Jami Porter Lara

Jami Porter Lara (born 1969 in Spokane, Washington) is an artist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, known primarily for her black vessel-like conceptual sculptures created using millennia-old ceramics techniques indigenous to the Chihuahuan Desert.

Education

Artist Porter Lara moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico as a young child in 1980, and later attended the University of Johannesburg, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2013.[1][2][3] Porter Lara also learned pottery techniques from Graciela and Hector Gallegos in the village of Mata Ortiz in the northern state of Chihuahua, Mexico.[4]

Work

Porter Lara uses techniques based on those that Mata Ortiz potters have used to create vessels in the region over 2,000 years ago.[5] She harvests raw clay from the earth in central New Mexico, then processes it, by slaking, filtering, and drying it to a workable state.[6] She builds the vessels with clay coils, burnishes the pieces with a polishing stone, then uses the reduction firing process in a backyard pit.[7][8][9]

Her inspiration for the black burnished vessels appeared on a trip with the Land Arts of the American West program to southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico. While hiking in the high desert, she recognized many discarded articles of immigrants who had crossed the border, including 2-liter plastic bottles, sometimes in burlap slings.[1][10] Her work reflects on the necessity of water for human life and a concept that Porter Lara calls "reverse archeology."[11]

Selected exhibitions

Porter Lara's work was exhibited at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as part of Alcoves 16/17.[12] Peters Projects, a major gallery in Santa Fe, NM, presented a solo exhibition, In Situ, in 2017. She is represented by Peter Projects. [13][14]

Porter Lara also had a solo exhibition in 2017 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts called Border Crossing. [15][1][10] Twenty-five pieces of Porter Lara's work were featured in the show with much of the work inspired by the plastic bottles and ancient pottery remnants (shards).[16] The show explores questions about what classifies relics as well as the human tendency to catalog and classify. Each of the work's titles includes a series of numbers and letters that further identifies where Porter Lara sourced the clay and when she fired each piece.[17]

In 2019, Porter Lara was commissioned by Art in Embassies (AIE), a U.S. Department of State program, to create an installation of her sculptures for the Matamoros Consulate.[18]

gollark: ...
gollark: This is degenerating into pointlessness.
gollark: A conversation between whom?
gollark: 2th warning...
gollark: 4rd warning!

References
  1. Writer, Kathaleen Roberts | Journal Staff. "Potter inspired by traditional techniques, plastic water bottles". www.abqjournal.com. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  2. "Jami Porter Lara: A Map with No Border". The Magazine. 2017-09-01. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  3. "SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico 2015". Jun 4, 2015. p. 15. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  4. "Jami Porter Lara". Peters Projects. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  5. Lacy, Alberto Ruy Sánchez; Suderman, Michelle; Cornejo, Beatriz Braniff; Johnson, Jessica; Parks, Walter P.; MacCallum, Spencer H.; Gilbert, Bill; Turok, Marta; Page, John (1999). "The Ceramics of Mata Ortiz". Artes de México (45): 81–92. ISSN 0300-4953. JSTOR 24312543.
  6. "Clay Tells All". American Craft. 79 (1): 34–51. Feb 2019 – via Ebsco.
  7. Lesser, Casey (2017-02-23). "These 20 Contemporary Artists Are Shaping the Future of Ceramics". Artsy. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  8. Writer, Kathaleen Roberts | Journal Staff. "Potter inspired by traditional techniques, plastic water bottles". www.abqjournal.com. Retrieved 2018-03-03.
  9. "You searched for jami porter lara". Luxe Interiors + Design. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
  10. "Art on the Border". Art21 Magazine. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  11. "Jami Porter Lara + J. Matthew Thomas". Central Features Contemporary Art. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  12. "Alcoves 16/17 #6". nmartmuseum.org. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  13. "Jami Porter Lara: A Map with No Border". The Magazine. 2017-09-01. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  14. "Jami Porter Lara | In Situ". Peters Projects. Retrieved 2019-03-23.
  15. "Border Crossing". National Museum of Women in the Arts. Retrieved 2017-03-12.
  16. "Border Crossing | National Museum of Women in the Arts". nmwa.org. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  17. "Clay Vessels Pay Tribute to the Plastic Water Bottle". Hyperallergic. 2017-04-05. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  18. "Jami Porter Lara – U.S. Department of State". Retrieved 2020-02-22.
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