Artists :: Lema's Kokopelli Gallery

Robert Ridges - Grand Gourds

Bob is a native of Utah and has lived in Moab since 1996. He became interested in gourds in 1998 when he decided to grow a few bottle gourds to make birdhouses and bird feeders With that first crop, Bob became fascinated by the uniqueness and natural beauty of every gourd that he grew.

Bob creates his work with wood burning tools. He enhances his designs with dyes in the natural colors that are found in this part of southeastern Utah. Much of his artwork includes accurate depictions of the petroglyphs and pictographs that adorn the canyon walls in this area. His minimal design technique allows the natural beauty of the gourd to remain.

In addition to decorative pots, bowls and ladles, Bob makes musical instruments from gourds, including drums, rattles, maracas and mbiris (thumb pianos). He makes other unique items, depending on the shape of the particular gourd.

Bob has been honored as a contributor to Utah State University's " Western American Literature" and as Artist of the month in "Moab Happenings."

He is a member of the American Gourd Society and is a founding member of the Castle Valley Gourd Festival.

Two of his goals include sharing his knowledge of gourds and continuing to create one-of-a-kind works of art from gourds that he grows in Grand County.

Mara Stoneware

Mara is an accomplished painter, sculptor and ceramicist who has studied engraving with the famous artist Alfredo Zalce. After studying art in London, she began working with high-temperature ceramics and created wonderfully unique glazes for her pieces. She then went on to study with the Italian ceramist, Bruno Terese, in Italy. Mara has had numerous expositions of her original pieces in Europe, the United States and Mexico.

"She has developed a fine sensibility in schematic and precise line drawings. Ceramics is no easy medium for precise line drawings, yet Mara has mastered her technique with brush and stylus and has been able to portray her life experiences with unrivaled naturalness. We see her universe on parade in all of her pieces, whether they be vases or plaques. Flowers, birds and geometric designs all represent her personal vision and display her unique perceptions of the world." Alfredo Zalce, May 1994

Currently Mara works daily at her studios creating an enchanting array of original pieces in varied mediums. She is a master of the complicated art of mixing glazes and gives her skill each day in overseeing the production of the fine line of ceramic tableware presented here.

Alvin Marshall

Over the last two decades, Alvin Marshall has received much acclaim in the art world. He has been included in the Rising Stars 2001 exhibit at the Desert Caballeros Museum in Wickenburg, AZ. In the early 80"s, he was named Sculptor of the Year at the Native American Art Show sponsored by the famous Heard Museum in Phoenix.

Marshall's images that emerge from alabaster stone tell stories of his Navajo culture. Working through a process relying on his ability to visualize "memory photos", he says: " I often feel like an instrument through which my art flows".

Marshall believes there is a need for spiritual connection among different peoples. His special gift is the ability to produce art that embodies an authentic spirituality that can unite. He worries that "we've lost the togetherness as a people" and hopes that through his art he can share the closeness and harmony that was at the heart of Navajo life.

Despite his successful career as one of today's best Native American stone sculptors, Alvin remains a quiet, spiritual man who lives in his native Four Corners area of New Mexico with his wife Laverna and five children.

Antoinette Silas Honie

Antoinette Silas Honie is from the Tewa/Laguna, Kachina Clan. She is the daughter of Roberta Silas and sister of Louann, Venora and the late Loretta Silas and Jofern Silas puffer.

Antoinette has been making pottery for over 15 years now. She learned her craft for her mother, Roberta Silas. Antoinette has hand coiled and hand painted this piece in the Hopi tradition. Like her mother and sisters, she gathers her own clay at first mesa along with clays, minerals and vegetation that are used to create the beautiful designs that are the hallmark of the Silas family.

Maria Martinez and San Ildefonso Pottery

Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso Pueblo Few craft artists, Native American or otherwise, can claim worldwide fame and appreciation, but these accompanied the life of potter Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso Pueblo. Through her hard work and generous sharing of her techniques, Maria reintroduced the art of pottery making to her people, providing them with a means of artistic expression and for retaining some aspects of the pueblo way of life.

