Steve Lucas is one of the leading Hopi-Tewa potters working today.  Each piece is coil-built, stone polished, painted with native clay slips and bee-weed (black), and traditionally fired.  Steve has won “Best of Show” at Santa Fe Indian Market, and his work remains some of the most refined and creative.  This jar has a rounded shape with a short neck.  It is entitled, “Five Katsina Faces”.  It is very detailed in design with five different katsina faces encircling the jar.  They are each painted with bee-weed and then highlighted with green, white, red, and brown clay slips.  Amazingly, Steve can use so many different colors of clay and the result is fluid but visually engaging.  If you take a closer look, not only does he paint all the different colors, but each area of color is also stone polished!!  WOW!  That is very time-consuming.  The piece was traditionally fired and has a dramatic coloration from the firing.  It is signed on the bottom in the clay, “S. Lucas” and a mudhead (koyemsi) and an ear of corn (corn clan).  It is an innovative design in a classic form.

“In my pottery the katsina masks are not exact representations of them but simply have elements of them in there. I would go and watch the dances, and I liked the way the katsinas looked so I began to put them on the pottery.  I try to mix the abstract and the classic design elements on the top to show how the two could be connected. I was always interested in looking at stars and finding inspiration there. Where I fire there are no streetlights. I can sit at night and see everything and watch a lot of stars.  Steve Lucas, Spoken Through Clay