Working to preserve art of Mojave pottery

[Okwes]

Working to preserve art of Mojave pottery

Saturday, April 12, 2008 11:39 PM CDT

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COLORING: Joe Scerato, director of Aha Macav Historic and Culture
Preservation, paints a design during a class about Mojave pottery. The
class has had about 20 students since it began several months ago and is
hoping to revive the art form among tribal members. DOMINIKA
MASLIKOWSKI/The Daily News
NEEDLES - The Mojaves were once known as great potters. Today their
pieces are displayed at museums in Phoenix, California and New Mexico.

Tribal elder Betty Barackman carried on the tradition for a while with
unique works that were displayed at the Avi Casino and fetched high
prices from Japanese collectors. But when she died, there were few
tribal members who could preserve the tradition and the art form was in
danger of extinction.

Now Joe Scerato, director of Aha Macav Historic and Culture
Preservation, is hoping to revive the craft with a new pottery class
offered to members of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe.

He says there's been high interest, and about 20 students have attended
since the class was first offered several months ago. There are more
waiting to attend, and a curator at a museum in Parker offered them
space to showcase their work.

To help revive the art, Scerato enlisted Tony Soares - a potter he met
at a Pow Wow in Palm Springs - to come and teach the class.

Soares, of Joshua Tree, Calif., has been doing pottery for three decades
and has hosted a half-dozen classes for the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe.

He began with the ingredients, teaching students to use all-natural
materials they could find in the area. Whether it's the oxide they grind
down to make pigment or the willow and bark wood used for the fire pit,
Soares emphasizes the traditional technique used before pottery wheels
and store-bought clay were available. Brushes are made with trimmed
pieces of human hair.

Soares' grandmother taught him pottery basics while he was growing up,
but he says he learned mostly by trial and error. He says it wasn't very
hard to switch over and learn Mojave pottery because the tribes in his
area are similar in style.

When it's completed, Mojave pottery tends to be buff with red designs
painted in a more utilitarian style than some other tribes. One of the
more common figurines is a frog with a stick in its mouth - a symbol of
the animal in the tribe's creation story that brought back fire for the
creator's cremation. Larger jars that were once used for community water
pots are shaped by hand or with wooden paddles.

There are also clothed doll figurines topped with human hair. Frog
figurines are adorned with decorative earrings of dark and white beads -
a tradition left over when the Spaniards came and offered the Mojaves
payment after they served as their guides to California. The Spaniards
only had blue and white beads on hand, and the colors later became
traditional in Mojave beadwork.

Early Sunday morning in mid-March, several students in the class painted
the finishing touches on their pottery with yellow ochre. When they were
done, Soares dug a fire pit about a foot deep, where he said the
temperature would rise to three times that of a home oven.

When the fire got going, tribal spokesperson Kelly Hills came by to snap
photos and chat with the students.

"Hopefully we'll reclaim our name as potters again," he said,
looking out into the fire. "It's good to see it bringing back to the
community."

Some charred fragments of pottery shot up into the air and peppered the
ground with fragments. Soares said it was part of experimenting with
different clays to see what works.

Several frogs lost their legs, but most pieces emerged in one piece and
were rinsed off with water before they were left to dry in the sun.

Soares was optimistic and the students were happy with their creations.
What pieces broke could be mended later with grease wood.

"I wish my first pieces looked like this," he said. "They
were ugly little things for a long time."