Twelve-year-old Juan Quezada had abandoned school to work in the fields and make his contribution to the low family economy. His surroundings were the same as they had been 600 years ago for the members of a sophisticated culture called Casas Grandes, who erected the city of Paquime, evolved and then inexplicably disappeared.
Over the ruins of that lost civilization was built a poor, dusty town, lacking in everything, named Juan Mata Ortiz. There, little Juan Quezada, always reserved and alone, began to gather firewood. On his adventures he used to find the remains of ceramic which served as testimony to the artistic level reached by the inhabitants of ancient Paquime. Their designs and forms caught Juans attention, and through extraordinary intuition, Juan began to reproduce the techniques used hundreds of years ago.
He kept the ceramic shards, examining them over and over again. It soon occurred to him that the materials used to make these pieces of art had to be close to where he was, and sure enough, he was able to combine the right amounts of different clays found in the mountains near Mata Ortiz. He also experimented with different materials to make the pigments he was going to need.
With the help of his fingers, serrated knives, and his ability, Juan learned to give a uniform thickness to the walls of the earthenware vessels.He worked on those ornamental designs by using drawings that he would trace in a symmetrical 180-degree form. These drawings were very similar to the drawings that he had seen in the pre-Columbian ceramics. He invented his own technique of firing the pieces, using cow manure as combustible. To protect his pieces from direct fire, he would cover them with cans or ceramic flower pots, which he would place over rocks so that the hot air would circulate.
Juan never realized the magnitude of his accomplishments, and everything indicated that he would go unnoticed by the world. However, the greatest stories are often woven with chance opportunities. Juan finally gave several of his pots to some salesmen who in turn took them to the United States. There, they exchanged them for clothing in a junk store in El Paso, Texas – Bobs Swap Shop. And thats how the other protagonist of this story appeared: Spencer MacCallum, an American anthropologist, with a specialty in Art History, who liked to go to browse through those stores.
When Spencer entered Bobs Swap Shop and saw the pots, he couldnt help but to buy them. Once he got home, he observed them time and again, admiring their beauty, the perfection of their design and almost unearthly symmetry. Spencer couldnt stop thinking that somewhere in the world existed an extraordinary artist, whose works of art were being sold in modest swap shops.
After a month, he decided to find this unknown artist. His search was successful. In just a few days, Spencer found himself in front of a very surprised Juan who couldnt believe how this American man had come all the way to this lost, dusty town called Mata Ortiz. What he found to be even more incredible, though, was the generous offer of Spencer, which said, In exchange for a monthly stipend please dedicate yourself solely to produce art. And note that Mr. MacCallum did not say produce ollas, pots, he had such confidence in Juans talent that whatever he decided to create would be artistically worthwhile.
Within many magical moments in this story, this one seems to me to be the most fascinating: the encounter of two extraordinary men, destined to change the fortune of that little town, and to leave us a artistic legacy whose reach is still unknown.
What happened after that day is no less interesting. Due to Spencers promotion mainly in the southern part of the United States, Juan accomplished more and more everyday as a potter. He first taught his family, and then he taught other members of the Mata Ortiz community to work with ceramics. Today, there are 400 artists who make up this artistic movement, dedicated to pottery. Their economic level as a community has increased incredibly.
