Lucy Leuppe McKelvey

       Lucy even can coil and scrape square pots, a feat that requires lots of extra time, experience, and skill.  Like always she likes to use agricultural designs with clouds, cloud people, rainbows and storms.  She grew up with her great grandmother dry farming and raising sheep on the mountain so rain and agriculture are important to her and have always been.

     This pot has two personified corn people on opposite sides.  She calls them funnel corn in that the leaves funnel any rain directly to the stem and then to the roots like real corn plants.  These corn people have clouds at the bottom and three auxillary roots sticking out on the right side of the roots.  Their leaves are decorated with cloud designs and their forearms are decorated with zig-zag lightening flashing in the night sky.  The rectangular shaped headed one is the female and the round headed one is the male. On their heads they have triangular clouds and corn tassels.  From their right hands is attached a perfect ear of ceremonial corn and on their left hands is attached  a ceremonial basket.

     On the sides that do not have corn people are a storm pattern and a cloud house with three male cloud people on it.  The storm pattern is like one you would find as a pattern of clouds on a Navajo rug.  Navajos even see designs in nature like clouds in the sky and that is where this design comes from. Opposite this is an elaborate design of a cloud house of stair-stepped and triangular cloud designs.  Three round-headed male cloud people have their heads sticking out of the cloud house Their heads are decorated with feathers and triangular clouds.  The main cloud person has a turquoise necklace and earrings and has zig-zag male lightening flashing from his head.

      On the corners of the pot near the bottom between the main designs are sundogs or little straight rainbows decorated with clouds. Four triangular clouds float on top of each sundog. There are two stair-stepped clouds carved into the rim  of this square pot and on the other two sides of the rim above the corn people are rainbow guardians with emergences in the middle so that the artists spirit might not get entrapped within the designs of the pot.  These emergences also exist between the sundogs at the bottom to the pot.  Openings or emergences are found on many designs on pots, in baskets, rugs, and in sandpaintings.

      This is really an unusually fine and tall elegant pot with lots of detailed designing with lots of different colors.  The size is11 ½”h x 6”w.  The price is $1200.