The Pottery Makers

The mural The Pottery Makers by Zia Pueblo artist Velino Herrera shows three women designing and painting earthenware. Herrera’s mother was a potter, and the artist pays special attention to the techniques used by each woman to create these intricately designed ceramics. Pueblo pottery continues to be an important artform. Created by women potters, the vessels begin as coiled clay that is then shaped and smoothed into the desired shape. The potter then coats the clayware in a slip, which is a watery clay substance, to create different colors and designs that appear during the firing process. Throughout his career, Herrera faced criticism from his community for sharing aspects of their culture outside the confines of the Pueblo. His fellow artist, Woody Crumbo, commented that “if there was one of those pots that had a sacred design on it, it would have been sudden death for him.”

Velino Shije Herrera, also known as Ma Pe Wi, was commissioned in 1939 to create a series of murals at the new Department of the Interior building in Washington, D.C. He was one of four Native American artists who painted 2,200 feet of murals for the-eighth floor penthouse, which served as the employee lounge. While Herrera painted the north corridor, Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo covered the south corridor. In the main room, the walls were divided between Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser and Navajo painter Gerald Nailor. The Secretary of the Interior at the time, Harold Ickes, insisted on commissioning artworks by Native American artists. Because of this mandate, the Section of Fine Arts invited Crumbo, Herrera, Houser, and Nailor to participate in the penthouse project and commissioned two Kiowa artists, James Auchiah and Stephen Mopope, to paint murals for the cafeteria.