Hernandez, Gloria

Gloria Hernandez de Silveira is a potter from the village of Mata Ortiz in northern Mexico. She and her sister-in-law, Socorro Sandoval de Silveira, learned to make pottery back in the early 1980s, working by trial and error. Her husband, Gregorio Goyo Silveira learned how to make pots from his brother, Rogelio Silveira Ortiz. Goyo and Gloria became one of the more productive pottery-making teams in Mata Ortiz.

A lot of Gloria’s work incorporates patterns and designs from the Mimbres-Mogollon culture of the ancient city of Paquimé. She seems to prefer working with red clay: many of her pieces are black designs painted on a red clay body. Her designs tend to be bold with Mimbres reptile, animal and human figures embedded in the geometrics.