By now many people know the story Juan Quezada and the potters of Mata Ortiz. We are not anthropologists, and we have had no special training in recognizing great pottery. But our background is in the arts, as a filmmaker and a graphic designer/historian; we have trained eyes, and we know quality when we see it. Inspired by an article in the San Diego Union Tribune, we decided that if we wanted to see a real and culturally relevant Mexico, we needed to head for the village of Mata Ortiz and find out about the exciting art work being done there. So it was goodbye Tijuana and hello Mata Ortiz.
We picked up from the villagers, from Juan and some reading that Mata Ortiz had been a poor, out of the way village for much of its history. It started big, a hundred years ago, with a paper mill and a railroad line. But Pancho Villa during the revolution destroyed the mill company, the railroad line aborted, and the town barely survived. Folks from all over Mexico had come to work at the mill; some, Juan Quezada's family among them, stayed on after it was gone.
As a boy Juan found pieces of ancient Casas Grandes pottery in the painted style of Paquimé, a nearby ruin of an ancient city with natural artesian wells where trade routes had crossed. The shards intrigued Juan, and he began a study of them that continues to this day. With no one to advise him or tell him it would be difficult, Juan set about experimenting to discover how to make pottery. The challenge took him 16 years, and he experiments still. His fascination led him to find clay of various kinds and to learn by trial and error how to clean and prepare it, how to form it into pots without a potter's wheel, how to burnish and paint these with natural paints, and how to fire the pots with dried cow chips and wood so as to get the hottest, cleanest fire using both oxidation and reduction techniques. In short, whatever was required to make a fine pot, Juan taught himself. He had no input from the outside. Over many years, what had started as a dream became a reality.
Three pots eventually found their way to Bob's Swap Shop in Deming, New Mexico. There in 1976 an anthropologist, Spencer MacCallum, chanced to see them. The owner knew nothing of their origin but thought they were from somewhere in Mexico. He only knew that they had been traded to him for used clothing by some poor people some months earlier. Spencer, intrigued and sensing that a master had made them, determined to find out who the maker was. With great good luck he made his way to a remote village in northern Chihuahua an hour from the nearest graded road. There he found Juan Quezada.
The two struck up a strong relationship. Spencer gave Juan a monthly stipend to afford him the economic freedom to experiment and perfect his art. He also worked full-time for the next six years building a market in the United States that would support the level of quality work Juan aspired to do. Gradually, Spencer introduced Juan to the art world, arranging pottery exhibitions and workshops for Juan to demonstrate his distinctive techniques at dozens of schools and universities throughout the United States. Among places they toured were the Rhode Island School of Design, Princeton, and UC Berkeley. The National Endowment for the Arts helped fund a traveling exhibition.
And years later Juan received- from president Ernesto Zedillo -the Premio Nacional de los Artes , the highest honor Mexico can confer on a living artist. |
Juan never abandoned his simple lifestyle in his village. He generously shared his knowledge, first with his family and then with others. Interest in pottery grew in Mata Ortiz. Slowly each family developed its own style inspired by Juan and the Casas Grandes tradition. Early buyers in the United States and Mexico spread the word. Mata Ortiz pottery had arrived. Hundreds of potters are working today at an extraordinarily high level of quality, producing what surely will be referred to as the "Golden Age" of Mata Ortiz pottery.
Edited by
Spencer and Emi MacCallum
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