San Ildefonso Pueblo is a quiet community located 20 miles northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Inhabited since A.D. 1300, the pueblo saw many changes that resulted in a rich culture, in which ancient traditions mix with Spanish festivals and Anglo conveniences. Life in the Tewa-speaking village on the Pajarito Plateau is filled with love for one's neighbor and respect for the God-given gifts of the earth. Into this community, at a time of great transition from isolation to increased contact with other peoples, Maria Antonia Montoya was born, probably in the year 1887. For nearly one hundred years, until her death in 1980, Maria lived in the pueblo, eager to greet visitors and to share her craft with those who would like to watch and listen.
Maria's fascination with pottery-making started at a young age, when she would watch her aunt making pots, after her chores were done. Although many women in the pueblo knew how to make pottery, by Maria's time it was no longer a necessary part of daily life. Inexpensive Spanish tinware and Anglo enamelware had replaced traditional containers and cooking pots. In many ways, the art of pottery making was facing extinction. Fortunately, Maria's interest and willingness to experiment with techniques prevented this from occurring.

Not long after her marriage to Julian Martinez, Maria was asked to replicate some pre-historic pottery styles that had been discovered in an archaeological excavation of an ancient pueblo site near San Ildefonso. These excavations of 1908 and 1909, led by Dr. Edgar Lee Hewett (who was also the director of the Museum of New Mexico), produced examples of many pre-historic pottery techniques. Dr. Hewett asked Maria, who already had a reputation in the pueblo for being an excellent pottery-maker, if she could make full-scale examples for the museum of the polychrome ware. It was then that Maria and her husband, Julian (who painted the designs on the pottery after Maria shaped them), began an artistic collaboration that would last throughout their lives together.

Maria and Julian refined their pottery techniques and were asked to demonstrate their craft at several expositions, including the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, the 1914 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, and the 1934 Chicago World's Fair. Part of their success came from their innovations in the style of black-on-black ware.

Although other pueblos, such as Santa Clara, had been producing black wares, Maria and Julian invented a technique that would allow for areas of the pottery to have a matte finish and other areas to be a glossy jet black. Through experimentation that began in 1919, they created a style that would become world famous.

Part of the unique-ness of San Ildefonso pottery is the clay that is used, which comes from their reservation. Dried clay and volcanic ash are collected yearly from selected locations throughout the reservation, and later combined with water in small batches. The clay from each pueblo has its own mineral composition, allowing for rich differences in texture and color. The watery clay slip that is used on the black wares, for example, has a rich iron content that turns black when fired in a particular way.

After a batch of clay is mixed and has set for a few days, a "pancake" of clay is formed and pressed into a puki, beginning the process of building a pot. The puki is a bowl-shaped form that supports the bottom of the pot as it is being built. Most commonly, pots are formed with a coil technique, in which long snake-shaped coils are circled around the base of the pot and blended together to create the walls of the vessel. A potter's wheel is not used in traditional pueblo pottery making. When the height and the amount of clay are just right, the walls of the pot are smoothed and shaped into curves with pieces of gourd, called kajepes.

The pot is left to partially dry after the form is completed. In its semi-dried state, the pot is ready to be scraped, which refines the shape and removes any irregularity. Then the pot is sanded with sandpaper to rid it of any grit. The red slip is applied next, and the pot must be burnished with a stone before the slip dries completely. This step is most critical for the glossy nature of the black wares.

A decoration is painted onto the polished surface, resulting in matte areas once the piece is fired. Traditionally the men of the pueblo do the painting, but women were taught the process and painted during the times that the men had left the pueblo for work. Julian replicated and was inspired by many pre-historic designs. He was fond of many motifs, using ancient symbols in new combinations. He often painted the avanyu, the horned water serpent, which he saw as a symbol for the rush of water after a hard rain, and as a metaphor for the pueblo itself.

Black wares become so in the firing process. This labor-intensive task is done after many pots have been made, to maximize efficiency. Wood and dried cow manure are piled around an iron grill, upon which the pottery has been carefully stacked. The pile is lit and left to burn for a specified amount of time, until the fire has reached its maximum heat. At this time the fire is smothered with ash or fresh manure, producing a smoke-filled reducing atmosphere that turns the pots black. Variations in the process can produce pottery with black areas and red areas, which are also popular.

