Contemporary Pottery from North Carolina`s American Indian

Contemporary Pottery from North Carolina’s
American Indian Communities
Contemporary Pottery from North Carolina’s
American Indian Communities
Sally Peterson | Photography by Nathan Moehlmann
Published for the North Carolina Pottery Center
by Goosepen Studio & Press, Conover, North Carolina
contents
Copyright © 2009 by the
North Carolina Pottery Center.
Introduction 7
1.
Davy Arch 11
2.
Bernadine George 15
3.
Karen Harley 19
4.
Harold Long 23
5.
Raleigh & Claudese Lynch 27
isbn 978 -0 -9793 63 1-4-6
6.
Senora Lynch 31
9 8 7 6 6 4 3 2 1
7.
Betty Maney 35
Photography by Nathan W. Moehlmann,
excepting “Betty Maney,” courtesy of Betty Maney,
and “Raleigh & Claudese Lynch,” by Dudley Lynch,
reproduced with permission.
8.
Tara McCoy 39
9.
Herman & Loretta Oxendine 43
All rights reserved.
Designed, set in Archer, and published for
the North Carolina Pottery Center
by Nathan W. Moehlmann
Goosepen Studio & Press
Conover, North Carolina.
www.GoosepenPress.com
This project was supported by the
North Carolina Arts Council, an agency
of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources,
and the National Endowment for the Arts.
10.
Joel Queen 47
11.
Dean Reed 51
12.
Amanda Swimmer & Merina Swimmer Myers 55
13.
Mary Ann Thompson 59
Exhibition List 63
Introduction
T
he North Carolina Pottery Center hosted
its seminal exhibition, Contemporary
Pottery from North Carolina’s American
Indian Communities, from May 9 through
August 23, 2008. The exhibit showcased
works from eleven Cherokee, four Haliwa-Saponi, and
two Lumbee artists in clay. Each artist and each tribe has
a different story to tell, yet a common purpose unites
them. They want no less than to rediscover, recreate, and
revitalize the ancient pottery traditions of their peoples.
And indeed, they want more than this. Individually and
collectively, they wish not only to master an ancient
craft but also to elevate its quality to levels that match
and perhaps surpass the best pottery found in both ancient and contemporary American Indian traditions.
History has left an indelible mark on all Native
American Indian cultural expression, including pottery.
The commonly accepted trajectory for the decline of
indigenous pottery began with brisk trade between first
peoples and European settlers and traders. But brutal
expulsions of people from their native lands or crushing
assimilationist policies towards those who managed to
remain decimated populations and traditions alike. Iron
pots and tin utensils replaced the wares of most potters,
whose traditional village and home life suffered from
disruption and relocation. Few potters found reason
to pass along their traditions, and few found reason to
learn. And yet reminders of this tradition never wholly
left those communities that maintained residence on the
lands of their forefathers. Some Cherokee families still
keep cherished pots, keepsakes of their ancestors. Other
families bequeath to their children carved wooden
paddles once used to stamp designs onto clay surfaces.
Lumbee farmers collect shards turned up by plows, and
Haliwa-Saponi children find pieces of pots after a hard
rain. Construction projects in the western mountains,
ancient Cherokee territory, must pause while archaeologists explore the remains of pottery and other artifacts
uncovered by machines digging new foundations. And
everywhere, the clay remains. Farmers have known it
long; it may lie at an inconvenient depth that stymies
plows and strangles roots wherever ancient lakebeds
and riverbanks became fertile farmland. Clays of all
colors and consistencies line ponds and streams. The
North Carolina landscape provides clay in abundance.
Children mold clay for fun. Some people still recognize
the health benefits of certain clays and ingest them in
small amounts.
In the late 1800s members of the Eastern Band of
Cherokee began to supplement their incomes through
selling or trading such wares as baskets and other
handmade items to general stores and later to a growing
tourist market. Observing the success of the neighboring
Catawba Indians of South Carolina with the marketing of
small pottery ware to tourists, a number of Cherokee artists refamiliarized themselves with coiling, shaping, and
burnishing techniques. Like the Catawba and like their
own ancestors, they dug pits in their yards and burned
their pottery, learning to manipulate the resulting colors
by varying the soft- and hardwoods they burned. A great
tradition grew that spanned many generations and
brought recognition to such well-known and respected
artists as Amanda Swimmer and Louise Bigmeet Maney,
both recognized by the North Carolina Heritage Award
sponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council.
