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L E C T U R E S . A N D . P R E S E N T A T I O N S

GLOBAL TRADITIONS - CONTEMPORARY CERAMIC PRACTICE
Moyra Elliott, Magdalene Odundo, Lonnie Vihil, Manos Nathan, Christine McHorse

MOYRA ELLIOTT (New Zealand)

Hello, Kia Ora and good afternoon. It is my pleasure to moderate this Global Visions Panel.

We have four very fine artists to talk with us today. I don’t think ever before has such a quartet been gathered together to explore their differences and similarities. What each has in common with the others is a long, rich, often multi-layered link with ancestral lands and customs which reaches down through the generations to connect with the artist’s contemporary being. All have received multiple accolades and honours for their work. Professionally and ethnically they have these things in common, geographically they almost could not be further apart deriving, as they do, from three very different parts of the world. These influences are reflected in their work in differing ways and this afternoon we can explore some of them.

Their work has similarities in that all are makers of vessels, further, these vessels have burnished surfaces. Despite their differing origins the burnishing is a constant to smooth, strengthen, help waterproof and imbue vitality to the pots by their sheen that reflects the perfection of surface. In many cases the surface is left unembellished so that form is an emphatic element in the total piece, in others the surface marks makes links that connect the pot with other ancestral practices. This burnishing also underlines another connection and that is that each, has been guided, in some way, by one, or more, of the great matriarchs of Native American pottery. I am sure each will, in their talks, acknowledge this mentoring as it has been important for all.

Now we can hear these artists talk for themselves . . . if there are questions very particular to the speaker perhaps best to ask it immediately after they have finished talking. If the question concerns more than one artist or is general perhaps wait until all have finished speaking and add it to the general session at the end.

First let me introduce the locals, as it were and ladies first.

The name Christine McHorse certainly sounds Native American if like me you spent a childhood with High Noon and Roy Rogers at the local cinema, but the McHorse is her husband’s name and his father was an Irish Texan! Christine is Navaho and she was brought up surrounded by her Navaho roots and traditions. Her husband Joel is from Taos pueblo and they met attending the Institute of American Indian Arts here in Santa Fe. Christine is the first generation of potters in her family as she is Navaho and not pueblo. Navaho traditions lean towards weaving and metalwork, not pottery although there were simple cooking pots made. Christine uses the local micaceous clay as peoples from some local pueblos have been doing since 1300. Its called shiny earth due to the flecks of mica particles and I can tell you from personal experience it can be worked and workd….one day I was visiting Christine’s studio and I took a small piece of this clay and worked it in my fingers. Now any clay I have ever used would, after a fairly short time working in the fingers – become dry and begin to crack but this clay stayed plastic and moist through close to an hour while we talked! These fine qualities mean that strong, thin walled vessels with a high thermal shock threshold can be made, and have been made for over 700 years. Traditionally used for cooking pots and unembellished, Christine took that as a starting point and makes pots that are only possible, probably, because of the character of this clay. Undecorated still but with often complex form, that is organic but yet also reductive, sometimes growing to elaborate multivolume shapes but realised with pure minimalism and simplicity. Mass, volume and Line combine fluidly in her work and they are contemporary as much as they are of traditions. There is as much Brancusi as anything Navaho or Pueblo. She can tell her own story better than I so ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Christine McHorse.

CHRISTINE McHORSE

Our next artist is Lonnie VIHILL from the Tewa GROUP? Nambe pueblo in this locality, north of Santa Fe. He started a career in finance and business firstly here in New Mexico and later pursued it in Washington but eventually in the early 1980s decided that these pursuits offered nothing for his soul and he returned to his pueblo where his ancestors have lived since 7 or 800 AD. There he sought help towards working with clay. I read, that around his simple adobe home, surrounded by cottonwood trees, there is so much quiet that it makes visitors from big cities feel very uneasy! Lonnie also uses this local, fine micaceous clay and he also reveres it as source of many things. He works intuitively and as he sees it, traditionally. Originally, as I said in introducing Christine, this mica flecked clay was used for traditional culinary pots. Vihill has been credited with taking this humble customary use and turning it into an art form. Certainly his pots are taken beyond what is needed for cooking purposes and into the realm of art, with their strong profiles, extensions of scale, and generosity of form along with an adherence to what for him is important in traditional shape and detail. They hold considerable expressive presence with their undecorated surfaces apart from the patterning by smoke and flame that arise from the simple firing processes. Here to tell you of his journey, please welcome Lonnie VIHILL .

