This is a creative square jar by Daniel Begay.  The piece is coil-built, carved, stone-polished, and traditionally fired.  The piece is entitled, “Messages After a Cold Winter”.  The jar has square sides and it is fully carved.  One side has a butterfly, the other a hummingbird.  Between them are feather and cloud patterns.  Daniel is one of the few Pueblo potters who creates pieces with this distinctive square form.  One important aspect is his design work, which flows across the surface.  There is a higher degree of difficulty in creating carved designs that go across the side and shoulder angles than just creating panels of imagery. The piece is polished to a high shine and the designs are a contrast of polished and matte surfaces.  Daniel’s style of carving has a beveled appearance to the angle of the cuts into the clay.  The jar is signed on the bottom in the clay, “Daniel Begay”.

“Smoke Screen” is an original and creative idea by Daniel Begay.  It started as a personal challenge to create large vessels and focus on firing them red.  It is usually enough of a challenge to create a series of pieces over ten inches all.  But there is an added complexity to fire them red.  Red pieces are always more difficult to create in Santa Clara pottery as they are more difficult to polish, and the timing for firing is more exact to get just the right coloration and not overfire.  Over the six months he has been making these pieces, he began to evolve his firings as a means to create additional colorations.  The dark red, browns, and dark brown coloration are all created from the firing.  Together, there is a striking visual gradation of colors and an excitement from the size of the pieces.”