Hopi potter Preston Duwyenie’s work is inspired by the sands of his homeland
Preston Duwyenie says he’s making ends meet despite cancellation of Indian Market
The pottery of Preston Duwyenie echoes the shifting sands of Hopi Pueblo laced with the silver ripples of a rare rainstorm.
Duwyenie is one of more than 1,000 artists who juried into the now-shuttered Santa Fe Indian Market. For the first time, the annual market will go virtual at swaia.org beginning on Aug. 1. Many of the artists glean more than half their annual income from the event.
Duwyenie says he’s busy working in his Santa Clara Pueblo studio with his wife Debra and preparing to launch his own website. His work currently can be found at King Galleries in Santa Fe and at kinggalleries. com.
The artist grew up in the Hopi Village of Hotevilla, Arizona, inundated with sand. For him, the textural quality of the land grew into a means of expression through the rippling lines of his clay vessels.
The Hopi people live in the desert region of the Colorado Plateau where water remains a scarce commodity. Duwyenie believes he is the only native potter using silver inlay in his work to represent this precious life blood.
“As a child, when it rains out there, there are areas where the water collects and there’s clay,” he said. “As youngsters, we used to get handfuls of clay and mold it.
“The only waters we get are from the heavens. We were taught as youngsters to really revere what we have there.”
Today, he creates streamlined, flatted pots with minimal decoration, capturing the windblown sands. Delicately placed silver inlay spills across some; rounded pieces sprout figures of bears and quail on their lids.
His black mica, or “pregnant pot,” was inspired by the pregnancy and birth of his youngest daughter Megan. The vessel symbolizes the torso of a female carrying a child in the womb. The matte area on top boasts two terrace symbols: the front terrace represents the mountains; the back forms the clouds. The wavered rim symbolizes the skyline and the silver inlay duplicates rain clouds.
“The earth itself is the pregnant female form,” Duwyenie said. “The silver inlay represents the male spirit.”
The artist says much of his inspiration comes from the ancient vessels found at the Sikyátki archaeological site near Hopi.