This jar by Jody Naranjo is from 1996.   The jar a wide shoulder and short neck.  The top half is polished and the bottom half is matte. The jar was fired a brown coloration and then etched with designs. The top has eight “hand birds”, which a humourous take by Jody on how we draw “birds” using our hands. Note the fingernails on the ends of the feathers,  as if it was a hand.  As the jar is turned, there is also one of her “crazy legs” figures.  The neck of the jar is highly polished, and left plain.  Below the shoulder, the jar is matte, and there are stars more deeply etched into the clay in three rows.   It is signed, “Jody Naranjo” and it is in excellent condition with no chips, cracks, restoration, or repair.

Jody says of her pottery:

“The clay is cathartic. I spend a lot of time carving. That’s my peace. That’s the time I release my energy, any good or bad energy. If I have some issue going on, I focus and the whole world goes away.  I can sit there and build this piece from nothing. It makes me happy. You should do the part you like more. If you like it, you are good at it.  I started carving in the center where the polish didn’t meet and then my polish still looked nice. My carving in the middle was on the matte surface. Before you know it the matte surfaces started getting bigger, and it was less about masking my polishing and more about making my carving larger.  Bigger pieces tend to overwhelm me in the amount of designing I have to do.” Jody Naranjo, Spoken Through Clay