Archaeologists and artists alike have sought information about the antecedents of Cherokee pottery.
Continual excavation and perusal of early museum
collections have unearthed a body of work with remarkable and consistent features. The ancient Cherokee fashioned thin-walled coiled pots that ranged in size from
very small to very large, indeed; it’s estimated some
pots stored human remains and may have served as
burial urns. Most pottery was decorated with contiguous
stamped designs carved into a wooden paddle. Others
retained the imprint of corn cobs, shells, and other items
7
that lent themselves to patterning. Some theorize that
the patterns strengthened the wall of the pot by varying
the surface tension. The older pots showed evidence of
high-temperature firing, which enabled them to hold
liquids, and were often coated with the oily smoke of
burning corncobs, a method that reinforced the waterproofing of the kiln.
Archaeologist Brett Riggs, familiar with museum collections of ancient Cherokee pottery, learned of Cherokee artists interested in reclaiming the methodology
and aesthetics of early Cherokee pottery. He suggested
a collaboration between the North Carolina Arts Council, the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s archaeology
program to bring together artists and scholars in order
to reconstruct the ancient techniques, led by ceramics
specialist Tamara Beane. In 2003, fifteen artists (many
of whom exhibited in this show) formed the Cherokee
Potters Guild, funded in part by the Cherokee Heritage
Foundation. Their mission is to teach these techniques
to other tribal members while maintaining high quality
standards; to create a college course to extend historical
and archaeological knowledge; to disseminate information about Cherokee pottery traditions nationally and
internationally; and to detect and protect the natural
resources vital to continued pottery production. Young
artists like Tara McCoy and elders such as Amanda
Swimmer have embraced the new styles and techniques
and made them their own.
Rediscovery of pottery among the Haliwa-Saponi took
place largely on an individual level, as multi-talented
artists explored numerous arts and crafts common to
Eastern woodland peoples. When artist Senora Lynch
began to devote herself to pottery, she opened a world
of expression that mirrored the shared values of her
rural, eastern Piedmont tribe. Having mastered coiled
pottery’s challenges of shape, proportion, and consistency, Senora recalled museum pieces of unidentified
Southeastern pottery and began to inscribe designs and
utilize animal shapes in accordance with these ancient
pieces. A vocabulary of place and spirit emerged as
longevity turtles, dogwood blooms, the three sisters of
corn, squash, and beans, celestial stars, tobacco spirits,
8 introduction
and a wealth of other symbols balanced symmetrically
on the clay’s tense surface. Senora outlines and colors
with a white slip that contrasts with the natural reddish
brown of her preferred clay. Senora has been teaching
her techniques to willing Haliwa-Saponi students, such
as her relatives Claudese and Raleigh Lynch. Fellow artist Karen Harley adds her own variations on the ancient
themes she also has observed in museum collections.
Senora Lynch has brought her pottery to other Eastern
tribes, especially North Carolina’s Lumbee Indians, who
are experiencing a renaissance similar to that of the
Haliwa-Saponi.
It is no accident that North Carolina tribes are in the
midst of revitalizing ancient arts. Such artistic activity has emerged across Indian Country as tribes large
and small assert their identity and struggle to take
their rightful place in the body politic. Although many
contemporary artists seek to understand the minds of
ancient makers and to reproduce at least parts of this
experience, they have achieved much more. Perhaps
the greatest surprise to emerge from this earnest effort
is the unprecedented creativity that it has unleashed.
Artists wishing to study at the feet of these elders have
found themselves standing on their shoulders instead,
inspired to create works of art that extend beyond the
bounds of any previous expression.
The catalog to Contemporary Pottery from North Carolina’s American Indian Communities will allow this gathering of North Carolina’s major practicing Indian clay
artists to live on in print and image. The North Carolina
Pottery Center is indebted to the National Endowment
for the Arts for funding the exhibit and catalog. Nathan
Moehlmann has provided all photography and catalog
design. He has traveled tirelessly across the state to
meet and photograph the artists. The North Carolina
Arts Council provided technical assistance necessary to
produce the catalog. The Arts Council is committed to
finding many ways to share our state’s outstanding pottery traditions with the public, both within our borders
and beyond.
Sally Peterson, Ph.D.
