Torivio, Frances

Frances Pino Torivio was born at Sky City in Acoma Pueblo in April 1905. Frances and her sisters, Lolita Concho, Connie Torivio Garcia, Juanita Torivio Keene and Mamie Torivio-Ortiz, learned how to make pottery the traditional way from all the women potters they were surrounded by as they grew up. Frances later described it as “learning the hard way.”

Frances was a traditional potter, digging and processing her own clay and mineral colors, gathering and boiling her own bee weed, making and decorating her pots and firing them outdoors to complete the process.

She liked to make bowls, jars, Nativities, Storytellers, owls, figures, plates and canteens. Her style was also traditional, often using the four traditional geometric designs that symbolize the four directions and four seasons. Sometimes she would add rainbows, flowers, the Acoma parrot, and Mimbres-Revival animals.

Frances earned many awards in her life and was still exhibiting at the Santa Fe Indian Market in 2001, the same year she died. One of her pieces was carried to Moscow by her grandson to be displayed in the Soviet National Museum.

In 1976 Frances began organizing and teaching pottery making classes at Acoma, her contribution to the revival of pottery making on the pueblo. Frances also taught her daughters, Lilly M. Salvador and Wanda Aragon, how to make pottery the traditional way.