Born in Albuquerque, NM, and raised in Las Cruces, NM, Margarita Paz Pedro’s work draws from ideas of time, place, material, and culture, and their intersections with her Mexican-American, Laguna Pueblo and Santa Clara Pueblo background within New Mexico and beyond. She works across a broad range of media with a focus on clay, and her wheel-thrown functional ceramics, ceramic jewelry, painted and tiled murals, multimedia installations and hand built works with Native clay explore how the materiality of clay connects myriad facets of history and identity.  

“Finding all these interconnections via clay has been inexplicably profound and furthers my belief in ancestral knowledge and ways of knowing,” Paz Pedro says. She sees working in clay as a relationship, requiring all the care, commitment and communication fundamental to any healthy partnership. In this show, she is exploring a relationship with a new material: adobe. 

“It has been a few years since I have met a completely new yet companionable ‘friend,’” she says. “Building with the earth is a new relationship that is in its beginning phases, where it consumes your thoughts and is exciting.”

Adobe is a building material with deep roots in the Southwest. Formed from earth and organic materials, adobe is extremely durable, able to withstand time, weather, and even fire. Adobe building and plastering in the area was historically done by Pueblo women, forming strong foundations for homes, community buildings, and other structures. Still widely used in the Southwest, adobe “continues to show connections through architecture, building and practice,” Paz Pedro says. Working from historic photos from both institutional and personal archives, Paz Pedro’s work in this show explores identity, self, histories and foundations, and seeks to repatriate traditional building practices. “I hope I am giving it another life that connects it to its past life,” she says. 

Paz Pedro’s installation will incorporate adobe bricks and other adobe forms handmade by the artist, porcelain clay, personal and archival photos, painted mural and lighting aspects. Initially, adobe had a place in her work simply as a way to create a temporary display for her ceramic works in gallery settings. But soon enough, it began to play a more foundational role. “I mean, what’s not intriguing about adobe?” Paz Pedro asks. “It’s a basic mix of materials, heavily rooted in place, strong enough to build homes and structures for centuries, yet totally recyclable, and has similarities to other clays, just to name a few.”

Process has always been as integral to Paz Pedro’s work as outcome, and this has become even more true with time. Each of her installations involves sculpting forms, embedding imagery, and moving, arranging and stacking adobe bricks. When working with porcelain or natural clay, there’s also an element of releasing control: “lots of things are left to the material, fire and higher beings.”  

“The movement of stacking connects me through time and material,” Paz Pedro says. “Arranging all the elements together intuitively, critically, and seeing all the elements together is how I make sense of the story of each installation—with each bead of sweat, I get closer to the why.”

foundations: land and sky will open at Hecho a Mano on Friday, August 1 and will be on view until September 1, 2025.

There are More pieces in the installation that have not been photographed. Please contact us for information.