For our second Friday Feature of Women’s History Month, we’re highlighting the work of another of Taos Pueblo’s potters with her own trademark style: Jessie Marcus.
Jessie creates clayware of all sorts, shapes, and sizes, but she is known expressly for melding two media: combining pottery with sculptural effects to coax figurative images from each bowl or mug. Sometimes, as with the mug shown above, it’s the head of an animal figure; more frequently, it’s a representation of the Pueblo’s own people in their diverse daily pursuits — elders, singers, dancers, parents, lovers. We’ve had in inventory pieces by Jessie that fall into each of those categories, although most are long since gone. Eight remain: the horse spirit shown above; four buffalo dancers; a male elder; and two feminine incarnations.
Jessie’s work is unique: It blends the Pueblo’s micaceous pottery style, unadorned by paint or other external accents, with an eminently functional form, the handle-less mug. Such mugs are ordinary drinkware, but can also play a role in certain traditional functions. From such artifacts of daily life Jessie calls forth the image of a traditional being, in human or animal form, adding another layer of traditional identity to her work.
The horse mug at the top, if course, is far and away my favorite, for what should be obvious reasons to readers who know us: We’re horse people. And her clayware featuring horses (which initially included a mug that was a mirror image of the one shown here, and a small bowl with two horses’ heads arising out of the rim, both sold a long time ago) were what particularly attracted Wings to her current body of work. From its description in the Other Artists: Pottery gallery here on the site:
This vintage-style mug by Jessie Marcus (Taos Pueblo) is made in the traditional fashion, to be cupped in one’s hands like those used ceremonially. Hand-coiled of micaceous clay, it features a horse’s head extending from the rim, the tail flowing down the opposite side of the mug.
Micaceous clay
$125 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The detail work is simple, yet lifelike, particularly the horse’s eyes, and the entire piece possesses a sense of motion not usually present in pottery.
Of course, her work featuring human figures is equally animated. Generally speaking, they feature mouths open in song or speech, in the fashion of traditional Pueblo storyteller figures, folding yet another artistic and culture motif into the clay with which she works. And even those that are part of a series, like the four buffalo dancers shown immediately below, all bear distinctive identifying marks, each different from the last, and each distinguished by the incised work she includes on the molded front of each mug.
The first, his long hair escaping from the front of his headdress, arises from an image of the old village, pine ladder in the foreground, mountain peaks behind the adobe walls.
The second dances with his headdress carelessly askew, perhaps focused on the village scene below, or possibly surprised by the appearance of the lightning bolt-like pattern that traces the length of the molded edge in front.
The third wears his mane and horns neatly, all correct and in perfect order, while another slender bolt of lightning races down the front of the mug beneath him.
The last dancer seems intent and enthusiastic, if a bit rumpled, horns ready to fall over his left eye. The lightning bolt design that appears along the front resembles the curving, agile shape of a desert lizard.
Of course, not everyone is a dancer, but all have roles to play.
This elder, wrapped in a blanket in the old way, appears to rise, singing, directly out of the adobe walls themselves: The structure is not so much incised on the front as molded directly out of it, creating a fitting image of the foundational, integral part that elders play in the traditional way of life.
And then, there are the women, the foundation’s other cornerstone.
The first sings to the corn plants dancing across the front of the mug, nurturing their growth as they sway in the summer winds.
In the second iteration, a woman appears to rise organically out of the clay of the very earth itself, from inside and between the incised mountain peaks arrayed across the front of the piece.
Together, they represent a snapshot of daily life, each being fulfilling her, his, or its appointed role, yet each doing so in a highly individual way, in all of their beautiful diversity.
It is this aspect of Jessie’s work that makes it so special: She has a gift for distilling some of the many essences of Pueblo life into small, modestly-priced works that are accessible to outsiders — so accessible, in factg, that you can hold them in your hand.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
