Today we’d like to introduce you to Rowan Harrison.
Hi Rowan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a Native American Indigenous artist that began my journey into the clay arts or Southwestern Pueblo Pottery with my grandmother on the Pueblo of Isleta Indian reservation in New Mexico when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I would spend a week or weeks during the summer time season with my grandmother and it is here during this period that my grandmother would bring a bag of native natural clay to her kitchen table and teach myself and my cousin how to make pinch pot forms and small animal forms out of clay. This would be the start of my interest in working in clay and the ceramic arts that would consume my young adult years and has continued to be a practice and discipline throughout the course of my entire life.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I am currently 55 years old, I began this journey in my early twenties and at the time I had a great deal of responsibilities that made the process of development very slow. I lived in orange county at the time and so with little knowledge or understanding of working in clay much of the earlier stages of making and creating pottery relied on trial and error. These formidable years and also reading and understanding the process of Native clay artists from the past opened the creative door to a much more streamline process in the work. Working in Orange County my resources of materials depended on commercial clays, materials and firing methods. As a Native American I began to feel the need to work in a more traditional way as previous Native American clay artist have from past generations. Which meant transitioning from commercial clays to experimenting with traditional natural native clays and traditional firing techniques. So during the middle stages of my life and as I traveled and journeyed through many parts of the southwest I began to mine and collect natural clays and materials in the pursuit of making my own natural native clays. So today I continue this pursuit still learning and trying to gain and understanding of this process of working with natural materials and I have has some success and failures but as time moves on the successes are far out weighing the failures.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a Native American Artist who works in the creation of hand built, hand made and hand painted pottery. I also work in a two dimensional format creating design work in pen, ink and acrylics on paper and wood panels. However my specialty has always been my ceramic and clay work and it is what most people recognize me for. For me I am most proud of all the individuals who have collected my work over the past, whether it be individual collectors or museums also representing my Native American culture and my people through the arts. It also a noteworthy endeavor to be givin the opportunity to share and teach others in what I do. I think what most set me apart from others is the style of my design work, I work with traditional southwestern Pueblo art, designs and patterns, but yet at the same time I will integrate these traditional elements with other design elements that gives the work a presentation that is traditional yet contemporary at the same time.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Oh yeah risk taking and engaging yourself from your normal practice, taking yourself out of your comfort zone is part of the maturing process of any visual artist. Throughout the development of my work I have pushed myself to work with other non clay materials, found objects and utilize them with the clay work. Also changing design concepts is always part of working in ways that are out of my normal comfort zone. Taking on large scale public work projects in the form of a large scale mural project was a process that I’ve never done but felt needed to explore for the experience. So taking risk, working outside your general expertise should always be a part of the artist toolbox. It is easy for many of us to create the same work year after year but there is also stagnation and creative limitations when an artist does so. I think taking on a project that you have never done before you learn the process, the materials, the execution the challenges that occur along the way adds volumes of experience, knowledge and development to any creative individual.
Pricing:
- Based on overhead costs you accrue
- hours it takes to create piece of work
- your reputation and experience
- what similar works in your medium are being sold for.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://twotribespottery.com
- Instagram: two_tribes_pottery
- Facebook: twotribesart
- Other: https://twotribespottery.blogspot.com
