Val Kahe is a daughter of noted potter Gloria Kahe.  This new plate is coil-built, stone polished on the front and back, and painted with bee-weed (black) and red clay slips.  The front is painted with a large classic Butterfly Maiden or “Pahlik Mana” design.  The figure is painted in a traditional style with the headdress (tablita) and figure surrounded by a water design.  The red clay areas are stone polished on this piece.  The piece was been traditionally fired to create fire clouds.  It is signed on the back, “Val”.

The Butterfly Maiden (Polik-mana) is one of the Hopi katsinas. Every spring she dances from flower to flower, pollinating the fields and flowers and bringing life-giving rain to the Arizona desert. She is represented by a woman dancer at the yearly Butterfly Dance, a traditional initiation rite for Hopi girls. The rite takes place in late summer, before the harvest.  She can be identified by the symbols she wears: the irregular edges of her tableta (headdress) represent rain clouds, the small wooden objects protruding from the top of her head symbolize flowers, and the rectangular design on her forehead represents an ear of corn.