Anna, a native of Galisteo, started
studying pottery five years ago with artist Don White and Felipe
Ortega. She builds utilitarian clay vessels using slab, hand
built, and wheel thrown techniques. Building micaceous pottery
starts with digging micaceous clay up in La Madera or the Manzano
mountains, forming it into a puki and building it up
with coils. After shaping and drying, you wet-scrap the puki
line and start sanding the vessel with a piece of white
pumice rock and then again with sand paper until each piece is
smooth. Micaceous slip is applied three times with a sponge and
then burnished with a quartz rock. The vessels are warmed and
then fired outside in a pit.
Freddie started painting a couple of years after retiring from
New Mexico Public Schools. He paints landscapes from around the
Galisteo village and flowers from the family garden. He is inspired
by some of the artists’ work he has seen in museums while
in cities he has visited in his travels. He paints in oil and
acrylic mediums. Bright colors, sunflowers, clouds and whimsical
characters are found in most of his paintings.
Tana shows her retablos and hide paintings at the Santa Fe Spanish
Market. She creates her retablos with images of santos.
She finishes the retablos with varnish she makes using pine sap
and Everclear. She studies Retablos with Arlene Cisneros
and is apprenticing hide painting with Jean Moya. Anna
studied pottery with Felipe 6 years ago and Tana is attending
New Mexico State University. She is taking classes in Mechanical
Engineering.
|