Folklife Specialist, North Carolina Arts Council
Contemporary Pottery from North Carolina’s
American Indian Communities
Davy arch | 1
My first memory is of making pottery when I was a child around my
grandmother’s washpot. She had a cast iron pot that she would boil the white
clothes in out behind the house. And in the branch beside the house there was
some clay. And while she was boiling the clothes, we’d be right there around it,
and I was always right under it. [laughter] So she showed me how to make little
pinch pots. Then we’d fire them around the washpot fire. There was a blue clay
that was there in the branch right next to the house. It was really gritty, it wasn’t
very fine. That’s the first experience I had making pottery.
D
avy Arch spent
his first ten years
living with his
grandparents on
Stilwell Branch in
the Painttown community on the
Qualla Boundary. They lived a traditional way of life, and Davy grew up
absorbing the practices and lore of
an earlier generation. He was drawn
to the artistic traditions that permeated his life. “I grew up in an artists’
community here. My uncle Boyce
Allison was an artist, Amanda
Goingback, all the brilliant artists
right here who were resources for
everybody, willing to share their
techniques and tools and wood, you
know, whatever they were working
with. I was really fortunate.”
Opportunities for Cherokee
artists expanded as the tourist
trade in the Smoky Mountains
increased. Davy studied art through
high school, later learning modern
ceramic procedures at Western
Carolina University. Although
woodcarving and mask making
were his specialties, Davy continued experimenting with pottery,
stone carving, beadwork, and other
traditional Cherokee arts. Like
many other Cherokee artists, he
embraced versatility:
Nobody ever told us we couldn’t do
it. That’s how I was raised; they said
I could do anything I wanted to, so
I did. Anything I wanted to. At least
I was told to do it the best I could.
I think that’s a general philosophy
with us. As long as you don’t infringe
on someone else, you can do anything you want to.
Davy’s ongoing fascination with
pottery reached a fever pitch as he
helped to plan the pottery revitalization workshops with the Museum
of the Cherokee Indian. The archeological evidence of local indigenous
pottery with its thin walls, textured
patterning, and sometimes immense proportions (burial pots
can hold as much as forty gallons)
both astounded and inspired Davy
and the other Cherokee artists in
attendance. An avid local historian
himself, Davy enjoyed the ensuing
conversations between the scholars
and the potters, as they theorized
and experimented with reproducing
ancient Cherokee coil pots. “We realized they made the pots very thin
and textured the outsides so [the
pots] can expand and contract in
the cook fires, without fear of cracking; thermal shock wouldn’t crack
the pottery as bad if it was thin.”
The textured effects on the pot’s
outer wall are made by stamping
the surface with a design carved
into the flat end of a paddle:
We’ve had ceramics here for three
thousand years. Some of the patterns
can be identified with regions of the
Cherokee territory. Artists in the past
were really responsible for developing some of these patterns that
related directly to the culture, and
had symbolic significance in the religion, like the fire pots we carried fire
in. Different pieces were developed
Davy Arch, with mother, Jean Arch, inside the Qualla Arts & Crafts Mutual, Cherokee, NC, March 2009.
11
bernadine george | 2
It’s just a good hobby.
B
Bernadine George in front of her kiln, at home, Cherokee, NC, April 2009.
ernadine George
may modestly call
her twenty-five years
of pottery making a
hobby, but it is an undertaking that has led her far from
home to demonstrate and to teach.
It has taken her deep into Cherokee
history as she explores the minds
of earlier makers by studying their
craft. Bernadine began making
pinch pots as a young adult, having
observed older family members
creating pottery for years. “I was
just interested,” she explains.
Bernadine created pottery when
she could take the time from her
full-time job and family caretaking.
She became expert at the pinch pot
styles sold to tourists and appreciated the supplementary income that
came from sales. When the workshops about recreating older Cherokee pottery were offered, Bernadine
eagerly joined other interested potters to study the old ways. She was
immediately impressed by the functionality of the elder pots, noting
how function demanded craftsmanship. The high temperatures that
rendered pots waterproof required
thin walls to survive the heat, thin
walls required textured surfaces—
such as those created from stamped
designs—to make them sturdy by
thinning and bonding the clay.
Pots had rounded bottoms that fit
securely in a bed of coals, and when
the coals were banked up around the
pot, the thin walls distributed the
heat evenly and the sides cooked
like the bottom.
“These were essential items used
in the home,” explains Bernadine.
“Most of the Indian cooking was
done in pots. That was a way of
life.” Bernadine remembers how the
fledgling Cherokee Potters Guild
members cooked a stew in pots
they’d made following the ancient
methods. “It was good,” she reports.
