SANTE FE — On a typical summer, tens of thousands of people visit Santa Fe, New Mexico for the largest juried Native American art show and market in the world, the Southwestern Association of Indian Arts (SWAIA), also known as Indian Market.
While this year marked the 101st year of SWAIA, other marketplaces also showcased Indigenous artists like the Free Indian Market, and Pathways Indigenous Arts Festival, along with Albuquerque’s Shy Native Summer Market.
The Sunbeam Indian Arts Gallery booths illustrated an intersection of creative family lineage, traditions, and creative expressions. Their booths showcased traditional and contemporary Pueblo pottery, but also included raw materials found from the San Ildefonso hillside, and a children’s book titled Shaped by Her Hands: Potter Maria Martinez (2021) by Anna H. Freeman and Barbara Gonzales, along with an iPad looping the film, “Our Quiyo: Maria Martinez” (2022) by director Charine Pilar Gonzales.
I stopped to watch the film and talk with the multi-generational artist family who are six generations of Pueblo potters. Charine Pilar Gonzales and her grandmother Barbara Gonzales, also known as Than-Moo-Whé, from San Ildefonso Pueblo, shared that their familial matriarch Maria Martinez was one of the first participating SWAIA artists. Thus, the family considers this weekend more than a time to sell. For them, it’s also a time to host and teach, which is why their booth is designed in a way that invites conversation.
Barbara Gonzales, who lived and learned from her great-grandmother, Maria Martinez, explained that she has been participating in the market since she was a child, and recalls memories of sleeping on her “bedroll” to get the “best spot” at the Palace of the Governors. Today, her family sets up at the Free Indian Market in Federal Park. Throughout all the decades and changes, for her and her family, it’s always been about hosting a “meeting of friends” and sharing art, culture, and traditions.
As a family of six generations of potters, they explain that working with clay and making pots is a year-round affair, and they all support different creative capacities. Barbara and Robert Gonzales’s four sons and grandchildren support Sunbeam Gallery’s booth through their varied artistic intersections. Graphic artist, Derek Gonzales, son of Barbara and Robert, designed the booth’s signage, which includes traditional Pueblo motifs. Brandan Gonzales focuses on black-on-black traditional bowls and plates, specifically the cornmeal bowl. Buffalo figurines are Aaron Gonzales’ signature pieces in addition to traditional work. This year, the oldest son Cavan Gonzales, who graduated from Alfred University in ceramics and world art history, tested positive for COVID-19 and could not attend the market, which was a difficult first for him. His daughter, Charine Pilar Gonzales, shared that this was her first time curating her dad’s booth, which was filled with traditional and polychrome pieces. She explained that people stopped by the booth and asked for her dad, “They aren’t just tourists, they are friends. They watched me grow up too. They’ve watched me grow up at the pottery booth. […] For me, the market has always been about building relationships and greeting people. Talking with people. Enjoying the journey of the market. When the market is happening, I take it very seriously. It is a weekend to dedicate and showcase what [my] Dad, Grandma, cousins, and uncles have been working on all year long.”
Some of the sentiments of sharing and educating are materials at the booth, like a generational chart of the familial lineage, which highlights the names of family potters whose work sold at the table. This visual aid also serves to share that the pottery prices include intergenerational knowledge and value. The raw materials at the booth illustrate and open conversations about the process of making. These pots are made through a familial collaborative process that includes harvesting the clay from local hillsides, wedging, coil-building, polishing, drying, pit-firing, and then post-production etching, décor, adornment, and stone placement.
Barbara Gonzales shared that she “apprenticed” with her great grandma, aunts, and uncles to master various techniques. As a young girl, sometimes she couldn’t go outside to play, but as she got older, she understood that clay, ceramics, and art were ways of opening doors of possibility and potential. Thus, both Barbara and Robert Gonzales fostered a home that centered on creative learning and teaching for their children and grandchildren. At Sunbeam Indian Arts Gallery she shared, “I want to show all the different creative expressions of my family,” which range from filmmaking, jewelry, painting, graphic design, and sculpture. All these interdisciplinary creative expressions center Indigenous storytelling, and while this weekend showcased their pottery, Gonzales also attended her granddaughter Charine Pilar Gonzales’s film screening, River Bank (Pō-Kehgeh) ” (2023), which she also stars in. Pilar Gonzales credits working with clay to being a filmmaker because it is with clay she first learned about “collaborating” work with others, “listening” to the land, and allowing the story to fully take shape. She shared, “Sometimes the story will take its own direction and you have to respect that spirit. Same with clay, you have to respect that you are working with the spirits.”
Many of the family members echoed a similar sentiment, that being part of this family meant you were going to contribute to the collaborative process of making pots, working with the land, and getting your hands in clay. Pilar Gonzales shared, “I don’t remember who said this first, probably Maria [Martinez], but we come from clay and earth, and we return to clay and earth. In that way, pottery is about life itself. As host of [the Indian Market], sharing what we made from this land and offering it to the people is full circle.”
Ceramics and clay are humanity’s most ancient technologies, and Barbara Gonzales prompts everyone to “learn your culture and nationality. Learn your land. Learn where to find your own clay source. Come up with your own design and revive your own traditional art. Learn your own traditions.”
Land acknowledgments have become an institutionalized practice that is meant to acknowledge Indigenous people, but often undermine their sovereignty and often lack restored action. Often, at an event when a land acknowledgment is shared, the statement evokes past-tense verbiage of ancestral homelands, as if those lands are no longer stewarded by Indigenous peoples. I witnessed many land acknowledgments during the SWAIA weekend, yet I believe there is still work to be done to make these acknowledgments actionable. Speaking with this family opened up cultural conversations and understanding of how this weekend isn’t simply about the market, but rather about relations and as guests of the Tewa community and artists.
Charine Pilar Gonzales said, “We invite our relatives from other tribes to come and be a part of Indian Market and walk on our land and feel the strength and power that we have here, Indian Market will always be about pottery, family, and Tewa people.”