For many years, Maria and Julian produced their pottery together amid raising a family and carrying out traditional duties for the pueblo. Their children were taught the importance of the craft, and they participated in various ways. After Julian's death in 1943, Maria began working with her daughter-in-law Santana. Santana provided the painted decoration that was her father-in-law's legacy. After 1956, Maria also worked with her son Popovi Da. It was Popovi who helped market her work, building a shop at the pueblo and speaking about the pottery tradition of San Ildefonso at lectures across the country. One of the family's most innovative potters is Maria's grandson Tony Da. Tony combined sculptural techniques with traditional forms to create unique forms. Due to a motorcycle accident, Tony no longer makes pottery, but he continues to work as a painter. Many other family members and people from San Ildefonso continue to make pottery, carrying on the tradition so openly shared by Maria.
Maria signed her pieces several different ways over the course of her life, and to some extent, these signatures can help to date her work. At first, she signed her pots "Marie" because she was told that this name would be more familiar to those who would buy her work. Through the years her pieces were signed "Poh ve ka," "Marie," "Marie & Julian," "Marie & Santana," "Maria Poveka," and "Maria/Popovi."

Since her death in 1980, the pottery of Maria and her family has become increasingly more collectible and difficult to find.

Maria Poveka
1956 - 1965

Undecorated wares were signed by Maria with her Hispanic and Indian names. "Poveka" is the Indian word for Pond Lily.

Lucy McKelvey - Navajo

Lucy McKelvey My name is Lucy. I am Dine' (Navajo) but with some Hopi-Tewa ancestory. My clan is Tlashchi'i (Red Bottom), born for Todichi'ni (Bitter Water). I am mostly a self-taught potter who has spent 34 years refining the art of Navajo Pottery up and beyond tradition but still using traditional materials and methods.

My artwork is influenced by the ceremonies and traditional teachings of my grandfather and of my great-grandmother who partially raised me. Also the pottery from the ancient ruins near my home and my many Pueblo friends who inspired me, and quite possibly some of my Hopi-Tewa ancestory.

The main shows that I always participate in are the Santa Fe Indian Market in August and the Heard Museum Show in March. My husband and I do not travel as much as we used to. Other shows I have participated in are Eight Northern Pueblos, Gallup Ceremonial, Dallas Indian Festival of Arts, Totah Festival, Eitljorg Museum Show, Southwest Museum, the Red Earth Festival, Indian Artists of America, Rancacus Show, and the Pueblo Grande Show.

Some of my pottery is in the collections of Robert Redford, Lane Allen, The Raymond James Financial Institution, Heard Museum, Denver Museum of Natural History, San Diego Museum of Man, and the LDS Temple in Albuquerque.

THE MAKING OF A MCKELVEY POT
The way that Lucy and Celinda make pottery is a long, tedious, and time-consuming process. Emphasis is on quality rather than quantity. The following is a very abbreviated version of how it is done.

Clay Preparation
The clay is usually mined under big overhanging sandstone cliffs usually near the tops of the mesas in many places throughout the Southwest. It us brought home and soaked in buckets of water for over a month and is screened through many mashes of screen with the final mash being as fine as cloth. Ground mica temper is mixed with it. After the final screening the soupy mixture of clay is poured on drying racks covered with sheets and allowed to dry to the right consistency to make pottery. Then it is stored in big plastic trashcans until it is made into pottery.

When they are ready to make pottery they beat and kneed the clay to remove air bubbles and to mix the white and red clays together in a secret way to make the marbleized pottery.

The Making of the Pots
The pots are usually started in the bottoms of open bowls and coiled up from there one coil at a time. The coils are put together by sliding and pinching the coils to the ones below and thinning them by pinching them between her fingers and scraping with gourd scrapers. Usually 4-7 pots at a time are worked on so that a coil or two can be added at a time and allowed to firm up while she is working on other pots. This drying between coils prevents the pots from collapsing when being worked on. Lucy is known for her unusually large size pots of many unique, and varied shapes, and for making handles and overlay on pots.

Smoothing, Slipping, Polishing, and Painting of the Pots.
When the pots are dried they are sanded with a series of sandpapers until they are finally sanded to a 320 grit. Next they are evened out so the top and bottom will be almost perfectly even. The pot is then measured out and the basic background is drawn on with a pencil. The background is slipped with water and stone polished and then the various other clay slips are applied three times and stone polished one color at a time. Finally the black paint is made by grinding the hematite paint mixed with the juice of bee plant on a sandstone pallet. This grinding takes about one and a half hours of hard work to grind a day.s worth of paint. Then the black paint is then painted on the pot.

Firing the Pots
The pots are fired outside in a fire of Sheep manure and cedar wood. They are protected from the fire by potshards and burned off tin. Firing temperatures reach between 1800-1900 degrees F. Most of her pottery has a few firing blushes where the fire got extra hot. Pots fired outside usually have better and varied coloring and are shinier. However, firing in this manner is sometimes disheartening as the pots can break when a sudden gust of wind or rain comes up or if the fire heats unevenly. Also the pottery can under-fire if the manure is damp or has too much sand in it.