“You could taste the difference.”
Bernadine likes working with a
clay out of Macon, Georgia, that has
some texture to it. It works well with
a paddle, holding up against the
Stamped and incised cooking pot.
15
force that comes from stamping on
a design. It’s a good clay for the big
pots. She makes pots with circumferences of up to fifteen inches.
Some of her paddles were carved for
her by her brother and her cousin.
Other artists also produce paddles.
Sometimes she will draw a pattern
out, and her brother will carve it for
her. Most of the designs, she says,
have been carried on from the early
days. They can be found on pottery
shards or off of older pots in the
community or from museum pieces.
Bernadine and her brother designed and built a kiln made from
cast iron that allows her to avoid
pitfalls caused by weather conditions such as humidity, wind, rain,
and cold. She can preheat the kiln
with just a small fire and then pile
on the wood to raise the temperature to over one thousand degrees.
She mixes woods to achieve the
desired surface colors. “I like to
get mine with reddish spots, or
different shades—I don’t like mine
to come out terra cotta. Poplar
burns fairly clean and gives deeper,
reddish tones. Pine smoke gives a
good, dark color. I use a lot of red
dirt, too,” says Bernadine. “You use
that for paint, smoothing it into the
clay.” This technique is used to create “negative painting”—contrasting colors to create the foreground
and background of a design.
Bernadine enjoys the special
consciousness that comes with
the intense concentration pottery
requires. But it helps to begin with
a relaxed mind. “If there’s a lot of
chaos,” she states, “it’s not a good
time.”
Incised water jar.
Stamped bowl.
16 bernadine george
Stamped water jar.
bernadine george 17
herman & loretta oxendine | 9
That urge—you want to get your hands back to it to build it, to build the clay.
That’s the time to do it; I say the spirit is moving then, and it comes together better.
If that spirit’s not there, it just don’t come out right. — H. O.
A
Loretta and Herman Oxendine, in their gallery, at home, Pembroke, NC, April 2009.
round forty or fifty
years ago, recalls
Loretta Oxendine,
she and her husband, Herman, were
taking a leisurely drive near the
river, talking together about their
dreams and plans. She remembers
Herman telling her that one day
he wanted to make pottery like
their people did hundreds of years
ago. At the time, both Herman
and Loretta worked full time and
were raising two children. There
was little time to explore ways to
revitalize the traditional arts of the
Lumbee people. Both Herman and
Loretta had grown up in Lumbee
Indian communities around the
Lumber River in Robeson County.
They remembered the arrowheads
and pottery shards churned up by
the plow. Like other Lumbees, they
collected the bits of pottery that
would rise to the surface after a
hard spring rain. Everyone knew the
Lumbee came from pottery making
people. But only a few tried to learn
Gray water pot.
the coiling and pit firing techniques
that distinguished Indian pottery in
the Southeastern United States.
In the mid 1990s the children
were grown, retirement was fast ap-
proaching, and Herman and Loretta
began taking classes in traditional
Indian arts. At age eight Loretta
had learned pine needle basket
making from her aunt, and she
43
quickly revived her knowledge and
refined her practice. Herman helped
with the baskets, experimented with
gourd painting and carving, and
began to explore pottery with Lumbee artist Carl Anthony Hunt at the
Indian Cultural Center. Herman’s
brother’s mother-in-law, Nola
Campbell, was an established potter
from the nearby Catawba tribe. She
gave pointers to Herman, and she
made some of her last pottery with
him before she passed away. Loretta
remembers the day Miss Nola
showed her the dress she was planning to wear in Washington, DC,
where she was scheduled to demonstrate pottery at the Smithsonian
Folklife Festival. That day sparked a
dream of Loretta’s own that she was
able to fulfill in 2007, when she and
Herman demonstrated their own
Lumbee arts on the Washington
mall as part of that year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
Many local artists and cultural
specialists encouraged Herman
and Loretta to continue with their
pottery production. As Loretta confides, “Pottery making, that’s work.
You form it one day. The next day
you scrape it. You dry it out, and
the next day you get a little rock
or stone and rub it until it shines.
You then put in the decoration and
then you fire it. That’s a lot of time
and a lot of work.” Herman agrees,
but explains that when he gets that
urge to make pottery, it’s something
he cannot resist. He waits for the
urge to come to him, though; without that inner compulsion, he just
doesn’t trust the result. The heart
and the hand must go together.
44 herman & loretta oxendine
Wedding vase.
