal attachments and cultural significance they hold for their makers. Thus “to know the fire” is to know this history and to recognize the power of art for community care, survivance, and wellbeing.
- Krannert Art Museum 1/27/2022 - 9/3/2022
- Albert & Josephine Vigil (active San Ildefonzo Pueblo, NM, USA, 1945 - 2001)
- Albert Vigil (San Ildefonso Pueblo, NM, USA, 1927 - 2009)
- Angela Baca (Santa Clara Pueblo, NM, USA, 1927 - 2014)
- Blue Corn (San Ildefonso Pueblo, NM, USA, 1921 - 1999, Santa Fe, NM, USA)
- Carolyn Concho (Acomita, Acoma Reservation, NM, USA, 1961 - )
- Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo (Polacca, AZ, USA, 1928 - 2019)
- Dolores Lewis Garcia (Acoma Pueblo, 1938 - )
- Dorothy Gutierrez (Navajo Nation, 1940 - )
- Ellsworth Polacca Nampeyo (First Mesa, Hopi Reservation, AZ, USA, 1940 - 1993)
- Emma Lewis (Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA, 1931 - 2013)
- Emmalita C. Chino (Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA, 1931 – )
- Fannie Nampeyo (First Mesa, Hopi Reservation, AZ, USA, 1900 - 1987)
- Fawn Navasie (First Mesa, Hopi Reservation, AZ, USA, 1959 - )
- Flora & Glenda Naranjo (active Santa Clara Pueblo, NM, USA, 1970 - 2000)
- Flora Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo, NM, USA, 1915 - 2000)
- Frances Naranjo Salazar (Santa Clara Pueblo, NM, USA, 1936 - 2002)
- Gail Leno (active Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA, 20th century - )
- Gary Polacca Nampeyo (New Mexico, USA, 1955 - )
- Geraldine Sandia (Jemez Pueblo, NM, USA, 1950 - )
- Geri Naranjo (New Mexico, USA, 1952 - )
- Glenda Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo, NM, USA, 1953 - )
- Iris Youvella Nampeyo (Hopi Reservation, AZ, USA, 1944 - 2018)
- Jennie Laate (Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA, 1933 - 1994, Zuni Peublo, NM, USA)
- Josephine Vigil (Taos Pueblo, NM, USA, 1927 - 2001, San Ildefonso Pueblo, NM, USA)
- Joy Navasie (Arizona, USA, 1919 - 2012)
- Juana Leno (Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA, 1917 - 2000)
- Juanita Martinez (active Taos Pueblo and Jemez Pueblo, NM, USA, ca. 1980 – )
- Julia Saiz (active Zia Pueblo, ca. 1980 - )
- Julian Martinez (San Ildefonso, Pueblo, NM, USA, 1879 - 1943, San Ildefonso, Pueblo, NM, USA)
- Kathleen Poleahla (active United States, ca. 1980s – )
- Lilly Salvador (Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA, 1944 – )
- Lucy M. Lewis (Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA, 1898 - 1992, Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA)
- Maria & Julian Martinez (active San Ildefonso Pueblo, NM, USA, ca. 1915 - 1943)
- Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, Santa Fe, NM, USA, 1887 - 1980, San Ildefonso Pueblo, NM, USA)
- Maria Martinez & Santana Roybal Martinez (active San Ildefonso Pueblo, NM, USA, 1943 - 1980)
- Marie Torivio (active Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA, ca. 1940s - 1990s)
- Marie Waquie (Jemez Pueblo, NM, USA, ca. 1940s – )
- Matt Lovato (active Taos Pueblo, NM, USA, ca. 1980 - )
- Niadi Wildflower (active Colorado River Indian Reservation, AZ, USA, ca. 1980 - )
- Polingaysi Qöyawayma (Old Oraibi, Third Mesa, Hopi Reservation, Arizona, United States of America, 1892 - 1990)
- Priscilla Namingha Nampeyo (Arizona, USA, 1924 - 2008)
- Rachel Concho (Acoma Pueblo, NM, USA, 1936 - )
- Rachel Namingha Nampeyo (Arizona, USA, 1903 - 1985)
- Sally Garcia (Laguna Pueblo, NM, USA, 1940 – )
- Santana Melchor (Kewa Pueblo, NM, USA, 1889 - 1978)
- Santana Roybal Martinez (San Ildefonso, Pueblo, NM, USA, 1909 - 2002)
- Stella J. Teller (Isleta Pueblo, NM, USA, 1929 - )
- Thomas Polacca Nampeyo (First Mesa, Hopi Reservation, AZ, USA, 1935 - 2003)
- Virginia T. Romero (Taos Pueblo, NM, USA, 1896 – 1998)
- Wallace Youvella (Sichomovi, First Mesa, Hopi Reservation, AZ, USA, 1947 - )
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