Lucy M. Lewis 1895 – 1992

"I enjoy making pottery because it comes from inside," Lucy Lewis told The LA Times in 1984, speaking in Keresan, her tribal language.

A matriarch of American Indian pottery, Lucy Martin Lewis was born and raised on the isolated, 300-foot high Sky City Mesa in Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico. Lucy never received any formal schooling. By the age of eight, Lucy showed an interest in the clay tradition of her community and learned her craft from a great-aunt and other community potters. Using found shards of Anasazi and Mimbres pottery as inspiration, Lucy Lewis was instrumental in reviving 11th century Mimbres style pots with black line work over white clay.

Lucy Lewis married and had nine children. She helped her husband farm but always found time for pottery. Occasionally she would make the 20-mile trek to the nearest town to sell some of her pots. Until the 1950s she was isolated from the help or interference of archeologists, museum collectors, or tourist.

She began signing her work in the 1950s after she received a blue ribbon at the Annual Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial in Gallup, New Mexico. In 1977, she was invited to the White House, and her work is part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution. She was given the New Mexico’s Governor’s Award for outstanding personal contribution to the art of the state in 1983. She also received awards from the American Craft Counsel, College Art Association, and the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts.

Lucy Lewis continued making pots well into her late 80s. Seven of Lucy’s children and some of her grandchildren continue the tradition and are highly regarded contemporary Native American potters. Lucy Lewis lived a traditional life enriched by her close connection with sacred clay believed by the Acomas to be Mother Earth from which they came and to which they will return.