Santa Clara Pueblo: Pottery: Jody Folwell, fish images, 1990

ca 1990 
Hand coiled clay pottery
5 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches

Jody Folwell, born at Santa Clara Pueblo in 1942, is one of the best-known of the avant-garde potters. She consistently finds new ways to draw attention to controversial political and social issues through her remarkably plainspoken pots. Her works are meant not as utilitarian pottery, but exclusively as works of art.

One of nine children in the accomplished Naranjo family, Jody is one of the most renowned American Indian clay-workers. She is known for the many innovations she has instigated in the art of the pot. Her mother, Rose, is an accomplished potter.

Lee Cohen, the now deceased owner of Gallery 10 in Santa Fe, told me not long ago that he thought Jody Folwell was the first Indian artist to make good, innovative, off-round, uneven-lipped, asymmetrical polished pots. He referred to Jody as the "first impressionist potter" and said her ideas were very different from those of anyone else working in clay. He thought this even then, over twenty years ago, when Jody was just beginning to make these types of pots. "She was flying in the face of resistance," Lee said, "and she will always be on the edge fighting the odds."