‘It smells like the rain’
Acoma Pueblo potter’s traditional upbringing helps him cope with pandemic
The migration swirls and fine rain lines of Robert Patricio’s pottery echo the ancestors who lived on the top of Acoma
Pueblo.
Patricio is the grandson of the legendary Acoma potter Marie Chino.
Acoma Pueblo is regarded as the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States. The mesa’s 367-foot sheer sandstone bluffs make climbing formidable. Members originally gained access only by means of a hand-cut staircase carved into the sandstone.
Patricio grew up on top of the mesa in Sky City until he was 15. Hauling water from a natural spring up to the top of the pueblo was normal to him, as was life without electricity. Given the family name of “Bear,” he grew up in a family of 14 siblings.
He also grew up in a family of potters. Today, he specializes in hand-coiled and hand-painted pottery ablaze in the traditional designs of his pueblo.
“I started when I was 9 years old,” he said in a telephone interview from Acoma. “I made small little olla jars. I used to sell them outside the family home at Acoma.”
Today, he’s been selling his work at the Santa Fe Indian Market for 10 years.
“I just like the feel of it,” he said, “and the smell of it. It smells like the rain when it hits the ground.”
The smooth silk of the clay was in his fingers from the start. He began selling his work to Albuquerque’s Old Town galleries when he left high school, first at the old Santa Fe Indian School, then at the Laguna-Acoma High School. He bounced among about three jobs before becoming a fulltime artist.
“I had my first child with my wife,” he explained. “Pottery always made me enough money to pay my bills.”
Creating pottery using traditional methods is both timeconsuming and complicated. First, Patricio gathers the clay.
“We hike about 10 miles into the mountain areas,” he said. “We put it in the old Bluebird flour sacks.”
The artist soaks the clay, letting it crumble and dry. Then he grinds it on a stone. Once it forms a fine powder, he sifts it.
He gathers ancient pottery sherds from the valley floors to add to the clay.
“You’re actually using a pottery from ancient history — the 1600s, the 1700s,” he added.
The sherds impart both ancestry and temper to the clay; it makes it more structurally sound. Next, he mixes it with boiling rain water and forms it into blocks. Then, the clay is kneaded to break up any air bubbles, a process that once was accomplished with the feet. Patricio uses the palms of his hands.
Before he begins shaping a pot, Patricio turns to a higher power.
“We go outside and ask for guidance from the creators and our relatives that are gone.”
First, he molds a bowl with his fingers and places it into another bowl to form the bottom of the pot. Next, he makes the snake-like coils, smoothing them out as he forms the sides and the shoulders of the vessel.
When Patricio speaks of the pot’s anatomy, he sounds as though he’s discussing a human form.
The top is the neck, the middle area is the stomach, the opening is the mouth and the bottom is “the butt part,” he said.
“It’s almost like you’re making a human body shape,” he said. “We’re creating a piece of Mother Earth.”
He sketches on the designs with a soft pencil, then gathers his paints.
“Once you look at the slope of the pot, you know what kind of design you’re putting on there,” he said. “That’s really exciting; you’re anxious to put that design on there.”
Patricio’s designs range from swirls and kiva stairsteps to constellations and birds.
“I don’t really like painting,” he said. “It’s gotten hard for me to sit there all day. It takes a toll on your back and your shoulders. I went through rotator cuff surgery because of pottery.”
He gleans his paints from river rocks (rust), wild spinach (dark black/brown) and sandstone (orange), scraped, soaked and strained in water.
Traditionally, he has used yucca fibers as a brush. But this father of six daughters learned their hair taped to a stick produced the fine lines he sought.
Patricio fires his pottery outdoors, or in a kiln, depending largely on the weather.
“With outdoor firing, you can’t control your heat,” he said. “Outdoor firing is more of a risk. Sometimes you can get cracks.”
His “Tularosa Sunset” pot features the spiraling migration pattern.
“When my ancestors were migrating, they were walking and walking,” he said. “They also use the spirals for the constellations, the sunsets, the moonrise.”
The nearly microscopic fine line designs are the oldest.
“The representation of the line is rain,” Patricio said.
The parrot motifs came from the Spanish.
“They brought the macaws to us,” he said. “These were represented as beauty.”
When the artist juried into his first Indian Market in 2010, he took both first and second place for Best in Class and Best of Division out of 300 artists.
He wasn’t surprised when organizers canceled this year’s event.
“I was debating going this year because of the pandemic; it was because of the safety of my children and my family.”
Being raised traditionally is helping him cope with the isolation.
“Me, I can sit here with no TVs or videos or Internet,” he said.