New Mexico’s Red Clay
From cooking pots to collector ceramics
THE TAOS CERAMICS CENTER creative entrepreneurs have a dream: “A 501(c)3 nonprofit status will help us serve the community in a big way,” Georgia Epstein, owner, along with her husband, Jules, explained. Located at 114 Este Es Road in Taos, the Center, with only two-and-a-half years in business, has become three successful entities under one roof.
The TCC Gallery showcases collectible ceramics and wall art by both local artists and others throughout Northern New Mexico and nationally.
The TCC’s 2,400-square-foot studio offers classes and workspace. Beginners and the proficient both learn about clays and use equipment such as pottery wheels, wedging tables, wet/dry shelving and the outdoor “kiln yard” featuring electric kilns, a raku kiln, with more to come.
As a retail partner with Albuquerque’s
New Mexico Clay, TCC offers tables stacked with New Mexico clays, but also clays from Laguna, Calif. An adjacent room features a wall of shelves filled with hand tools and glazes that will delight potters — brands such as Coyote, Amaco, Mayco and Laguna.
The Epsteins plan on building a new educational facility on adjoining acreage at the Estes Es Road site. “Our goal is to support the needs of the clay community in every way possible,” she explained, anticipating artists-inresidencies and scholarship programs, which Jules, with marketing skills, will help introduce to the public. While donations from the community are welcomed, a nonprofit, educational and charitable status will allow TCC to expand its facility and apply for grants. “We want to reach out to our Taos student population and also to those who need financial assistance for their creative dreams.
“My own work with clay has been pretty simple: creating images I use in collages, and jewelry of bake-in-yourown-oven clay, which I then varnish a day later. I suppose my interest in clay, however, goes back to childhood, when, at three or four, as I recall, impatiently waiting for a rural Southern California rain to cease so I could muddy up my high topped shoes, squatting down to create little figures out of sticks and mud that I dried in the sun.
“So, not being an expert, I sought out varied points of view on New Mexico’s history with clay and definitions of pottery and ceramics.”
The University of New Mexico course website on Ceramics describes working with clay as an “…investigation of clay’s potential as a timeless, primary means of artistic expression.” Courses are conducted by many visiting artists from the state’s Pueblos.
The New Mexico Office of Archaeological Studies (a division of the New Mexico Department of cultural Affairs) features a site, “The Pottery Typology Project,” reflecting a scholarly classification of the making of utilitarian pottery, which has evolved to become collectible ceramics pieces. “For most time-spans, almost all pottery produced within the current boundaries defined for New Mexico was produced by groups that appear to be in some way related to modern Pueblo groups.”
An on-line retailer, Soul Ceramics, defines ceramics as “…materials that are permanently changed when heated… items made out of clay, once fired, are turned into a ceramic, and they cannot be returned to their original state.”
To simplify, pottery, whether a cooking pot, a vase for outdoor plants, or bowls and platters for the patio or dining room table, if made from clay, then fired, they become ceramic. And the good red earth of New Mexico and the Southwest in general has an ancient history as a provider of both pottery and ceramics made from clay.
Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, at 710 Camino Lejo, recognizes this. The current exhibition, “Grounded in Clay, The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery,” runs through May 29, a project of some sixty members of 21 tribal communities or pueblos, part of the museum’s public education mission, “…enabling the public to experience pottery through the eyes of Native peoples.”
The “peoples” and the pottery of New Mexico can scarcely be separated.
Crafting pottery during a workshop at TCC.
The Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, located at 2401 12th Street NW in Albuquerque, features a permanent exhibition, “We Are of This Place.” Intended to honor generational traditions that have respected both land and living things, it includes “…a world-class collection of historic and contemporary Pueblo pottery…from the black-onblack vessels of San Ildefonso and Santa Clara Pueblos to the fine-line black-on-white jars of Acoma Pueblo and the golden micaceous bean pots of the northern pueblos.”
Visitors to Taos Pueblo, ‘the only living Native American community designated both a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and a National Historic Landmark,’ should inquire at the visitors center, 1201 Paseo del Pueblo Sur, about the Pueblo artists’ pottery. Termed “Taos Micaceous,” such pottery dates back to the 1500s or before. The high mica content in the clay of this region causes a metallic shimmer.
FYI:Taos Ceramics Center For supplies, instruction, workspace and membership: 575-758-2580 or info@ TaosCeramics.com.
For more, visit:indianpueblo. org/pueblo-art-collectionceramics. nmarchaeology.orggroundedinclay. orgnmpotters.org