Potter Russell Sanchez
Russell Sanchez was only eight years old when the renowned San Ildefonso potter Popovi Da died in 1971, but he got to know his widow very well. “One day when I was eleven or twelve, I had finished a batch of pots and I put ’em outside my house. Anita Da walked over from the studio, saw them, and said, ‘I want you to start bringing me stuff.’ That’s how it all started.” Those first pieces were small black-on-black bowls of the traditional type. Sanchez’s forms today are modern twists on tradition. “The very deep red I’m doing now was done up until the 1920s or so, when everybody went black,” he said. “Nobody knew where to get it, but I listened to a lot of the older people and because I grew up speaking Tewa, I’ve been able to find some of the old clay sources. We also have sacred places all through this area, and I’ve learned where to go.” The potter is an expert at kayaking and riverrafting. He has sought out challenging waters in Chile and Peru and has plied the Zambesi River in southern Africa. An advantage of the tamer rivers closer to home is that he has been able to find clay sources along their banks. Sanchez fires his pots in outdoor fires fueled by juniper and dried cow and horse manure. “For a lot of it, I use the same technique I was taught as a kid. It’s tried and true and it works well, so you just don’t mess with it. Everything I do is traditional tools and techniques, but then I think outside of the box. Lately I’m leaning toward old-school, doing what the San Ildefonso potters did in the 1800s, but taking their ideas and totally flipping it around and making it my own style.” He has studied the pottery archives at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture and the School for Advanced Research. There was a transition period in Native ceramics, when, in addition to making utilitarian vessels, potters began creating decorative pieces for collectors. But their strength and other functional characteristics did not change. “We still make pots that are used for ceremonies, we still make pots for use at home,” he said, “and any pot I make for [Indian] Market you can use.” Whatever type of vessel he begins, Sanchez is always receptive to changes encouraged by the clay itself. “You can sit there and say, OK, this pot I’m going to polish, I’m going to burnish it to be a black pot. You can start burnishing it, and it does not want to come out. Strip it down, do it again, it does not want to come out. Then I’ll use a different slip for a red firing and it works out. The clay tells you what it wants.” In his research, he has seen many beautiful old San Ildefonso pots. Does he ever feel like copying one directly? “No. Because we were always taught, we were given a saying, ‘This is mine. This is what I do. Take it and make it yours.’ I can never copy a pot, even one of my own if a collector asks me that. And to us at home, tradition doesn’t mean being stuck in a certain time period. To us,
tradition is always growing and moving forward, everybody adding something else to it.”
He loves continuing the tradition, and loves the work of making pottery. “Sometimes people say, ‘Why don’t you take a break, relax for a bit, enjoy yourself?’ But I am enjoying it. I love the smell of the wet clay and even the smells of firing.”
— Paul Weideman