SAN ANTONIO — Jody Folwell made main waves on the 1975 Indian Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The artist’s first ceramic submission, “Half a Step” (1975), represented an enormous leap away from Pueblo custom. Although it was executed in an ordinary form with a extremely polished prime and backside, Folwell “needed to go towards the grain,” as she recalled within the exhibition catalog, by adorning the piece’s midsection with a working buffalo motif sculpted in reduction. The occasion’s judges hadn’t seen something prefer it available in the market’s 50-plus-year historical past, and debated whether or not the groundbreaking vessel even certified as Pueblo pottery.
Innovation prevailed, and Folwell received a Museum of New Mexico Basis Buy Award for her submission. This episode marked the start of her trailblazing profession, the place taking “half a step” from her heritage has allowed her ample room for expression and experimentation. O’ Powa O’ Meng: The Art and Legacy of Jody Folwell on the McNay Artwork Museum presents 26 works spanning greater than half a century.
Folwell lives and works in Kha’p’o Owingeh (Santa Clara Pueblo), the Tewa-speaking village in northern New Mexico the place she was born in 1942. She realized to make pottery from her mom and great-grandmother, utilizing these vessels for carrying water, cooking, storing meals, and different operations of every day life. Pottery was additionally an vital supply of revenue for her household.
However being a potter additionally carries profound which means within the Tewa tradition. In a documentary movie screening within the exhibition house, Folwell’s sister, scholar Tessie Naranjo, notes that the Tewa language makes use of the identical phrase for “earth” and “us.” She explains that this reveals “how deeply we really feel about our connection to the Earth.” Describing her course of in the identical video, Folwell shares that she prays to the Clay Mom whereas digging her uncooked supplies, asking for perception within the creation of her work.
Although she has at all times felt deeply rooted in her tradition, she started her personal ceramics follow within the early Seventies with a need to search out her voice. “When Jody started making pottery, there have been solely 4 designs that had been generally used, and deemed acceptable to make use of, on Kha’p’o Owingeh pottery,” scholar Bruce Bernstein writes within the exhibition catalog. On the time, Pueblo and different Indigenous artists had been usually pressured by market forces to observe sure aesthetic, technical, and materials requirements so as to acquire common gross sales and patronage.
It was dangerous to maneuver exterior of these conventions, however Folwell selected to forge her personal path. “With conventional pottery it’s so structured, it’s in a field,” she says within the documentary. “It’s important to climb out of that field to have the ability to do one thing else.”
The artist adopted the controversial “Half a Step” with different works that broke the mildew at subsequent Indian Markets, together with “The Hero Pot” (1984), a vessel created with a non-Pueblo collaborator in a inexperienced colour — a primary on the Indian Market — and “Roober Stampede” (1990), that includes motif of a working horse made with a rubber stamp, one other first. With later works, similar to “Wild West Present” (1996–2003) and “You Don’t Push Bush” (c. 2003), Folwell set her sights on the USA’s fraught historical past of imperialism, conflict, and oppression focusing on international “enemies” and Indigenous teams.
All of those works mirror the artist’s inventive ethos, which builds on Pueblo pottery’s historical past whereas making searing up to date social and political commentary that bridges disparate instances, cultures, and locations. Folwell connects with this sense of continuity on a bigger, historic scale — a few of her methods have been utilized by Pueblo peoples for 1000’s of years — and on a way more private degree: she has handed her potter’s information to her daughters and granddaughter, whose works are additionally on show within the exhibition. In reality, within the Tewa language, the exhibition’s title interprets to “I got here right here, I acquired right here, I’m nonetheless going.” The phrase completely summarizes Folwell’s courageous life and work.
O’ Powa O’ Meng: The Art and Legacy of Jody Folwell continues on the McNay Artwork Museum (6000 North New Braunfels Avenue, San Antonio, Texas) by January 4, 2026. The exhibition was co-organized by the Fralin Museum of Artwork on the College of Virginia and the Minneapolis Institute of Artwork, with Lauren Thompson overseeing the McNay iteration. It would journey to the New Mexico Museum of Artwork in Sante Fe from February 6 to June 21, 2026.
