Qoyawayma, Al – “The Visitor” Polychrome Jar with Cliff Dwelling

4.5"w x 6.5"h

$ 4,900.00

Al Qoyawayma calls this jar “The Visitor”.  It has a high shoulder and asymmetric rim.  The jar is carved and polychrome in coloration on one side, and has a key-hole doorway with architectural incised designs on the other.  Al wrote of this piece:

“The Visitor.  The face icon on one side is part of our pantheon on clan group interactions and groups coming from the south or going back.  Many consider the “Hopi People” as a “homogeneous group”.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We speak a “Uto-Aztecan language dialect”, which has the base language of “Aztec” in today’s Mexico. Many of our groups were from the “South” (Mexico) as well as all other areas…like our Coyote Clan (Sikyatki…likely Mesa Verde) with a Keres base language as in Acoma and Laguna. (What Keres speaking elders know of the language origins is way beyond what anthropologists know and make our past amazing and much larger than known). Today we’re mixtures within Hopi by clans and their origins. More recently for example the Tewa at Hano, first Mesa…like Nampeyo.

Further, the world today does not know of our spiritual ties to land, water, all people and current activity.  For instance Prescott, Arizona is within the boundary of spiritual land boundary…with a Coyote Clan village as close as just north of upper Verde River (north of Chino Valley) with significant Sikyatki pottery remains. Or, that Prescott is named from Hopi: “Peeski”, not named for the current city or population…but much earlier occupation with stone housing structures in the area; or that Hopi runners have in recent years run from Hopi all the way to Mexico City (hosted by tribal groups, many related all the way to Mexico City….some speaking dialects similar to Hopi. Finally, that Aztec groups have run from Ciudad de Mexico back to Hopi as well.  There is a “unseen” world and we Hopi would just as soon keep it that way. “We’re connected”.  Al Qoyawayma

The jar is a fascinating combination of both designs and cultural backgrounds. The jar is signed on the bottom in the clay, “Al Qoyawayma”.  It is a new piece from 2021.