Final Statement
As you can see the making of their pots is a very long process. Lucy is basically self taught but received a little help from Hopi-Tewa friends. It has taken her 30 years to learn to make her beautiful pottery and is glad that all of her daughters are fine potters in their own right and that one of them is taking it up as a career even though she has a college degree. She has been trying to make Navajo pottery evolve up into a fine art going up and above tradition while still using native techniques and home refined materials that are all natural . Most of the designs are adapted from Navajo sand painting designs, rug and basket designs, and the ancient pottery designs from the ancient ruins that are so numerous in the area the she grew up in.

Harry Bert - Kachina Carver

For sixteen years Harry Bert has been searching out the sandbars of the mighty Colorado and San Juan rivers, and scavenging the shores of Lake Powell. He is looking for driftwood- the water tumbled cottonwood roots that wash up in shoals like bleached bones. It is from these roots that Harry creates new life with his wood sculptures. "I try and make it more human than sculpture," he asserts. "How you see it is how it is in real life."

"I'm not here to impress anybody," Harry Bert says matter-of-factly, then he makes a statement that at first may seem as though he were contradicting himself: "I'm here to do what I like to do. I get enjoyment out of doing something that people really like- that's mainly why I do it."

Harry- half Navajo and half Hopi- is an artist that is totally comfortable with himself. This self assurance comes through in his work, which is one of the reasons they are so appealing.

When asked how his work differs from other artists, he answers, "I try to make them more realistic than anybody else does. I try and see my friends dancing in my mind, then that's how I make my Kachinas."

Harry uses hand tools to saw away unwanted wood, then to shape his piece and carve in details. Lastly he sands the figures, burning the wood slightly so that the acrylic water colors don't seep and run through the wood.

"I have to have the right wood," Harry says, "The wood has to feel right. In some pieces of wood the form's already in it- usually it just comes out by itself."

Being a Kachina carver isn't something Harry imagined for himself when he was growing up. From the time he was 8 years old Harry lived the school months in a foster home in Orem, Utah, graduating from Orem High School in the early 70's. "When I went home I never felt like I was home," he remembers. "That's the reason I just left again and went to school."

After high school Harry went to a trade school where he took automotive classes. Then he attended Northern Arizona University where he earned a teaching certificate. "I wanted to be a mechanic, but I ended up just being a teacher." Harry taught art at Tuba City High School for six years.

His cousins first got him interested in carving Kachina dancers. When he was home, he explains, "I would mingle around with everyone else. During the night we would have a dance, or go sing in the Kivas. During the day there was nothing else to do but carve, so I tried to learn. When I started I wasn't too good at it. During the winter time there was nothing to do, so I tried to learn more."

At the same time he was learning about his ancestry. "My friends taught me after I got back," he says, "They told me, 'A spiritual person helps you along, protects you."

Now Harry lives a life close to his roots, and carves full time, supporting his wife and three daughters on his income. His wife makes pottery and they travel to Indian shows, sharing their art with others, learning more about their Native American heritage. "Sometimes I get new ideas," he adds, as he talks about making a continual effort to improve his Kachinas. "With each one I try and do my very best."

Jon Stuart Anderson

Jon Stuart Anderson is simply the foremost polymer clay artist in the world today. His amazing technique has been honed by over a decade of hard work, creative vision and dedication to the art of polymer clay.

An accomplished painter, sculptor and jewelry designer Jon lived among incredibly diverse cross sections of the world's people from Central America to the Far East, and his designs show the influences of classical Moorish motifs, Native American spirits, ancient petroglyphs, Celtic themes, and more.

Born the thirteenth son of an immigrant lettuce rancher in Kingman, Arizona, Anderson was forced from the comfort of the family doublewide during the great Iceberg Stampede of 1960, when all 200,000 head moved to California.

His formal art education hit a crescendo while studying at the Universidad de Las Americas under Sr. Julio Chavez, portrait artist to the Spanish Court, a position formerly held by such world renowned artists as Francisco Goya. Domestically, Jon holds a Masters degree from Texas A&M.

Currently living and creating in Bali, Indonesia, Jon's fascination with color, balance, design and form has led him to the absolute pinnacle of his chosen medium, and we are honored to be able to share his talent and creativity with America.