Order Dolores Porras Video on New Website: Ceramics Education
Dolores Porras: Artista Artesana de Barro is a 31-minute documentary video made by Michael Peed, a university ceramics professor. This link takes you to a new website where you can buy the DVD. When the DVD was released in 2010, I reviewed it here on my blog because it offers an outstanding discussion of the […]
Authenticating Oaxaca Pottery — A Dolores Porras Clay Sculpture
I received a question from a reader this week along with a photograph of a vintage Oaxaca ceramic figure for sale by a Southern California gallery, asking “Is it real?” The California dealer is selling a Dolores Porras pottery figure measuring 28″ high x 14″ wide, and the price is $500. Of course, the reader […]
Clay Times Magazine Features Dolores Porras Video Review
Oaxaca is known for folk art and especially pottery. Potter Dolores Porras was one of those exceptional self-taught people who took their traditions, skill and creativity to the next level. The Atzompa pueblo, where she lived and worked, provided the cooking vessels and ornamental pottery for Monte Alban, one of the earliest cities of Mesoamerica. […]
A Tribute to Potter Dolores Porras, a Documentary Movie by Michael Peed
I want to tell you that Michael Peed has made a remarkable, endearing, engaging, and beautiful film about Dolores Porras and her pottery. Michael is the perfect person to have made this documentary because he is a potter himself. That is why the narrative is laced with terrific explanations of the pot-making process, how the […]
Dolores Porras Documentary Film by Michael Peed Premieres in Oaxaca
Dolores Porras, legendary potter from Santa Maria Atzompa, died in November 2010 as a result of Parkinson’s disease. For years, potter and university faculty member Michael Peed visited Porras, videotaped and photographed her work. He has assembled a 31-minute documentary film that will premier on Saturday, February 19, 2011, at La Jicara Restaurant in Oaxaca. […]
Dolores Porras, Folk Potter Icon, Passes From Us on All Saints Day, November 1, 2010
What could I do to hang on a bit more to my memories of Dolores Porras? I had visited her home in Atzompa, a pottery village on the outskirts of Oaxaca city, on numerous occasions. I had come to know her late in life when her pottery style was well developed and she had created […]
Homage to Dolores Porras
It has been three years since I visited folk art potter Dolores Porras in her village of Santa Maria Atzompa. She was still actively creating decorative pots painted with figures of sirenas (mermaids) with wild hair and tantalizing three dimensional breasts, sculpted figures of madonnas and angels, fanciful pigs and burros. The shelves were packed […]