las ollas de mata ortiz

Continuing our ceramics workshop while learning and working alongside Graciela and Hector Gallegos we travelled into the mountains east of the river valley to dig clay.

We then took the clay chunks back to el ranchero and processed it by mixing it with water, filtering out sediment, and increasingly refining the clay into a smooth plastic form. This process took several days: settling and filtering until finally a smooth red clay emerges.

Students continue to finish las ollas by sanding, burnishing and painting. Hector demonstrates his mastery of painting, applying intricate lines, shapes, and color patterns.

The following is a photo collection documenting the last several days in process, including the final firing which occurred today, October 17th.

Group hiking out to clay source in the hills.

Jane digging out clay chunks

Students bagging clay

Hector filtering sediment during clay processing

Student ollas drying.

Nina sanding her olla

Paint brushes made out of old ball-point pens

Hector and Bill painting ollas

Elena painting olla

Gene painting olla

Jane painting olla next to the acequia

Jen painting the leg-less mule, Estaban

Graciela warming pots in the oven

Preparing firing area

Color pots getting ready to be fired.

Wood stacked around the pots

Pots firing.

Students check out ollas post firing

First color ollas after firing.

Making Flour Tortillas

Recipe by Graciela Gallegos

Ingredients:

1 kg. of flour

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 C oil

2 C water

Directions:

Mix all of the ingredients together in one bowl. Knead the dough until it feels like

clay. Pull off pieces of dough that are about the size of an egg. Form each piece

into a ball. Flatten the ball in your hands into a thick disc about two inches across.

Once all the discs are made, pile them back into your bowl. Lay a towel across the

top of the bowl and let them rest for approximately 10 minutes.

Heat up your cooking surface. Tortillas are best cooked on a wooden stove with a

cast-iron flat top. If this is not an option, a griddle will suffice. Make sure your

surface is hot.

After ten minutes has passed, roll out the first disc on a countertop or other flat

surface using a small rolling pin. After each roll, flip the tortilla over to roll

on the opposite side. This will help the tortilla’s shape to stretch. Continuing

rolling and flipping until the disc is very thin and about 9-10 inches in diameter.

Immediately place that disc on your stove. Allow it to cook for about 45 seconds on

the first side or until the tortilla releases. Flip to cook the other side and press out

and bubbles on the first side with a spatula or hamburger press. After about 30

seconds, flip again and press any bubbles on the second side.

Continue to quickly flip and press bubbles for about 30-45 seconds.

Remove the tortilla from the stove and spread with butter. Begin rolling out your next disc.

Dream of Horses

Jennifer Etelka Gorst

10/8/11

Journal entry

“ Dreamt I had salt packed in my shoes and my right foot had it’s toes eaten down to the bone... I slept on a cow patty last night but was too tired to move it out from under my tent. I imagine I will want to remove it tomorrow but predict I will forget until last minute and thus sleep on it again. This is heaven.”

10/12/11

“ I sculpted a horse today, rode one at a rodeo and am now sleeping in a horse pasture. This is purely badass.”

Aprendiendo Hacer Ollas: Primer Dia (Learning to Make Pots: Day 1)

Journal Entry

Elena Lopez

Mata Ortiz

10.11.2011

Aprendiendo Hacer Ollas: Primer Dia

(Learning to Make Pots: Day 1)

Our hosts in Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico are Hector and Graciela Gallegos, known for their stunning pottery. Since Graciela is more skilled at building the clay forms and Hector’s talent is the paintings that adorn the surfaces of the traditional pots, they work together as a team to create finished pieces. We dove right into learning the traditional Mata Ortiz methods of pottery on our first morning in Mexico.

MATA ORTIZ

Any fears I had of crossing into northern Mexico quickly dissipated once we started driving through Agua Prieta after clearing customs. Although I had never traveled through northern Mexico before, the architecture, the colors, the streets were at once familiar. It quickly transformed from the land of cartel murders and drug mules to the country I had fallen in love with two years earlier.

As we drove east on highway 2 through breathtaking mountain passes, we were able to observe stretches of the rusty iron border wall, the other side of which we had traveled alongside only two days earlier – except everything had changed. The wall itself had changed. What it symbolized had changed.

On the American side in the company of friendly border guards, the wall symbolized safety & security. Restraint and a desire for order. Self defense. Reason. A necessary evil in the face of chaos and the loss of integrity. Keeping violence at arm’s length. Protecting loved ones. Scarcity. Fear.

The demarcation of where one’s body is permitted to exist

On the Mexican side, the same wall symbolized exclusion. Otherness. Ugly brute force. The tragedy of history. Wasted money. Inwardness. Exploitation. An obstacle. A challenge. An insult. Severed families. Division.

The demarcation of where ones’ body is not permitted to exist.

Here on the ranch outside Mata Ortiz, that wall seems thousands of miles away. Falling asleep and waking to the munching sound of grazing horses, corn fields, smiling old caballeros who greet you on the dusty road with a tip of their hat. Grasshoppers bursting all around your foot falls. The soundscape of English and Spanish spilling fluidly over each other like converging acequia ditches. Witnessing the act of mixing clay with water along the side of a well -- arms caked red with earth that smells like blood. Gracielas’ warm buttered tortillas she shapes with her own hands on the wood stove. Esteban’s dogs licking your bowl clean beside a glowing bonfire. Strangers at the rodeo inviting you up onto their gleaming horse for a ride around the crumbling hacienda where the revolution filled the walls with bullet holes. The young boy who cheerfully fills up your bag with ice to keep the cerveças cold.

Walls are built to keep out. And also to keep in.

- chris galanis 10/14/2011