Windgate Contemporary Craft Initiative Visiting Artist Lecture: Virgil Ortiz
Virgil Ortiz moves into a new era combining art, décor, fashion, video and film. One of the most innovative potters of his time, Ortiz’s exquisite works have been exhibited in museum collections around the world including the Design Museum Den Bosch in The Netherlands, Paris’s Fondation Cartier pour I’art Contemporain, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art and the Denver Art Museum.
Ortiz, the youngest of six children, grew up in a creative environment in which storytelling, collecting clay, gathering wild plants, and producing figurative pottery were part of everyday life; his grandmother Laurencita Herrera and his mother, Seferina Ortiz, were both renowned Pueblo potters and part of an ongoing matrilineal heritage. “I didn’t even know it was art that was being produced while I was growing up,” he remembers. Ortiz keeps Cochiti pottery traditions alive, but transforms them into a contemporary vision that embraces his Pueblo history and culture and merges it with apocalyptic themes, science fiction, and his own storytelling.
Although Ortiz has projects in varying mediums — including a newly launched jewelry line for the Smithsonian — Ortiz is first and foremost a potter. Ortiz says, “Clay is the core of all my creations. My work centers on preserving traditional Cochiti culture and art forms. It's important to recognize that Pueblo communities are very much alive and have a level of vitality that speaks to generations of strength, persistence, brilliance and thriving energy.”
This lecture is supported by the Windgate Charitable Foundation as part of the Windgate Contemporary Craft Initiative at ASU Art Museum.
Image credit: Virgil Ortiz