Detailed Artistry of Joseph Lonewolf

Joseph Lonewolf

The two Joseph Lonewolf vessels above are from the collections of Don and Nita Hoel, and Gene Gordon. The vessel below and detailed top view left, is Joseph Lonewolf's finest piece to date. It was nearly two years in the making. TANNER'S INDIAN ARTS

The Beauty Makers

Two young potters who have hit it big financially are Joseph Lonewolf, son of Camilio Sunflower Tafoya of Santa Clara, N.M., and Tony Da, grandson of Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso, N.M.

Handsome young men both, Joseph wears enough turquoise to look like a walking vein of the Blue Diamond turquoise mine while Tony wears fawn-colored doeskin suits. And when they get all decked out for Indian pottery and painting shows, count on it: At least one Anglo matron is bound to tell each, "Talk about a work of art! If you hadn't moved, I'd have bought YOU, and never mind your pots."

But their pots are where the real action is, of course. And both are fashion-conscious enough that they change the "styles" of their pottery creations as often as Detroit changes automobile bodies.

Lonewolf, for instance, long noted for his intricately incised and carved pottery with as many as seven different colors on the same pot during one firing, recently has switched styles. Now he sometimes creates bas relief designs in unslipped buff colors on terra cotta pots. Or black pots with pale grey basketweave corrugation. Today, he's excited about yet another drastic design change that he won't talk about.

"You see," he said, "I believe the clay is a living thing because it comes from Mother Earth, a living thing. Without her, we'd not have food nor plants nor animals.

"I talk to her before I take clay from her. And I believe the clay is a living thing and has feelings. I hurt the clay's feelings when I talk of a pot that hasn't been done yet. And the clay talks back by cracking or breaking. So I have learned to respect it's feelings and never talk of a pot until it is completed until it is finished and ready to talk for itself," he said.

But he doesn't mind talking of the Mimbres designs often incorporated into the design elements of his pots. "I regard the Mimbres as my ancestors. Though I refine their designs, each design must have meaning for me. In my dreams I see how to use the design, how to make the pot happen. Then when I work the clay, everything flows.

"But not necessarily do I dream one night and create the next. The bas relief designs I'm doing now have been simmering on the back burner of my mind and dreams for more than two years."

While he won't divulge the secret family recipe for potterymaking ("Does Heinz tell the pickle recipe?"), he does admit that the various slips that create the blues, greens, yellows and pinks he sometimes uses as backdrop colors for cameo-like designs come from Colorado clay pits, while the regular pottery clay comes from pits around Santa Clara.

"Some people wonder why I keep changing styles, colors, forms. But I can't just sit there and make pots. Like any artist, I must try different things, different techniques. I must meet the challenge with my hands the patterns and methods I see in my mind during my dreams," he said.

Joseph Lonewolf learned clay sculpture from his mother, Agapita, and clay potting from his father, Camilio Tafoya. His only student is his daughter, Rosemary (Apple Blossom) Speckled Rock, whom, he hopes, will one day know and use the almost-reverent feelings he has for the clay and will carry the family tradition through her own generation.

Tony Da had done a bit of painting and jewelry making before he went into the Navy (1960-64). When he returned to San Ildefonso, his uncle Philip died and he moved into the home of his grandmother, Maria.

"That's when I learned pottery. Had she not taught me, I'd not be a potter today. I'd probably still be painting.

"I haven't the well, call it mystical approach to potting that my grandmother did when she was still making pots. (Her eyes went bad several years ago and she has quit.) "One touching thing about her: When we would go to the pits to dig clay, she would pull out little pouch of cornmeal and sprinkle it over the ground, silently praying and blessing the earth before she took from it.

"Later, after the clay had been screened of impurities, any that fell to the ground during the time she was forming the pots she would carefully pick up, rescreen and use again. To her, it was shameful to waste it.

"It's the difference between us that I clean up my dropped clay by sweeping it into a vacuum cleaner," he said, "but you must remember that I live now in Santa Fe, surrounded by people who aren't necessarily involved in clay, pottery or potting. While we hold Mother Earth sacred, I think my generation is not so prayerful about the clay."