LONNIE VIHILL

Now, our outlanders and again, ladies first Magdalene Odundo probably needs little introduction as she is subject of many essays and books. Born in Kenya she left to study in England and was at West Surrey College of Art and Design under Henry Hammond who in turn was taught by William Staite Murray at Royal College. Her studies have been eclectic as she also visited St Ives and worked with Cardew for three months in Abuja looking at Gwari women hand-building techniques. Her thesis was on Kenyan Ceremonial vessels for rites of passage. She became a student at Royal College in 1979 Here she worked to draw together her varied and complex experiences with a developing interest in world ceramic history. She worked to synthesise ancient – pre-wheel – techniques and ideas with British studio work, and hand-building techniques from Sub-Saharan Africa, the terra sigillata of ancient Athens and Rome in cohesion with contemporary urban living. A visit to Maria Martinez and the San Ildefonso pueblo where she realised she still had much to learn, She did this at a time when terms like hybridity and cultures in the plural came into use and post modernism was developing some early presence in ceramics. Her vessels have grown out of these potentially conflicting traditions and influences and experiences into something uniquely her own becoming translated and encoded into considered sculptural forms. She has heeded the advice of Cardew who, while admiring pots from Korea and China as sources of inspiration said to enjoy fully is not to imitate but to appreciate the attitude or idea that lays behind. Her pots are faultlessly crafted amalgams of balance, purity and serenity. There is a clarity of line that makes them self-consciously modern and urban while acknowledging their potent traditional roots. It was Donald Winnicott who said that originality grows out of tradition. Here is the living embodiment please welcome – Magdalene Odundo

MAGDALENE ODUNDO

Our final speaker is a countryman of mine. He has mixed parentage in that his father, serving with the famous 28 Maori Batallion in WW11 was hiding from the German soldiers in Crete and was helped by a family who lived high in a remote hillside village. He fell for the daughter and after the war returned to claim her as his bride and brought her to New Zealand – a story that has been told in a highly acclaimed book by one of our honoured writers, Patricia Grace. They raised three sons in a small rural town near ancestral lands where generations have lived and worked since Maori arrived in New Zealand – then called Aotearoa (LLWC) by those early immigrants who came down from their last landfalls of Rarotonga and Tahiti and islands in the central Pacific but before that, as Polynesians, steadily occupied and settled the Pacific Islands after leaving South-East Asia, now believed to be the former Formosa and is modern day Taiwan. There the indigenous peoples have direct DNA links with Maori and other Polynesians. Any clay traditions that accompanied original emigrants stayed in Melanesia with the Lapita Peoples and where there are clay deposits. Coral atolls and islands offer no clay and besides, hollowed gourds and baskets woven from tree and plant fibres are excellent food and water containers and, being mainly unbreakable, more suitable for a migratory people who set sail on double hulled canoes navigating by wave pattern, bird flight and stars over the largest body of water in the world. The final landfall was Aotearoa now thought to be about a 1000 years ago. They brought no clay traditions or knowledge and despite adequate supplies in the ground, ceramics did not exist until the coming of western immigration and settlement which began in earnest in the mid 1800s. We grew up understanding that Maori had no clay culture but for a variety of reasons, in the 1980s one began, and this is the man largely responsible. Manos Nathan has been instrumental in the foundation of a small culture of ceramics in New Zealand that is already into its second generation. For him the development – perhaps invention is a better word, of a new way to express his traditions has been an interesting and complex journey within a culture that has struggled to guard its uniqueness and has been conservative in attitudes toward contemporary influences as it has only fairly recently asserted its freedom from an overwhelmingly Anglo dominance as we move toward becoming fully bicultural. A visit to the pueblos in this area has been part of his journey also. His are the only surface decorated pots in our otherwise austerely unembellished group and there are reasons for this. His pots are mainly what we might call classical in form and these, plus his extrapolations into sculptural forms all bear direct reference to his culture and its histories. I’ll let him tell his story. Please welcome Manos Nathan.

