Dear Potters,
I got to sit with our pottery teacher,
Jody Falwell on Tues., Dec. 18 of this week in her sweet home. She is a lovely
woman with a light-up the room smile, about my age who lives in the Santa Clara Pueblo village. She is amazingly caring for animals. We had to cancel our
meetings twice because each time she had to consult with a vet either about her dogs or her bull. She and her husband Lucky (she said he is Maori from New Zealand—an apparently gentle
couple), they run about 20 head of registered Angus cattle on tribal land to sell for breeding purposes. She is vegetarian, meditates and listens to her intuition.
She describes her clay work as non-traditional,
however the work that I saw were pots of different kinds that are very similar to traditional pots, although she experiments
with them and the techniques, so the results are not strictly traditional according to any Pueblo’s formula.
The clay seems to be the local red clay. She showed me a piece that she is working on that is cylindrical in shape, about 18”
tall, which narrows at the top and bottom. She is in the process of scratching
an image of a Northwest Indian with fish, I believe, on its surface.
She pointed to one pot that she said goes
for $8,000 and one for $4,000. The later one is a typically shaped round pot—small
at the bottom and widening to the hip, then narrowing again. It has some sort
of subtle wavy imprint at the top. It is entirely shiny black, similar to the
San Ildefonso (Maria) pots. As you know, San Ildefonso land starts about a mile
or so down that road to Los Alamos.
She said that the pots are costly because
of all the work that goes into them! She will start teaching us by having us
dig the clay ourselves—the clay bank is behind the clinic on that highway but told me not to go there without here. She complained about her “superstitious” compatriots! Then we will “sift” the clay—taking out the pebbles and other impurities. Then the clay is aged for at least a year, but she said that she would help us get started with her clay.
The pots are all hand built—as Pritpal
Kaur and I did with Felipe Ortega. Jody thinks the world of Felipe! We started by molding the bottom in a bowl, then using clay coils to build it up. And finally doing much polishing with stones. Then they are
fired in a in a tin box, polished and then fired in a cow dung fire. There are
applications of slip (liquid clay) as well at some junctures.
Jody also mentioned that she gets $800
for giving two lectures in one day at some university. I said that we couldn’t
possibly match that. So, she asked what Felipe charged and said that she would
ask the same. I said that I would have to look that up and let her know. That was a three day workshop. Pritpal
Kaur, do you know what that was?
So, Jody and I left it that we would let
her know the price, we would start with a 3 day workshop in which we first dig and sift our clay, and perhaps learn the basics
of making pottery as much as we can. Then we would figure out the rest after
that. And I will call her again in January to arrange things with her.
So, here are the questions for you:
- Pritpal Kaur, do you remember the price for our workshop with Felipe?
- What three days do you all have for this in January? Since our schedules—especially
Pritpal’s are so very diversified, please let me know EVERY day in January that you might be able to do this. Then I can match them up.
- What do you all think of this? Are you up for it?
It occurs to me that we have an amazing
opportunity here! If this were advertised, I bet that she could get lots for
this kind of learning, and because we are so close we are really, really lucky/blessed to have access to her!
I look forward to hearing from you all
and working with you all! I bet this will be fabulous fun to do this really special
pottery together and with Jody!
I am putting our communications on a page
on my community website at www.sirigian.com/pottery.html so that in the future we can refer back to them, and post any new information.
Lots of Love,
Siri-Gian Kaur
