CLAY FEstival on Friday offered activities, lectures, workshops and demonstrations.

Activities of the CLAY Festival on Friday, Aug. 2, including ClayPlay at the Silver City Public Library, with Pam Lujan Hauer as the presenter to help the children of various ages create their own works of art.

She said the clay for the project was donated by the Laguna Clay Company for the Clay Festival.

At the Clay Festival Headquarters at 405 N. Bullard Street, vendors set up their wares and talked about their techniques and processes.

LaDonna Victoriano of the Pueblo of Acoma said she used her mother's fine-line style with "some of my own style." Some of her pottery was handmade and some cast.

From Zuni Pueblo, Eileen Yatsattie said she had been creating pottery since she was 13 years old. Her great-grandmother, Catalina Zunie, was the first pottery teacher in Zuni. Her grandmother was also a potter. "Then it skipped my mother's generation, because emphasis was put on education."

Yatsattie said her grandmother raised her until she was three years old.

"I learned pottery techniques from an Acoma potter, as well as from Hopi and Zuni," she said. "They are all related to our religions. "

Yatsattie said she is carrying on her great-grandmother's and grandmother's style. "An anthropologist in the 1920 lived with my aunt and a lot of her books were based on my great-grandmother's work. The Smithsonian Museum and Santa Fe museums have my great-grandmother's pottery. Our of a family of 12, I am the only one carrying on the tradition."

She is one of only three or four Zuni potters using natural paints and clay. "I've been working on the paints since I was 13, but I didn't master them until the late 1980s and I'm still learning."

She pointed out some of the plants she uses in her products. Boiling wild spinach creates a resin with no color, as does boiling yucca. The latter is her resin of choice. Iron mineral gives the resin color.

With samples of different clays—natural, yellow ochre and white slip—she said they are in layers on a mesa. "When I sand my pots, I save the powder and reuse it."

Her husband, Nilford Tsattie, also creates pottery.

A large pot on display has been in use for 16 years and is used for carrying hot chile stew. The women carry the pot on their heads to take food to the men in the kiva.

A small unfired pot of a raised frog design showed the natural colors and she explained what they would become after firing. The greenish background would become a terra cotta color; the brown would turn to black and the yellowish to a darker reddish color.

Darrell and Donna Chino live at Acoma Pueblo. She, who is from Acoma, does traditional geometric pottery and he, from the Santa Clara Pueblo, creates dancers on some of the pieces.

"I use a yucca point for the design," Donna Chino said. "I also make my own brushes out of yucca fiber. I chew on it to get the right texture."

She was creating fine line with a yucca brush on a pot that had already been glazed and etched, with a dancer, created by Darrell Chino on the piece.

Darrell Chino was working on another piece with a deer dancer. They explained that the design is etched first and the firing is done last. He showed the stylus type that he uses. "The longer and newer ones are for fine work and drawing the outline." Another stylus, a bit more worn down is used for removing the paint that had been applied, and still another stylus is used for the design for the face and belt. "When I run out, I will use nails or whatever is sharp. Fifteen years ago, I started incising on her pieces."

Donna Chino said she forms, shapes, coils and freehands her pots, next "I polish them and then he does the artwork, and finally it is ready for firing." They often collaborate on pottery and artwork. "Darrell was the first to do scrimshaw on Acoma pottery, but now others are doing it, too.

She said she learned from her mother and grandmother. "The technique I am using goes out 1,000 years."

She uses a natural hematite for a dark black color. "I've been doing this since I was about 8 years old. I started out asking if I could help my mom, but I was learning the whole time. By the time I was 13 or 14 I could master a tiny yucca fiber brush."

Another vendor at the headquarters Friday morning was Denise Cowan, owner of Super Salve in Mogollon. Some of her Body Nourish products are clay-based masks for the face and body.

Demonstrations and workshops will continue on Saturday.

Photos by Mary Alice Murphy