Lucy McKelvey (Navajo)
Lucy Leuppe McKelvey is known as an innovator in the native american art world.
The whole philosophy of Navajo culture is one of beauty and harmony. That is what I am doing with my pots; this is what my girls are doing. We are creating Navajo beauty from Navajo materials. Everything you see on a pot has come from Mother Earth, from the clay to the paint - everything. The pots don’t look like traditional Navajo pots, but the uses for those are not needed as much today. There is always a need for beauty. Especially Navajo beauty.-- Lucy Leuppe McKelvey
Raised by her grandparents, her grandmother a Navajo weaver, her grandfather a Navajo medicine man, Lucy did not learn to make pottery until she was in college in 1973.
After graduating from college, Lucy taught elementary school in Bluff, Utah for a few years. She then took five years off to raise her three daughters, Cecilia, Celeste, and Celinda. Self-taught, she played at pottery with her young daughters. They would play with the clay and eventually learn to make pottery. She would make friends with neighboring potters and learn by watching them as well as examining pottery shards she would find outside her grandmother’s house.
Lucy and her girls use sandpaintings and other Anasazi designs on their pots. This is a break from the traditional pottery designs. Sandpaintings are sacred to the Navajo. Depicting a sandpainting as a permanent drawing and then burning it is sacrilegious to her people. The Yeis depicted are believed to be far too powerful. A way around this is to leave the design unfinished or to change it in some way so that the Yei is able to escape from the piece.
My grandfather, who was a medicine man, told me that it was okay to paint these designs as long as I did not exactly reproduce a sandpainting figure. That is why, while I take some inspiration from a sandpainting, I always change it and add something different.-- Lucy Leuppe McKelvey
Lucy and her girls collect their clay near Low Mountain, Arizona. They mix their clay with temper and develop all paints with materials from Mother Earth. They use natural pigments from the mineral hematite, beeplants and various clays.
Use of intricate sandpainting designs with graceful curve to the vessels are the hallmarks of their pottery. Lucy’s daughters are now putting themselves through college by selling their pottery.
People come by and want to learn how I make my pots. After seeing me make one, they say it’s too hard. There are some factories for Indian pots now, but that is wrong. I could make more pots if I were to use commercial clay, but that is not the way I was brought up. The Navajo way is never easy.-- Lucy Leuppe McKelvey
Lucy has been an exhibitor at the famed Indian Market since 1975 and has won numerous awards at those shows.
I remember some people would tell me that you shouldn’t put a design like the sandpainting on a pot. Then I would see them selling a miniature sandpainting. Now, most people don’t say anything.-- Lucy Leuppe McKelvey
Canteen with sandpainting designs |
Jar with sculpted Anasazi pueblo |
Whirling Rainbow Goddesses |