Four small bowls.
Herman even dreams of going to
a spot on the river he’s heard of and
digging out the clay. Despite the
hard work of digging, drying, cleaning, sifting, and mixing all that dirt,
he’s intrigued by the idea of being
responsible for every part of the
pottery process. Right now he buys
his clay from Pam and Vernon Owens of Jugtown, in Seagrove. Pam
mixes several kinds of clay, and
the Owenses and Oxendines have
struck up a friendship centered
around discussions of clay, pottery,
and the satisfaction of working with
one’s hands.
Herman mostly coils his pots,
although he uses the pinch method
for smaller vessels. He favors making coiled vases that he smooths
carefully with stones. Nola Campbell’s family helped Herman to
make a kiln by cutting an oil drum
in half, mounting it lengthwise on
a stand, and hinging the two halves
together. Herman lined the bottom
with fire brick. When it’s time to
burn the kiln, Herman lays his pots
on the firebrick and covers them
with oak firewood. After about
twelve hours of steady burning,
Herman switches his wood supply
from oak to pine; the softer woods
cause the fired clay to turn dark and
shiny, which he prefers. “Patience,
patience, patience,” advises Herman. “You cannot rush it.”
Herman and Loretta enjoy
bringing their wares to craft fairs,
Indian art shows, museums, and
powwows. Several customers follow
Herman’s work and are eager to
collect examples from his expanding repertoire. Loretta, always busy
with the ever popular pine needle
baskets, has recently sold some of
her own pottery and is considering
devoting more time to it. Herman,
now planning an expansion of the
crowded shed that houses his many
tools, building supplies, and pottery
projects, recalls with delight how
Loretta has told him to “Make room
in the workshop for me!”
Jars.
Jars.
herman & loretta oxendine 45
joel queen | 10
As a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, I feel I have a
responsibility to keep Cherokee art alive. I live to teach others about my
art and the Cherokee culture. Prejudice drives me to educate. It is my
passion to break the stereotype that has been placed upon Native art.
I strive to link all cultures together through art. My goal is to create art
so that people can see their past and future in my creations.
A
t least nine generations of potters in
his family worked
the clay before Joel
Queen touched its
earthy potential. He keeps in touch
with these ancestors through the
vessels that pass through his hands.
His grandmother Ethel Bigmeet
taught visiting anthropologists
how traditional Cherokee fired their
coiled pots in earthen pits. Now
he teaches about her in the thesis
that earned him a mfa degree from
Western Carolina University. Joel
thinks about his ancestors always,
as he tasks himself with the kinds of
artistic challenges they faced. How
should he hand prepare the clay
so that its consistency is smooth
enough not to blast apart in the
fierce heat of the kiln, yet rough
enough to provide wall strength
for a pot large enough to hold the
weight of a man? Joel delights
in asking such questions, and he
answers them with breathtaking
creations that challenge status quo
“Healing Hands.”
understandings of both traditional
Cherokee art and of Indian artists.
It seems that Joel embodies all
the energy ever devoted to art production by his family. He consumed
the instruction in all media offered
Joel Queen sharing his first pot (left hand) and pot, ca. 1925, by his grandmother Ethel Bigmeet, in his gallery, Whittier, NC, March 2009.
47
dean reed | 11
I consider myself a potter. I have tried the beadwork
and made a basket or two. But I love pottery.
D
ean Reed grew
up on the Qualla
Boundary. Her
father was a logger,
and her mother
worked in the costume shop at Oconoluftee Indian village. Dean loved
the special occasions when she was
allowed to accompany her mother
to work in the village. She would
watch the artists at work and hope
to someday be one of them. She got
her wish when she turned fifteen:
I come to work here as a teenager.
I’ve been making pottery for thirtyfive years now. And when I was about
fifteen years old I come to work here
at the Indian village, and I was a
guide to begin with and I would sit
with the women at pottery on Sundays. I was interested in it, and at
the time, Lydia Littlejohn and Annie
Driver, they would help me. I would
start out with small bowls, then I got
to bigger bowls, then I got to making
wedding vases. It was all fun and I
really enjoyed doing it. They did tell
Dean Reed, in front of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, Cherokee, NC, July 2009.
Stamped water jar.
51
amanda swimmer & | 12
merina swimmer myers
I always think about my old ancestors, and I ought
to just keep going and keep making pottery and
teaching others to make pottery. — A. S.
