Candelaria, Daryl

Daryl Candelaria was born into San Felipe Pueblo in April, 1970. His mother, Sara Candelaria, said he was finished with high school and sitting in front of the TV one day when she handed him a lump of clay and said “Make something.” Shortly she was teaching him how to make pottery.

She had learned from her mother, Juanita Toledo of Jemez Pueblo. In the 1940s and 1950s Juanita had worked with Evelyn Vigil at Jemez to revive the Pecos style of pottery (when Pecos Pueblo was abandoned in 1830s, the people were welcomed into Jemez Pueblo).

Daryl had a gift for making pottery but when he got interested in reviving San Felipe traditional styles and designs, there were almost none left to work with. So he got a job at the School for Advanced Research and researched the collections there for several years as he developed a form of “sherd” pottery that incorporates designs from different times and pueblos on the same piece. His design elements range from contemporary to designs hundreds of years old found on pre-contact pottery sherds.

Daryl has been earning awards for his work since the mid-1990s at Santa Fe Indian Market and at the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show. In 1999 he earned the First in Class and First in Division ribbons at Santa Fe Indian Market.

Daryl’s work can be seen at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the Denver Art Museum; the Mint Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina; the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and at the Museum of Ceramics in South Korea.