Available for purchase here
Lucy Martin Lewis passed away on March 12, 1992 at a
supposed age of 93. Her year of birth is not known. She spent nearly all
her life atop the high mesa of Acoma Pueblo,
making pottery since the age of 7. She is largely responsible for the
revival of Mimbres black-on-white pottery designs which are more than
1,000 years old. She was famous, as well, for her exquisite polychrome
designs and her fine-line and lightning designs. Always thanking Mother Earth for the clay, taking only as much clay as she needed, working the clay with only her hands, forming the vessel from coils of clay, scraping the walls with tools fashioned from gourds, painting the vessel with slips and paints made from clay and vegetal sources and, finally, firing the finished pieces in an outdoor handmade kiln. Lucy signed her pottery as Lucy M. Lewis. Lucy Lewis was one of the most widely respected potters from her pueblo. She was the last of the Acoma matriarchs. She followed pueblo tradition in every step of pottery production.
Considered
one of the matriarchs of American Indian pottery, Lucy M. Lewis was
born and raised on Sky City mesa, a land formation more than three
hundred feet high in Acoma Pueblo, west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Since
there were no schools on the mesa, Lewis received no formal education
or art classes. She learned pottery as a young child from her great-aunt
and other Acoma Pueblo women. Lewis was instrumental in reviving
eleventh-century, Mimbres-style pottery, characterized by black lines on
white slip.Lewis married and had nine children. She handled the household chores, helped her husband with the farming, and still found time for her pottery. Because of Acoma Pueblo’s remote location, Lewis was never helped – or interfered with – by archaeologists, museum curators, collectors, or tourists. She also did not travel to powwows or fairs, though she occasionally sold her pottery in the closest town, 20 miles away.
Lewis’s pottery first became known outside the pueblo in 1950, when she received a blue ribbon at the Annual Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial in Gallup, New Mexico. During the 1980s and 1990s Lewis received awards from the American Crafts Council, the College Art Association, the state of New Mexico, and the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts. Lewis continued to pot well into her 80s. Some of her daughters and grandchildren also create pottery.
Considered
one of the matriarchs of American Indian pottery, Lucy M. Lewis was
born and raised on Sky City mesa, a land formation more than three
hundred feet high in Acoma Pueblo, west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Since
there were no schools on the mesa, Lewis received no formal education
or art classes. She learned pottery as a young child from her great-aunt
and other Acoma Pueblo women. Lewis was instrumental in reviving
eleventh-century, Mimbres-style pottery, characterized by black lines on
white slip.Lewis married and had nine children. She handled the household chores, helped her husband with the farming, and still found time for her pottery. Because of Acoma Pueblo’s remote location, Lewis was never helped – or interfered with – by archaeologists, museum curators, collectors, or tourists. She also did not travel to powwows or fairs, though she occasionally sold her pottery in the closest town, 20 miles away.
Lewis’s pottery first became known outside the pueblo in 1950, when she received a blue ribbon at the Annual Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial in Gallup, New Mexico. During the 1980s and 1990s Lewis received awards from the American Crafts Council, the College Art Association, the state of New Mexico, and the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts. Lewis continued to pot well into her 80s. Some of her daughters and grandchildren also create pottery.
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