A
Amanda Swimmer, at home, Cherokee, NC, April 2009.
manda Swimmer
has lived all of
her eighty-eight
years at the end of
the road atop Big
Cove, in the Strait Fork section.
Surrounded by the homes of several
of her nine children, Mrs. Swimmer
continues to garden, to clean, and
to cook for working parties in her
community. And when she feels like
it, she sits down to make coils or to
pinch out a pot she will eventually
burn in the open-air pit dug into her
yard. She has been making pottery
this way for sixty some years.
Few living potters were available
to teach her how to make pottery.
There was no history of continual
practice in her family. People
knew about pottery, though. Some
families kept treasured pots handed
down through the generations.
Most children played with clay, and
the elders could describe the coil
method. People remembered pots
burning in open-pit kilns right in
the yard. Some families still owned
Wedding vase and small vase, Amanda Swimmer.
hardwood paddles carved with
designs. And the tourist market was
growing as automobile travel penetrated into the Smoky Mountains.
Virtually all pottery made since
the late 1880s was sold to tourists,
and Cherokee potters followed the
stylistic and marketing lead of the
55
Catawba Indians, a regional tribe
with long experience in adapting
traditional pottery to a tourist clientele. So Amanda Swimmer taught
herself what she needed to know.
She hunted clay in the streambeds
outside her door. Her husband Luke
helped her experiment with pit
fires. Her expertise grew. She expanded her pottery repertoire, often
stamping on designs with wooden
and bone paddles, or sea shells, or
smooth rocks.
Amanda Swimmer began
demonstrating the art of pottery
making at the Oconoluftee Village
in 1956. Working closely with other
potters exposed her to traditional
skills practiced by other Cherokee
potters; she was especially indebted
to the expertise of Mabel Bigmeet.
Amanda coiled, smoothed, and
paddled pots for over forty years at
Oconoluftee Village. Building more
than one thousand pots during the
summer months honed her skills
and elevated her artistry to the
master class.
Amanda Swimmer’s expertise
in working with clay has won her
national recognition and many
awards. Her pottery has received
numerous prizes and is on display
in museums in Raleigh, in Washington, DC, and as far away as New
Mexico. She received the North
Carolina Heritage Award in 1994.
Amanda joined younger generation
potters in their fascination with the
archaeological models made available to them from university and
museum collections. She traveled
with her younger students to discuss the implications of renewing
Vase, Amanda Swimmer.
Swan, Merina Swimmer Myers.
56 amanda swimmer & merina swimmer myers
Cherokee pottery based on
examining ancient pots, analyzing
the ware to determine its original
functions and techniques, and the
subsequent experimentation with
clay, form, and technique to forge a
new, robust expression of the pottery tradition. To acknowledge her
contributions to the Appalachian
region, unc–Asheville presented
her with an honorary doctor of
humane letters degree.
For Merina Swimmer Myers,
Amanda Swimmer’s daughter, the
cycles of pottery making were a
part of everyday life. She knew how
to identify clay beds peeping out
from a stream bank, and she knew
how to buy different clays from
other regions of the Southeast. She
learned from her parents how to
sort the woods for the pit fire in the
yard, and she could read the signs
to tell if the weather seemed conducive to firing. Pinching and coiling
clay were early play activities, and
her skill and expertise grew as she
herself did.
Merina travels the distance from
her home in Murphy back to the
Qualla Boundary frequently to
help her mother. She also comes to
deliver her own fine pottery ware
to the Qualla Arts & Crafts Mutual,
the Cherokee Indian cooperative
that sells the juried members’ art
works. There, she is considered a
master potter in her own right. For
years, whenever Amanda Swimmer
received an invitation to demonstrate her award-winning pottery
methods or to teach a pottery
workshop, Merina was there by her
side. Both mother and daughter are
pleased that the next generation of
the Swimmer family is now learning
pottery, too.
Pot, Merina Swimmer Myers.
amanda swimmer & merina swimmer myers 57
exhibition list
1. Davy Arch, incised “Gumby.”
4. Bernadine George, incised fish.
8. Bernadine George, incised water jar.
5. Bernadine George, contemporary vessel.
9. Bernadine George, stamped water jar.
6. Bernadine George, stamped and
10. Karen Harley, “Longevity Frog.”
2. Davy Arch, incised mask.
incised cooking pot.
3. Bernadine George, stamped pot with
square pattern.
11. Karen Harley, “Carolina Parrot.”
7. Bernadine George, stamped bowl.
63