This is a creative and colorful by Autumn Borts-Medlock.  She is known for her often fancifully carved pottery.  This piece is entitled “On a Clar Day”.  It is a round bowl that is fully carved. The bowl has two butterflies and clouds. The clouds are carved into the clay at various levels, stippled, and left the natural color of the clay.  Autumn says that, “as the clouds part, the butterflies come out”. The largest butterfly has red polished wings with blue clay accents.  There is a blue flower above the butterfly.  The second butterfly is next to three large with petals that are carved to be overlapping and fully polished. The butterfly has polished green and matte white wings.  There are additional small blue slipped flowers between the butterflies.  It is a striking and complex piece for the size with a variety of colors and layers in the carving.  Autumn said she wanted to use the clay to give them a sense of motion in both colors and in her carving.  The bowl 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.”