Mata Ortiz

For my coil project in Ceramics, Susan talked to me about Mata Ortiz Pottery. Mata Ortiz is a small village in Chihuahua, Mexico. Even though I am from Chihuahua, I had never heard of this town and its famous pots, so I did my research and I found a lot of amazing designs!

My favorite thing about these pots is how there is so much variety to them. Some of them are matte black and shiny black at the same time. Black on black just looks so elegant, just as much as the abstract designs painted or carved on all the pots, they have a strong directional force all around.  And I must say that I like their unstandard openings on them, they compliment the pot well.The carving is also one of my favorite things about them, because they also create directional forces and so the pot doesn't have to rely on just a painted design to achieve this.

Mata Ortiz was pretty much about to become a ghost town due to its economic issues, that was until 1940's when Juan Quezada taught himself to work with clay and created amazing works. He sold a few pots to a store called Bob's Swap in Deming, New Mexico, there an American anthropologist, Spencer MacCallum, came across the pots and decided that he had to find the artist. Years later, MacCallum managed to find Juan, and offered him a stipend for his pots. Soon Juan was making enough profit that he decided to teach his family, and then the entire town. The economy of Mata Ortiz relies on agriculture and ranching, but much of it relies on the pottery.

If you want to see more work in person, Johnson County Community College actually has Mata Ortiz pots in their permanent collection. They are located on the second floor at the Regnier Center (right across from the Nerman museum) along with the contemporary Native American collection =) 


http://www.bienmur.net/files/2010/09/Mata-Ortiz.jpg
http://www.azulamericas.com/2011/06/09/mata-ortiz-pottery-and-the-economic-impact-of-the-arts/
Wikipedia.org