While he too, always had a preconceived idea of what a creation will eventually look like and how to achieve it, he, too, feels the artist's compulsion to change techniques and materials, forms and colors.

Notable for black or terra cotta highly polished pots set here and there with gem quality turquoise, he's now using silver and carved ironwood bear fetish designs on his pots as well, especially on pot lids.

The stylized bears are all of a design he originated several years ago. In the future don't be surprised he may use more lapidary work on his pots turquoise, shell, coral and jet, perhaps, set stone to stone in channels incised into the clay before the pot is fired.

perhaps, set stone to stone in channels incised into the clay before the pot is fired.

"There's always been a lot of helping back and forth between family potters," he said. "In the firing, timing is crucial if one is trying to achieve the famed San Ildefonso polished or matte black. The fire must be smothered with powdered manure at just the right time and then everything happens at once. So it's not unusual that four or five relatives help the potter whose pieces are being fired.

"My great-aunt Clara Montoya, Maria's baby sister, has always helped me polish my pots. I'd like to see her get some of the credit.

"Also, it was my father, the late Popovi Da, who originated that sienna color many in the family including me, occasionally now use. To achieve that delicate tan color, the way we do it, two firings are required.

"Nowadays, especially in Santa Clara pueblo, others have experimented and achieved that same sienna Blue Corn, Lonewolf, Medicine Flower among them."

About his grandmother, he says, "Only in recent years have I really appreciated her. Before, I took her accolades for granted. Now, I appreciate her not only as a great potter, but as a fine, great person who always put her people before herself. Her people being all who live in the pueblo, not just her family.

"Now, away from San Idlefonso, I sort of do my own thing, but I'm happy and content with what I'm doing. I'm happiest of all, of course, when the public shows responsive pleasure in viewing my work."

"Jewels" fashioned in clay an apt description of the miniature pots created by Joseph Lonewolf, Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. These pottery "jewels" have been so named because of their exquisite delicacy, flaw-lessness, and cameo-like appearance. These, as well as the larger pots created by Lonewolf, must be perfect or they are destroyed.

The miniatures, because of their small size from 3/8 inch to 2 inches in diameter and intricate design, are more difficult to complete than the larger pots with a wider design area. As the pots decrease in size, incising the design becomes more exacting, for the figures must be scaled to the size of the pot. A collector's set consists of 20 miniatures.

The motifs of the miniatures are from the pre-historic Mimbres period. Mimbres people live in Southwest New Mexico during the 10th and 14th centuries, and their descendants are making Pueblo pottery today. As in those long ago days, the only tools used are the talented hands of the potter, polishing stones, and the small, sharp primi-tive instruments for incising the corrugation and design.

The designs used by Lonewolf portray various life forms mountain animals and birds: deer, ram, turkey, eagle, rabbit; desert life: roadrunner; butterfly, lizard, scorpion; water: fish, turtle, frog, dragonfly. These figures are used alone or grouped to depict scenes of sky, water, or earth. The dragonfly is symbolic of an ancient family name long forgotten, but revived by Lonewolf to live again through his pottery.

The first miniatures were red on black with the corrugation in buff, then the red on red. Since Lonewolf is constantly striving for greater perfection of design and coloration, and new interpretations of the ancient designs for his creations, he has added to these basic colors a band of green, red, or blue surrounding the design, and has gone on to the unheard of combination of two or more colors in the design background.

The newest of the "jewels" has been named the "Puye Design" a rabbit form with four heads placed to represent the four corners of the earth from which the rabbits came to Puye "the gathering place of the rabbits."

Lonewolf begins the creation of his pottery jewels in the traditional manner of the Pueblo potters preparing the clay; shaping the pots; firing; polishing. But then, he goes beyond the traditional to create the exquisite, jewel-like pots that are unique. The delicacy of appearance gives one a feeling of fragility and antiquity.