Karen Abeita
Thunderbird
3" H
x 5 1/4" D
Karen Abeita was born on September
23, 1960. She is one of the finest young Hopi potters working
today. She particularly likes using some of the older designs
on her pots -thePolik Mana - (Butterfly Maiden) pottery sherds,
feathers, eagle tail feather skirt, clouds, and song birds.
She learned her art from potters
of her own generation, most notably Fawn Garcia Navasie and Mark
Tahbo. Her pottery blends very traditional Hopi-Tewi designs
with her respect for the materials of the earth .
Karen works particularly hard
on her outdoor firing techniques - aiming to have a certain warm
glow with the use of fire clouds.
Her work is some of the very
finest produced at Hopi today. Her use of fire clouds to produce
soft changes in hue in her works creates an exceptionally rich
and warm design.
All of Karen's pottery is
completely traditional from gathering the clay from the Hopi
Reservation to hand coiling, hand polishing , hand painting than
firing the old fashioned way – outdoors.
Karen has won numerous awards
– including Best of Show, "Invitational," Lawrence,
KS. She is in all the major books recently published on Hopi
pottery, including Gregory Schaaf's book Hopi–Tewa Pottery
500 Artist Biographies.
Karen is so diverse as a potter,
her work might sometimes appear in clean, traditional lines,
while other times it features more stylized, but still traditional
elements, and finally, as you see here, her repretoire includes
the ability to produce something so progressive and so innovative
that it can truly be called a style of her own.
She has signed with her name
"Karen Abeita" and her parrot clan hallmark.
