Santa Clara
$ 1100
dksc3c276
Black melon jar with thirty-eight ribs
8.25 in L by 8.25 in W by 5 in H
Condition: Good, has some scratches and a surface chip on exterior
Signature: Angela Baca Santa Clara
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Angela Baca
1927-2014
Santa ClaraAngela Baca was born into Santa Clara Pueblo in 1927, the daughter of Severa Tafoya and Cleto Tafoya. She grew up learning the traditional way to make Pueblo pottery and experimented with different styles before settling on making primarily carved redware and blackware melon bowls around 1955. Her melon bowls won awards at the Santa Fe Indian Market in 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1992.
In 1984 some of Angela's melon bowls were featured in an exhibition at The Graphic Image in Milburn, NJ, alongside pieces by Maria Martinez, Popovi Da, Stella Chavarria, Blue Corn and others. Some of Angela's bowls are also on display in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, and many other museums and galleries.
After raising and helping to raise many children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and teaching more than a few to make pottery, Angela passed on in 2014.
Santa Clara Pueblo
Ruins at Puye Cliffs, Santa Clara Pueblo
Santa Clara Pueblo straddles the Rio Grande about 25 miles north of Santa Fe. Of all the pueblos, Santa Clara has the largest number of potters.
The ancestral roots of the Santa Clara people have been traced to the pueblos in the Mesa Verde region in southwestern Colorado. When that area began to get dry between about 1100 and 1300, some of the people migrated to the Chama River Valley and constructed Poshuouinge (about 3 miles south of what is now Abiquiu on the edge of the mesa above the Chama River). Eventually reaching two and three stories high with up to 700 rooms on the ground floor, Poshuouinge was inhabited from about 1375 to about 1475. Drought then again forced the people to move, some of them going to the area of Puye (on the eastern slopes of the Pajarito Plateau of the Jemez Mountains) and others to Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo, along the Rio Grande). Beginning around 1580, drought forced the residents of the Puye area to relocate closer to the Rio Grande and they founded what we now know as Santa Clara Pueblo on the west bank of the river, between San Juan and San Ildefonso Pueblos.
In 1598 Spanish colonists from nearby Yunque (the seat of Spanish government near San Juan Pueblo) brought the first missionaries to Santa Clara. That led to the first mission church being built around 1622. However, the Santa Clarans chafed under the weight of Spanish rule like the other pueblos did and were in the forefront of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. One pueblo resident, a mixed black and Tewa man named Domingo Naranjo, was one of the rebellion's ringleaders. When Don Diego de Vargas came back to the area in 1694, he found most of the Santa Clarans on top of nearby Black Mesa (with the people of San Ildefonso). An extended siege didn't subdue them so eventually, the two sides negotiated a treaty and the people returned to their pueblo. However, successive invasions and occupations by northern Europeans took their toll on the tribe over the next 250 years. The Spanish flu pandemic in 1918 almost wiped them out.
Today, Santa Clara Pueblo is home to as many as 2,600 people and they comprise probably the largest per capita number of artists of any North American tribe (estimates of the number of potters run as high as 1-in-4 residents).
Today's pottery from Santa Clara is typically either black or red. It is usually highly polished and designs might be deeply carved or etched ("sgraffito") into the pot's surface. The water serpent, ("avanyu"), is a traditional design motif of Santa Clara pottery. Another motif comes from the legend that a bear helped the people find water during a drought. The bear paw has appeared on their pottery ever since.
One of the reasons for the distinction this pueblo has received is because of the evolving artistry the potters have brought to the craft. Not only did this pueblo produce excellent black and redware, several notable innovations helped move pottery from the realm of utilitarian vessels into the domain of art. Different styles of polychrome redware emerged in the 1920's-1930's. In the early 1960's experiments with stone inlay, incising and double firing began. Modern potters have also extended the tradition with unusual shapes, slips and designs, illustrating what one Santa Clara potter said: "At Santa Clara, being non-traditional is the tradition." (This refers strictly to artistic expression; the method of creating pottery remains traditional).
Santa Clara Pueblo is home to a number of famous pottery families: Tafoya, Baca, Gutierrez, Naranjo, Suazo, Chavarria, Garcia, Vigil, Tapia - to name a few.
Santa Clara Pueblo at Wikipedia
Pueblos of the Rio Grande, Daniel Gibson, ISBN-13:978-1-887896-26-9, Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2001
Upper photo courtesy of Einar Kvaran, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License
Gutierrez Family Tree
Disclaimer: This "family tree" is a best effort on our part to determine who the potters are in this family and arrange them in a generational order. The general information available is questionable so we have tried to show each of these diagrams to living members of each family to get their input and approval, too. This diagram is subject to change should we get better info.
- Jose Domingo Gutierrez (1844-before 1931) and Tonita Gutierrez (1859-aft 1934)
- Lela (1895-1966) & Van (Evangelio) Gutierrez (1885-1956)
- Luther Gutierrez (1911-1987) & Lupita Naranjo
- Paul & Dorothy (Navajo) Gutierrez
- Gary Gutierrez
- Paul Gutierrez Jr. (1966-)
- Pauline Gutierrez Naranjo (1931-)
- Stephanie Naranjo (1960-)
- Paul & Dorothy (Navajo) Gutierrez
- Margaret Rose Gutierrez (1936-2018)
- Luther Gutierrez (1911-1987) & Lupita Naranjo
- Leocadia Gutierrez (c. 1877-1950) & Thomas Sublette Dozier (Anglo from Missouri) (1857-1925)
- Severa Gutierrez Tafoya (1890-1973) and Cleto Tafoya
- Angela Tafoya Baca (1927-2014) & Antonio Baca
- Alvin Baca (1966-)
- Daryl Baca (1961-)
- David Baca (1951-)
- Leona Baca (1958-)
- Epimenia (Mela) Tafoya (1920-1962) & Robert Nichols
- Robert Cleto Nichols (1961-) & Miana Pablito (Zuni)
- Lydia Tafoya (1923-1975) & Santiago Garcia (San Juan/Ohkay Owingeh)
- Greg Garcia (1961-2010)
- Tina Garcia (1957-2005)
- Virginia Garcia (1963-)
- Maria (Mary Agnes) Tafoya (1925-1983) & Mosimino Tafoya
- Stephanie Tafoya Fuentes (1963-) & Lorenzo Fuentes
- Alita Povijua (1957-)
- Kathy Silva (1947-)
- Gwen Tafoya
- Wanda Tafoya (1950-)
- Eric Tafoya (1969-)
- Lawrence Tafoya (1968-)
- Mary Agnes Talache (1981-)
- Charlene Victoria Talache (1986-)
- Tonita (1930-) & Paul Tafoya
- Paul Speckled Rock (1952-2017)
- Adam Speckled Rock (1972-)
- Kenneth Tafoya (1953-)
- Ray Tafoya (1956-1995) & Emily (Suazo) Tafoya
- Jennifer (Tafoya) Moquino (1977-) & Michael Moquino
- Leslie Tafoya
- Paul Speckled Rock (1952-2017)
- Angela Tafoya Baca (1927-2014) & Antonio Baca
Some of the above info is drawn from Pueblo Indian Pottery, 750 Artist Biographies, by Gregory Schaaf, © 2000, Center for Indigenous Arts & Studies
Other info is derived from personal contacts with family members and through interminable searches of the Internet.
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