PVCC Puma Press: October 2002 Fine Arts

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	Photo by Frank Spink
	Ceramic artist Jesus Veloz crafts a piece of pottery in the style of Mata Ortiz during a demonstration at PVCC.
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There is a little town in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico where art is a way of life. To get there, you must travel through cloudless, dusty blue skies and through the dry rocks of the Chihuahuan Sierra Madre. Your journey will bring you to Mata Ortiz, where you will find some of the most sought-after pottery in the world.

This September, Paradise Valley Community College ceramic students got a taste of this world without even leaving Arizona.

Mata Ortiz ceramic artists Carmen and Jesus Veloz visited Paradise Valley Community College Sept. 5 to demonstrate their pottery-making process for teacher David Bradley"s ceramics class and to sell their work.

The Veloz"s have visited PVCC once before in 2000, but their relationship with Bradley reaches back farther than that. According to Bradley, their friendship started six years ago when Bradley was teaching at Mesa Community College.

While looking in the library one day, Bradley found a video about Mata Ortiz pottery and showed it to his students. After viewing the video, one of his students said that he knew of Mata Ortiz through his parents and offered to take Bradley there. That is how Bradley met the Veloz"s.

"I had really admired their pottery, and I liked them," Bradley said. "They"re very nice people. I was fortunate to meet them on my first trip down there."

The next year, Bradley took his entire ceramics class to Mata Ortiz, and he did the same thing the year after that. The trip became a tradition, one that he brought with him when he came to teach at PVCC in 2000.

Bradley believes that his students benefit greatly from seeing the Veloz"s and other Mata Ortiz artists create their artwork in person.

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I"ve never seen any place else like [Mata Ortiz], where making art is the main focal point of a whole community
—David Bradley Ceramics Teacher
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"Experiencing it is the best way to learn," he says. "It"s one thing to see me do it—I can do it okay—but to actually see them do it, very quickly and very well, it sets a high standard for them."

The Veloz"s are not the only Mata Ortiz artists to have demonstrated their craft at PVCC. Lucy Mora, Lorenzo Bugarini and Lupe Soto visited PVCC this September to demonstrate the pottery-making process to Bradley"s class. Bradley says he met them in Mata Ortiz two years ago.

"A fellow in the village said I needed to go and see their work, that their work was very special," he says.

So he did, and they became friends. They have been to PVCC two times before this year.

The pottery of Mata Ortiz is created with the simplest of materials yet is incredibly beautiful, Bradley says. The artists dig their clay from the ground, fire the pottery over a campfire, and paint their designs on the pottery with a paintbrush made of human hairs. They feel a connection with the materials they use because they gather them themselves. The designs they paint on the pottery are very intricate and difficult to do, he says. Individual pieces of pottery from Mata Ortiz vary in price from 100"s to 1000"s of dollars.

The Mata Ortiz style of pottery is only about 30 years old. It all started half a century ago in Mata Ortiz, when an eight-year-old boy named Juan Quezada unwittingly started the cultural movement that would bring for him and his town what is known today as the "economic miracle."

Destitution did not stop young Quezada from pursuing the arts. He learned how to use all the natural elements that he had at hand; mud, water and his fingers were his first encounters with his natural talents and with art. He used the walls of his family"s house as a canvas to try different colors and to bring to life the designs of his imagination.

While looking for more colors one day, he found in the dirt broken pieces of pottery created by the Paquime culture 600 years ago. Intrigued, he copied the designs from the pottery onto the walls of his bedroom. When he became a teenager, Quezada started to make his own pottery, taking inspiration from the pottery he had found when he was a boy, and he sold it to tourists in the marketplace.

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It has been an incredible experience to meet them. They are wonderful; they opened their arms to us, showing us what they do
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One day, in 1976, destiny knocked on Quezada"s door; his name was Spencer MacCallum. MacCallum, an anthropologist, had purchased some of Quezada"s un-signed pottery in the market, and his quest to find the creator of the pottery had led him to the doorstep of Quezada"s home. MacCallum convinced Quezada to sign his name to the pottery and sell it as art.

Then he offered Quezada a deal; MacCallum offered to pay Quezada a couple hundred dollars a month so that he could focus on his pottery work. In return, MacCallum would get all his pottery to set up in museums. Quezada agreed, and the rest is history.

Quezada eventually taught his family and friends how to make the pottery, and the practice spread throughout the village. Now, there are about 400 potters in the village.

According to Bradley, the Mata Ortiz style of pottery has seen quite a bit of change with the entrance of the younger generation into the business. These younger people are experimenting with new styles and techniques, unlike their predecessors, who followed the style of ancient pottery, he says.

The rise of pottery making in Mata Ortiz has made the once poverty-stricken village prosperous and has greatly increased the quality of life for the village, Bradley says. In a town where farming and cattle-raising were once the only sources of income, pottery has become the main business, he says.

"I"ve never seen anyplace else like it, where making art is the main focal point of a whole community," Bradley says.

This is something that American culture can learn a great deal from, he says.

"What is really special for the culture in America is to see people incorporate art as a part of their life existence. It"s not something that only wonderful artists can do. We have this idea that artists are something very unusual, but [they"re] not. It"s only our culture that sees it that way. People in Mata Ortiz are able to incorporate art as a part of a full life existence."

The students of Bradley"s ceramics class have been moved by the experience of meeting and learning from the Mata Ortiz ceramic artists.

"It has been an incredible experience to meet them," says student La Donna Adain. "They are wonderful; they opened their arms to us, showing us what they do. What is really amazing is that they have nothing but they are as happy as they can be."

For Magdalena Thiel, a first time ceramic student at PVCC, it has been "an incredible class. To meet the Mexican artists was a lifetime experience."

As for the ceramic artists of Mata Ortiz, one need not know them to appreciate the impact pottery has had on their lives. You can see it in their smiles; for what the artists share in common is not only their beautiful art but their smile, the proud smile of success.