Voices in Clay: Pueblo Pottery from the Edna M. Kelly Collection

Abstract

Voices in Clay: Pueblo Pottery from Edna M. Kelly Collection. By Bruce Bernstein and J. J. Brody. (Oxford, OH: Miami University Art Museum, 2001. Pp. 115, foreword, acknowledgments, introduction, illustrations, map, photographs, bibliography. $49.95 cloth, $24.95 paper) The ancestors of today's Pueblo people began to make pottery about 2000 ago, and by 600 C.E. they had begun to paint designs on their serving and storage vessels. Over time, as climatic fluctuations triggered massive resettlements, these people from Colorado plateau of northern Southwest spread out, establishing Hopi Pueblos of Arizona, Zuni and Acoma Pueblos of Western New Mexico, and Pueblos of middle Rio Grande valley. Developing mutually unintelligible languages and different cultures, Pueblo people also created distinctive styles of painted pottery that became emblematic of their regions and villages. The Voices in clay exhibition of 116 works of Pueblo ceramics from Edna M. Kelly collection at Miami University Art Museum ran from August, 2001 to January, 2002. This catalog of exhibition is not only descriptive record of superb Pueblo pottery collection, but, even more significantly, it is dialogue among three outstanding contemporary Pueblo and three curators. While scholars J. J. Brody, Tony Chavarria, and Bruce Bernstein contribute historical and cultural context, bring another dimension to pots, which are considered to be offspring of potters who created them as well as beings with lives and minds of their own (p. 9). Through participation of an all-male panel of and curators in what is traditionally woman's art form, this remarkable catalog brings out an overlooked aspect of Pueblo culture: adaptation and constant change. Especially in contrast to more dramatic changes in Navajo culture, Pueblo culture is usually perceived by outsiders to be continuation of a way of life that goes back hundreds of years (p. 10). Tony Chavarria of Santa Clara Pueblo identifies this to adapt . . . to anything, to outside influences . . . in their environment, internal or external as the real strength [of Pueblo people] (p. 10). Curator Bruce Bernstein observes that this choice of male participants gave session decidedly Outside Pueblo world' flavor (p. 9), but it also emphasizes truth of Tony Chavarria's words about Pueblo ability to change and adapt in response to outside influences. …