Les Namingha has, over the years, created exciting variations in his pottery with new painting and technical styles. This is a new storage jar.  It is round in shape with a short neck.  Les said about this piece:

“This piece is Untitled, but I do have kind of a working title that that I was keeping in mind and that title is “Tewa at Shungo”.   That is actually from a video that I saw where there was a Tewa group from First Mesa that went and was dancing up on Second Mesa.  I think they’re dancing like an Apache Dance but it was just really colorful. It was just a really lively dance, and so that was just an inspiration for doing something that I felt was lively, so I’ve done this type of pottery before where I’ve painted the layer series, so there’s some layering that’s happening of Hopi pottery designs, but I wanted to try to have it so that it’s kind of reflect what I saw as far as the color, and then just action. It was a voiceless dance but it was the movement I was struck by that dance.

As far as the shape, it has a different base on the bottom where it flares out a little bit. At the plaza where they were dancing, I think it was white stucco that I saw as the primary color of the homes. Then there was a turquoise or bluish border that was on some of the windows.  That was the inspiration for using something else, a bluish-turquoise type of color. The bottom and the top colors frame everything together. The rest is just that motion of dancing and rhythm and, you know, kind of the loud voices singing. “

The jar is colorful with numerous Hopi-Tewa birds as design, in a fluid motion on the surface.  The piece is signed on the bottom, “Les Namingha”.