William Pacheco
Santo Domingo
William Andrew Pacheco was born in mid-October, 1975, to Gilbert and Paulita Pacheco of Santo Domingo Pueblo, both potters. Like a typical 10 year old boy, he was truly in love with dinosaurs, sauropods in particular, with long necks, big legs, droopy stomachs and long tails. He first put his hands in the clay to make a real pot when he was fifteen. His primary teachers were his father and his uncle, Robert Tenorio. But when it came time to make his own pottery, what stirred William's heart was open bowl forms decorated on the outside with dinosaur shapes. The next year, 1991, he was an exhibitor at the 19th Annual American Indian Festival & Market at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles County, California. Then he won the Best of Division ribbon in the Youth category at the Santa Fe Indian Market. Those early pieces were signed "Andrew Pacheco" Unlike Peter Pan, William grew up, went to Harvard, stopped making pots, and Andrew became William.
William majored in East Indian studies and chose Japanese to fulfill his language requirement. He made several trips to Japan and studied Japanese ceramics. He also developed an exchange student program between Harvard and several Japanese schools. It became so popular that Tibet and Indonesia were added. In 2023, he completed graduate studies in the Educational Learning Design program at Harvard. Then he was off to MIT and research on the saving of indigenous languages.
When he wants to relax, though, he said he makes pottery. It's a calm, peaceful and creative outlet in his life. When we asked him what he does for fun, other than make pottery, he replied, "I love to travel, and learn new languages. I'm just back from a long stay in Bali. I learned about the culture and the art, and learned to speak Indonesian. But, I also speak Keres at home and some Tibetan. When I was studying in France I had to learn French. That language was the hardest one for me."
100 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
(505) 986-1234 - www.andreafisherpottery.com - All Rights Reserved
Santo Domingo Pueblo
Santo Domingo Pueblo Mission Church
Santo Domingo Pueblo is located on the east bank of the Rio Grande about half-way between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Historically, the people of Santo Domingo were among the most active of Pueblo traders. The pueblo also has a reputation for being ultra traditional, probably due, at least in part, to the longevity of the pueblo's pottery styles. Some of today's popular designs have changed very little since the 1700s.
In pre-Columbian times, traders from Santo Domingo were trading turquoise (from mines in the Cerrillos Hills) and hand-made heishe beads as far away as central Mexico. Many artisans in the pueblo still work in the old ways and produce wonderful silver and turquoise jewelry and heishe decorations.
Like the people of nearby San Felipe and Cochiti, the people of Santo Domingo speak Keres and trace their ancestry back to villages established on the Pajarito Plateau area in the 1400s. Like the other Rio Grande pueblos, Santo Domingo rose up against the Spanish oppressors in 1680, following Alonzo Catiti as he led the Keres-speaking pueblos and worked with Popé (of San Juan Pueblo) to stop the Spanish atrocities. However, when Spanish Governor Antonio Otermin returned to the area in 1681, he found Santo Domingo deserted and ordered it burned. The pueblo residents had fled to a nearby mountain stronghold and when Don Diego de Vargas returned to Nuevo Mexico in 1692, he attacked that mountain fortress and burned it, too. Catiti died in that battle and Keres opposition to the Spanish crumbled with his death. The survivors of that battle fled, some to Acoma, some to fledgling Laguna, some to the Hopi mesas. Over time most of them returned to Santo Domingo.
In the 1790s Santo Domingo accepted an influx of refugees from the Galisteo Basin area as they fled the near-constant attacks of Apache, Comanche, Ute and Navajo raiders in that area. Today's main Santo Domingo village was founded about 1886.
In 1598 Santo Domingo was the site of the first gathering of 38 pueblo governors by Don Juan de Oñaté to try to force them to swear allegiance to the crown of Spain. Today, the All Indian Pueblo Council (consisting of the nineteen remaining pueblo's governors and an executive staff) gathers at Santo Domingo for their first meeting every year, to continue what is now the oldest annual political gathering in America. During the time of the Spanish occupation Santo Domingo served as the headquarters of the Franciscan missionaries in New Mexico and religious trials were held there during the Spanish Inquisition.
Today, the people of Santo Domingo number around 4,500, with about two-thirds of them living on the reservation. The pottery traditions of the pueblo almost died out after the railroads arrived and many Santo Domingos went to work laying tracks. Even today many Santo Domingo men work as firefighters for the US Forest Service in fire season and practice their artistic talents during the rest of the year.
Potter Robert Tenorio began working to revive the Santo Domingo pottery tradition in the early 1970s. His influence can be found among many of today's Santo Domingo potters, even if they say he only stimulated them to learn on their own.
While today's Santo Domingo pottery is known for designs described as simple geometrics, another outstanding feature is boldness: the lines are thick and well-defined. In the 1920s, Kenneth Chapman, from the Museum of New Mexico, went to Santo Domingo and made drawings of many of the designs that were being painted on Santo Domingo pottery "before they disappeared." Thomas Tenorio said he got most of his designs from that collection.
As religious leaders forbid the representation of human figures as well as other sacred designs on pottery made for commercial purposes, birds, fish and flowers are common design motifs. Depictions of mammals are rarely seen. Another typical Santo Domingo style is to paint in the negative, meaning cover the pot in panels of big swatches of black and red so that only a few lines of the cream slip show through.
100 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
(505) 986-1234 - www.andreafisherpottery.com - All Rights Reserved