This is an exceptional wide jar by Autumn Borts-Medlock.  She is known for her often fancifully carved pottery.  This piece is entitled,”Blue Sky and Red Birds”.  The jar has a carved, sculptural appearance with dimension to the clouds.  They are slipped with mica to create the coloration.  The piece has a deeply carved, highly polished red bird on each end.  Each bird is not just carved and polished, but incised with designs.  She also used a blue-gray clay slip to give the appearance of the sky shining through the clouds!   Autumn said she wanted to use the clay to give them a sense of motion in both colors and in her carving.  The jar is signed on the bottom in the clay, “Autumn Borts-Medlock”.

“These pieces were inspired by watching the clouds at Puye Cliffs (the ancestral home of the Santa Clara people) and at the Pueblo. I wanted to carve into the clay to create multiple layers on each piece.  More importantly, I wanted to create a sense of movement.  I did this through both colorations of the clouds and layers of carving. The cloud colorations combine several colors of clay and are meant to appear as if they are moving and you can see through them.  The birds are captured in flight, amongst the clouds and the cliffs.”