Pottery shards, remnants of a prior civilization that flourished from the early 11th to the mid 14th century, are scattered throughout these rich river valleys. As a thirteen-year-old, Juan Quezada collected these shards, marveled at the designs and wondered about the people who made them. Juan realized that the presence of such a great profusion of broken pottery indicated that a source of clay was likely to exist in the nearby mountains. That realization led Juan to search for and discover numerous clay deposits. Without prior knowledge or assistance from anyone, Juan experimented with processing, tempering, shaping and firing the clay. After years of trial and error, Juan reinvented the technology of pottery making and revived a tradition that had been native to this region but lost for over 500 years.

Juan's first successful firing occurred in 1971, a time fixed permanently in his memory since it coincided with the birth of his son Juan, Jr. As his ceramic technique and artistry began to improve, Juan found that he could sell his pieces. In 1976, Spencer MacCallum, an American anthropologist, discovered three of these ollas (pots) in a secondhand store in Deming, New Mexico in 1976. Impressed by the quality of the unsigned work and armed with only vague information, Spencer ventured south into Mexico seeking the potter. His search led him to Nuevo Casas Grandes and eventually down a rough, unpaved road to the village of Mata Ortiz where he found Juan Quezada.

The partnership that developed between these two men was critical in Juan’s further development as an artist. >From the very beginning Spencer stressed that quality, not quantity, would be the determining factor of Juan's success as an artist. He agreed to provide Juan a monthly stipend that was independent of the number of pots created. During the next six years Juan's artistry progressed at an incredible rate. He explored the properties of different clays, slips and pigments, experimented with various firing techniques, developed alternative polishing methods, and created a variety of shapes, effigies and styles. He even invented his own painting tools. Use of the ancient Casas Grandes decorations and figures proceeded from faithful reproduction to creation of original, intricate designs. This was truly an explosive period in Juan's artistic progression.

Spencer introduced Juan and his art initially to the southwest through a series of museum exhibitions. These early exhibits helped to establish Juan's reputation as a legitimate artist. His work has been included in museum collections in the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Japan. Juan is recognized as the founder of a ceramic art movement that continues to grow. Today in Mata Ortiz, there are more than 300 skilled potters with diverse styles whose constant quest for artistic expression is the source of the movement’s artistic evolution.

The pottery of Mata Ortiz is thin-walled, generally measuring 2 to 3 mm in thickness. The pots are created entirely from natural materials. Different colored clays are dug in the nearby mountains while red and black pigments are produced from iron and manganese oxides. Designs are applied with brushes that often consist of a single human hair glued to the end of the stick. The pots are shaped by hand without benefit of a potter's wheel and are fired outdoors, almost always singly, using either dried cow chips or cottonwood when cow dung is scarce. Firing times vary from 20 to 45 minutes and temperatures reach 1200 to 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. Polychrome pieces were the first created by Juan, but the use of reduction firing was accidentally discovered a few years later and black on black pots are now common in Mata Ortiz.

Academic interest in the history and development of the Mata Ortiz pottery movement has grown significantly in the past six years. Graduate students from Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and the University of New Mexico have been coming to the village to document the artistic, social and economic consequences of this ceramic art. The Museum of Man in San Diego has established an Archive of Mata Ortiz to act as a repository of source documents, photographs, slides, video and audio materials.

This incredible, improbable series of events—Juan’s reinvention of pottery making, Spencer’s accidental discovery in Deming, Juan's artistic progression, and the eventual transformation of the economic life of an entire village—has been described as a miracle by Walter Parks in his book “The Miracle of Mata Ortiz: Juan Quezada and the Potters of Northern Chihuahua” (Coulter Press, Riverside, CA). In this small Mexican village, a single person, influenced by the remnants of an earlier tradition, acted as a catalyst to reawaken a lost art form and consequently altered life in his village.

Galería Pérez Meillón is pleased to present the exquisite, one-of-a-kind works of master potters like Juan Quezada, Héctor Gallegos, Macario Ortiz, Chevo Ortiz, Rubén Lozano, Mauro Quezada, Sabino Villalba, Socorro Reyes, Lydia Quezada, Reynaldo Quezada, Nicolás Quezada, Pilo Mora, Diego Valles, César Domínguez, Goyo Silveira, Jerardo Tena, Consolación Quezada, Martha Martínez de Quezada, Roberto Bañuelos, Olga Quezada and Laura Bugarini, as well as pieces created by the newest up-and-coming artists of Mata Ortiz.