Lewis, Sharon

“The painting is what I love most because you can become really creative. Sometimes I dream of designs.”

Sharon Lewis was born in 1959 to mother Elizabeth Concho (of Acoma Pueblo) and father Casino Garcia (of Santo Domingo Pueblo). In keeping with tradition, she was raised at Acoma and is a member of the Red Corn Clan. She remembers well growing up playing on the stairways and trails that lead up the mesa to “Sky City” at the top.

Inspired by her mother, she began three years of self-training in the family tradition of hand-coiling pottery in 1978. Her specialty is seed pots, which she likes to paint with a mix of traditional designs and modern fine line designs.

Sharon gathers her clay and other pigments from within the lands of Acoma Pueblo. In the traditional way, the clay is cleaned, mixed with finely ground pottery shards, shaped, sanded, burnished with a stone, painted with a white slip, decorated, and fired.

Once the white slip has dried on her piece, using a charcoal pencil she usually divides the piece into several sections to plan out the design.

Colors are produced by grinding red and black rocks against a larger rock to produce very fine powders. She meticulously paints her chosen designs with boiled-down bee-weed (a wild spinach) mixed with the colored clay slips.

The designs are often her own interpretations of prehistoric Mimbres designs of animals such as lizards and turtles. She is also well known for her visually complex checkerboard and spiral designs.

Sharon is constantly changing her designs, reinterpreting old symbols and pushing her creativity with both form and patterns. “The painting is what I love most because you can become really creative. Sometimes I dream of designs,” she has said.

The tradition continues: in 2010 her son, Eric Lewis, inspired by her work, began making his own series of unique seed pots.

Sharon has been producing pots for more than 30 years now. Somehow she found the time to earn her Bachelor of Fine Arts (graduating at the age of 54 – and rightfully proud of the accomplishment). As part of her degree requirement she was an intern at Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery in 2013.

Over the years she has participated in shows at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Eight Northern Pueblos Arts and Crafts Show in Espanola and at Santa Fe Indian Market where she’s earned First, Second and Third Place ribbons plus several Honorable Mentions. In 2004 the Southwestern Association of Indian Arts awarded her their Standards Award for Excellence in Utilitarian Vessels.

Sharon says she gets her inspiration from everywhere: books, galleries, museums and other artists. Her intent is to keep making pottery as long as she can as she so loves evolving as a contemporary artist while drawing from Acoma traditions.