Tag Archives: Dolores Porras

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 a following of collectors and admirers from around the world.  (See Wellesley College Professor Lois Wasserspring’s book, Oaxacan Ceramics: Traditional Folk Art by Oaxaca Women for reference.)  Then, she was prolific and her shelves were packed with sirenas (mermaids) sculpted and painted on the clay walls of vessels, urns, plates, and anything else that would allow a breast or nose to take form.

Sirena by Dolores Porras Circa 1970's

I have come to the conclusion that all of Dolores’ female images are related.  They are like sisters and cousins.  One wears a different color pair of earrings or her tail flares in an opposite direction and is adorned with a contrasting color.  Perhaps they are self-portraits — a common approach by self-taught artists who learn their craft from family members and village mentors.

I just acquired this vase (first photo above).  I purchased it from a friend who lives locally here in North Carolina because I wanted to have Dolores with me at home.  My other pieces are safely nestled in my Oaxaca bedroom at the Chavez casa — too fragile, I think, to ship. She belongs in both places that I love, Oaxaca and North Carolina.

Sirena in the movement of sunlight

Dolores was suffering from Parkinsons and was wheel-chair bound unable to work for the last year.  Her family sold off all her pottery in 2009.  I cried when I heard by email from Dr. Wasserspring that she had passed, although rumors were rampant during the last six months that she had succumbed earlier.  My tribute to her is this brief testament to her talent and generosity.

Dolores Porras, March 2009

There are moments in life when someone touches you.  Perhaps there is a link between my father, a potter, and Dolores.  They shared the same craft, the same affinity for translating their world into something solid and substantial that would endure beyond death.

Face or Breast? Folk art pottery by Dolores Porras, 2006

I can turn this three-dimensional pot in any direction and always see something different.  The perspective of shape and profile is confusing.  Is it a face or breast?

My Dolores piece at home in Oaxaca

This is a more recent piece with stronger colors and more defined and articulated painting and sculpture.

Jar with Emerging Faces

It is as if these figures are being born from clay.  I just love the allegory of life being formed from a ball of clay — the story of creation, a bibliography.

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 with stunning pottery and it was difficult to choose which piece I could take home that would be small enough to fit in my suitcase.  I was with photographer friends Sam and Tom Robbins from Columbus, Ohio, and my godson Eric Chavez Santiago.  There were two inverted pots covered with faces in bas relief.  The pots rested on the opening, bottom side up, displaying probably eight of these faces as if they were sisters or multiple personalities.  Sam and I each bought one and mine takes center stage on my dining room table, an homage to Dolores Porras.

I had not seen Dolores since, and when I visited her yesterday it was startling to see her wheelchair bound and frail.  She told me in a hushed, throaty voice that she has Parkinson’s disease, doesn’t want to eat and is losing her mind.  I know Parkinson’s.  A good friend in North Carolina has it and I have seen how it eats away at the nervous system, creating memory loss and immobility.  I asked Dolores if she was in pain.  Her only pain is that she cannot remember and she cannot see much.  Are you working? I ask.  Can you make your clay?  No, she said, I have no strength.

The shelves around the room were bare, only a few of her pieces remain to be sold.  I put my arms around her and kiss her forehead and tell her she is a great artist and thank her for her life and her creativity.  I give her magic kisses through the air and she kisses me back with her lips pursed, and we are there, two adult women, kissing each other through space and my eyes are wet and I just want to leave the room and sob.  This is such a loss of a treasured talent and it is painful to see how this disease robs people of their life’s energy much to early.  Dolores is age seventy-three but she looks like one hundred.

Outside, the courtyard walk is lined with piles of discarded, broken figures and plates, imperfect angels.  I lift up pieces and hold them between my fingers and discover a face plate made perhaps years ago, and then an angel.  Muy viejo (very old) says Dolores’s son.  Are they for sale?  Yes, he says.  I buy these and two extraordinary mermaid urns, the last two.  He and I cry.  I didn’t need these things, but to me, they are much more — my homage to Dolores Porras.