We awakened this morning to the universe’s own April Fool’s joke: a world blanketed once again in white. The snow is not deep, nor will it be long-lived, but the cold air will not loosen its grip yet this day.
At the end of a week in which we have been exploring elemental themes, and on this first day of a new month, one that, by the calendar’s reckoning, puts us squarely in Spring, it seems a good time to use this space to feature work that hints of warmer days. Throughout March’s month of Fridays, we featured Taos Pueblo’s micaceous pottery here; for April, we will continue with the pottery theme, but with a warmer, softer, yet still-bold twist: the work of Camille Bernal, a Taos Pueblo potter who has expanded her artistic reach into new styles that still honor tradition.
We begin today with a work that holds a few hints of its own — imagery that speaks of the wood and winds that have appeared in the week’s earlier posts, of the pale shades of visible in this dawn, wrapped around the warmer, more fiery center of the season yet to come. From its description in the Other Artists: Pottery gallery here on the site:
Mountain Lion makes an appearance at each of the Four Directions on this old-style square bowl, flared and flowing open into something new and wholly alive. By Camille Bernal (Taos Pueblo), the bowl is hand-coiled red clay, with a pale yet warm slip. Mountain Lion is painted petroglyph-style on each side in soft Laguna Blue-Gray outlined in red, his tail extended up over his back. Bowl stands 4″ high by 8″ across at the widest point, with a flared opening of 9.5″ across at the lip (dimensions approximate). Another view shown above.
Tewa clay; plant-based paints
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
This bowl, with its elegantly flowing shape reminiscent of the local waters, plays host to one of the big cats indigenous to this land. Their numbers are much smaller now, and they mostly retreat from contact with the modern world, but we are entering the season when some will report the occasional sighting: After a very long cold winter, they will be stalked by that even greater predator, hunger, and it will be time to venture farther afield in the search for food.
On each side of the bowl, Mountain Lion is framed by tall and swaying stalks reminiscent of the red willows for which place and people here are named — their real-life counterparts still the same bright red, the process of greening up their feathery tips still in the offing, and always adance in the season’s daily winds.
But this work’s real genius lies in its contrasts, as elemental as those of the season itself: a smooth and silken finish on the outside, palest ivory, stark against the warm earthy red velvet interior; the starkly sloping even base that flares upward into an abstractly flowing edge. It is the sort of work that is sensuous and visually stunning, yes, but more than that, it is sensual in perhaps the purest sense of the word: It invites touch, the indulgence of tactile sensation, the ability to feel the earth and indeed the world itself beneath one’s fingertips.
As we bid farewell to winter, albeit ever so slowly, we welcome a season in which it will again be possible to feel the earth beneath our fingertips, the touch of warm air against bare skin, the kiss of the sun on our faces. Like Mountain Lion, and like the willows, we will soon have the chance to dance in warmer winds.
~ Aji
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