Mountain Ram
Dusty Naranjo (b. 1968)
Santa Clara
Mountain Ram
c. 2001
4 x 4
Gift from the Edward J. Guarino Collection
In honor of Kathleen Guarino-Burns
2009.26.4
Dusty Naranjo did not grow up making pottery, although she comes from a very distinguished family of potters, including Rose Naranjo, Jody Folwell and Nora Noranjo-Morse. Dusty first focused on her formal education and graduated from New Mexico Highlands University with a B.A. in psychology and a M.A. in Art Therapy. Only later in her life did she come to realize that making pottery was a “wonderful creative process” (armadillotradingcompany).
Dusty’s Mountain Ram, an incised pot, reflects a fusion of Santa Clara Pueblo traditional technique and her own distinct sense of newly invented surface designs. She employs the sgraffito technique, in which she carves into the clay through the slip. This results in a color difference between the slipped clay and the raw clay beneath. The lines and patterns vary in width and depth: some are wide and deeply carved with finer lines delicately scratched into them. Overall the jar has an intricately etched surface pattern. These variations in linear texture serve to create surface movement throughout the entire piece. Geometric patterns resemble the half-terrace motif, representing Pueblo buildings, along with the other iconography of two mountain rams and two small crosses. Both the imagery and technique of this incised pot demonstrate the ongoing reinvention of traditional prototypes in contemporary Native American pottery. Dusty Naranjo has taken a family tradition and transformed it into a modern and vital outlet for her own artistic expression (LeFree 1975, 50-56).
Katherine Lukacher