Lasiloo, Alan

Alan Lasiloo was born at Zuni Pueblo in 1969. While growing up, he was exposed to the basics of making pottery at the home of his grandmother, Betty Lowsaytee. After graduating from Zuni High School he went to Santa Fe and attended the Institute of American Indian Arts. That’s where he first applied himself to making pottery and learned to work with micaceous clay working with Santa Domingo potter Manuelita Lovato.

From there he went to the American College for the Applied Arts in Los Angeles to study fashion design. Then he returned to Zuni in 1989 and began the journey to becoming a traditional potter.

First he had to recall what he’d learned from his grandmother so many years before. Then he spent years experimenting with his process. He learned how to turn a “mistake” into a centerpiece. He learned different ways to fire his pottery and he learned how to enhance streaking and make that part of his design.

As he puts it: “I try to utilize what I have learned about fashion design by using lines, curves and pleats in my clay sculptures. This creates movement and brings life to the pieces.”

Alan first entered the Santa Fe Indian Market in 2007 and won First and Second Place ribbons that year for a couple of his pieces. He works a lot with Zuni white clay but he is also the only Zuni potter who works with micaceous clay. Some of his pottery is decorated with highly stylized forms of ancient Zuni designs. Some of his micaceous pottery is decorated with elegant Zuni designs and linear decorations using dense black pigments. He is also one of the few potters at Zuni who still fires his pieces in a pit in the ground. Some of his work is in the collection of the Heard Museum.