MANOS NATHAN

Slide 1 Introductory – my place, people of the land (tangata whenua)

Our identity and culture is embedded in the landscape Maori people identify with the features of their tribal landscape Ko Maunganui te maunga Maunganui is my mountain Ko Waipoua te awa Waipoua is my river Ko Kawerua te moana Kawerua is my sea Ko Te Roroa te Iwi Te Roroa is my tribe

Slides 2 – 4 Marae are central to the life of a Maori community.

They are places of oratory, ritual, learning and debate. The practices and activities on marae uphold the spiritual, cultural and physical concerns of our communities. Ancestral house (Whare Tupuna) – our ancestors and tribal histories are celebrated in carvings and in other decorative features. The designs and patterns serve as mnemonic markers of our relationship to the land and each other.

Slides 5 - 25

• Traditional art forms and designs adapted and reconfigured for clay.
• Works draw on a strong visual culture and the narratives of our oral traditions:
• Designs and symbolism from traditional art forms of wood, bone and stone carving, ta moko (tattoo) and from the fibre arts of taniko and tukutuku (finger weaving and woven panels) have been adapted and applied to clay. The repertoire of carved surface patterns, perforated spiral designs and figurative forms of traditional wood carvings are reflected in this juxtaposition of the following images. Papahou – feather boxes Tauihu and Taurapa – prow and sternpost carvings of the waka taua - war canoe. Waka Koiwi – funerary chests (ossuaries) Pare- door lintel Ta Moko designs My involvement with clay began in 1980s This was a time of major economic restructuring in New Zealand. Many Maori returned to their tribal lands and marae based communities. It was also a time of significant revitalization of Maori culture. I was involved with the development of Marae and community based programmes:
• Using local resources - clay, ochre, river sand.
• With a low technology focus - hand built works - burnishing, pit firings / primitive kilns,

Slides 26– 31

• Works created from a conceptual base which is Maori.
• Works created which endorse existing customs or contribute to the revival of old customs. The cultural significance of the works is predicated on reinforcing and enhancing our ritual practice.
• Whenua is the Maori word for the placenta and also for the land.
• Whenua bowls and Waka pito - these vessels are buried containing the placenta and umbilical cord thereby affirming the child’s genealogical connections to the land

Slides 32– 35 Influences from the South West

• Susan Peterson biography of Maria Martinez. I further developed my work by adapting what I observed in a sequential series of photographs of her method of making and firing.
• Designed and made tools which replaced the burnishing stones used in the SW - tools that suited my hand and my technique. They are hand tools of various shapes which both sculpt and burnish clay.

Slides 36 – 48 Cultural Exchange initiatives

• Kaihanga Uku – National Maori Clayworkers organization - established 1987
• Facilitating international indigenous cultural exchange was a foundation activity for the group. Exchanges were planned to build relationships with peoples with a ceramic tradition.
• These initiatives took place with the assistance of Fulbright Awards and QE II Arts Council of New Zealand funding.
• Potters from Arizona and New Mexico, USA visit NZ -1991 The programme was called “Te Pokepoke Uku: the blending of clays, the blending of peoples”
• Return visit – Acoma and San Ildelfonso Pueblos, New Mexico - 1992 Blue Corn, Emma and Delores Lewis, Gloria Lomahaftewa, inheritors of the legacy of Maria Martinez, Lucy Lewis and Nampeyo.
• Maori Market, Wellington - 2007 - Lillian Pitt - Warm Springs / Wasco Yakima, Washington. USA
• Maori Market, Porirua – 2009 - Richard Zane Smith - Wyandot Nation, Oklahoma, USA