Denise Chavarria
Santa Clara
Avanyu Red
4 1/2"
H x 3 1/2" D
Denise Chavarria was born
in the early 1960’s and is from the Pueblo of Santa Clara-Tewa.
She began working with clay at the age of 16. She was inspired
by her mother, Stella Chavarria, to continue the long lived family
tradition of making pottery using ancient traditional methods
Stella taught Denise the fundamentals of working with clay and
encouraged her to continue the family tradition and add to the
legacy.
Denise specializes in hand
coiling traditional black on black Santa Clara pottery incorporating
many of her grandmother’s designs into her pottery. She
also works with carved redware.
She is a full time potter
and is teaching her three children to pot. She signs her pottery
as: Denise Chavarria, Santa Clara Pueblo. She is related to Teresita
Naranjo (grandmother) and Loretta "Sunday" Chavarria
(sister).
She just gets better and better
every year and is definitely worth collecting and still very
reasonably priced. Denise has exhibited and won awards since
the early 1990s at the Santa Fe Indian Market, Eight Northern
Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show, and the New Mexico State Fair.
Her work is included in Dillingham's
"Fourteen Families in Pueblo Pottery", Schaaf's "Pueblo
Indian Pottery 750 Artist Biographies", and "Southwestern
Pottery: Anasazi to Zuni" by Hayes and Blom.
