Published in Southwest Contemporary

Santa Clara Pueblo (K’haP’o Owingeh) artist Jason Garcia (Okuu Pín) waves me up the muddy driveway, a result of recent rains hitting Northern New Mexico just a few weeks shy of the summer solstice. Garcia is son to a family made up of generations of traditional Pueblo pottery makers, a legacy that marks his creative space and its surroundings. From the front windows of his multi-room studio, which once belonged to his paternal grandparents, he points out the homes of various relatives, including his parents’ house, where he does his outdoor firing.

In that same room sits a table full of plastic containers holding a variety of mineral pigments that he inherited from his godmother and aunt, the late Santa Clara potter Minnie Vigil. From her, he also received clay, temper, and polishing stones. Hand gathering and processing traditional materials like these is time-consuming and labor-intensive; these gifts will spare Garcia hours of digging, hauling, pulverizing, grinding, and sifting. He uses the term “cultural patrimony” when describing these polishing stones, which are used to add sheen to the blackware and redware for which Santa Clara is renowned: “Those aren’t sold, those are given.” His mother, potter Gloria Garcia (Goldenrod) has some from her mother, her paternal grandmother, and generations before them.