Wildflower, Teresa

Teresa Wildflower is a member of the Chemehuevi Tribe, the southernmost grouping of the Southern Paiutes.

Teresa was born in 1935 and became probably the most recognized of Chemehuevi potters. She most likely grew up on the Colorado River Indian Reservation near Parker, AZ. Between the 1930s and 1950s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs actively recruited Native American families from high desert tribes to migrate to other reservations. The Colorado River Reservations saw a number of incoming Hopi and Dineh families. Judging from the shapes Teresa made, the kinds of designs she painted and the quality of her work, it’s likely she learned how to make pottery from a Hopi neighbor.

There was a bit of a renaissance in Chemehuevi traditional arts beginning in the 1990s with the advent of tribal casinos but Teresa was well established long before that: we found records of a two-week show of her work at Andrews Pueblo Pottery in Albuquerque in the summer of 1982.

Teresa’s specialty was miniatures and she was prolific in making them. Because the Chemehuevi pottery tradition was almost wiped out a century before (and the examples available in museum collections look very Hohokam-influenced), it’s hard to see anything in her pottery that makes it specifically Chemehuevi. However, her work is light-hearted and reflects a way of looking at nature that is simple, direct and exquisitely to the point. Her pieces are very well made and meticulously painted. Her subject matter is all over the place, from penguins to tropical birds to frogs, lizards, bears and coyotes. Her creations are exacting, built to a scale of 1:12, where 1 inch is equal to 1 foot.

It’s easy enough to confuse her work with Hopi, Zuni, Acoma or Cochiti pieces as she created with styles and shapes and painted designs from all across the Southwest Native American pottery world. She didn’t sign her work either, she used a very distinctive hallmark of a human stick figure.

Teresa isn’t producing pottery any more but she did teach her daughter, Niadi Wildflower, her methods and processes. Niadi produced similarly beautiful pottery for a few years but she hasn’t made any in years now either.