This is a flat tile by Preston Duwyenie.  It is made from micaceous clay and slipped with red clay that is from Santa Clara and combined with mica. In the center is a silver star that has a “shifting sand” pattern.  The silver is cast against cuttle-fish bone (a type of squid).  This process creates a similar style of shifting sand design to complement the clay.  The tile is signed on the back in the clay with Preston’s hallmark, which is a woman carrying a child, as the hallmark for his name in Hopi.

“Why the shifting sand designs? Preston says he remembers watching a smooth pebble caught in sand being shifted by the wind, “there was beauty in its isolation within the sea of sand. It was like an island.  The endless sands of time, and the fact that people, too are tossed about by the wind. There is always rippling in our lives”.