Jami Porter Lara
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Jami Porter Lara (born 1969 in Spokane, Washington) is an artist living in
Albuquerque Albuquerque ( ; ), also known as ABQ, Burque, the Duke City, and in the past 'the Q', is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Bernalillo County, New Mexico, Bernal ...
, New Mexico, known primarily for her black vessel-like conceptual sculptures created using millennia-old ceramics techniques indigenous to the Chihuahuan Desert. Porter Lara's work is in public and private collections nationwide, and has been featured in Art 21 Magazine, CFile,
Hyperallergic ''Hyperallergic'' is an online arts magazine, based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by the art critic Hrag Vartanian and his husband Veken Gueyikian in October 2009, the site describes itself as a "forum for serious, playful, and radical thinki ...
, and on
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
. In 2017,
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named her one of the artists shaping the future of ceramics. She is represented by form & concept in Santa Fe, and Simon Breitbard Fine Arts in San Francisco.


Education

Porter Lara moved to
Albuquerque, New Mexico Albuquerque ( ; ), also known as ABQ, Burque, the Duke City, and in the past 'the Q', is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Bernalillo County, New Mexico, Bernal ...
as a young child in 1980, and later attended the
University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; ) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1889 by the New Mexico Territorial Legislature, it is the state's second oldest university, a flagship university in th ...
, where she earned a Bachelor of
Fine Arts In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creativity, creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function ...
in 2013. Porter Lara also learned pottery techniques from Graciela and Hector Gallegos in the village of Mata Ortiz in the northern state of Chihuahua, Mexico. In the 1970s, a
Pueblo pottery Pueblo pottery are ceramic objects made by the Indigenous Puebloans, Pueblo people and their antecedents, the Ancestral Puebloans and Mogollon cultures in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. For centuries, pottery has been centr ...
revival took place in Mata Ortiz. People there started making ceramic pots that bore stylistic relation to ancient pot sherds and artifacts found in that vicinity, from the
Casas Grandes Casas Grandes (Spanish for ''Great Houses''; also known as Paquimé) is a prehistoric archaeological site in the northern Mexico, Mexican state of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua. Construction of the site is attributed to the Mogollon culture. Casa ...
and Mimbres cultures. They locally sourced their materials and discovered how to make ceramic vessels using 2,000 year old techniques. Porter Lara says “they showed us how to soak the clay and filter it and then let it dry. They also taught us how to build out of coils and how to burnish with a stone.” In this way the forms and meaning of Porter Lara’s art are distinctly contemporary, but her materials and techniques connect her work to the
Southwest The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west— ...
and to people who preceded her in the region.


Work


Ceramics

Porter Lara uses techniques based on those that Mata Ortiz potters have used to create vessels in the region over 2,000 years ago. She harvests raw clay from the earth, then processes it, by slaking, filtering, and drying it to a workable state. She builds the vessels with clay coils, burnishes the pieces with a polishing stone, then uses the reduction firing process in a backyard pit, covered with a galvanized aluminum tub. During the reduction process, the pottery is kept away from flames and oxygen. Carbon released by sawdust and newspaper surrounding the work bonds with the clay and turns the vessels black. Her inspiration for the black burnished vessels appeared on a trip with the
Land Arts of the American West Land Arts of the American West is a studio-based field program that seeks to construct an expanded definition of land art through direct experience connecting the full range of human interventions in the landscape—from pre-contact indigenous to ...
program to southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico. The group spent a week camping in the high desert grasslands of
Coronado National Forest The Coronado National Forest is a United States National Forest that includes an area of about 1.78 million acres (7,200 km2) spread throughout mountain ranges in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. It is located in parts of ...
. There she recognized many discarded articles of immigrants who had crossed the border, including 2-liter plastic bottles, sometimes in burlap slings. In the same places she found water bottles, it is also possible to find potsherds and other artifacts left by people thousands of years before. When Porter Lara returned to New Mexico, she kept on reflecting on the idea of how the plastic bottle and the potsherd are essentially the same thing. Both constitute precious objects, vessels, with the ability of sustaining life. She "began to think about them as evidence of an ancient and unbroken flow -- of people, culture, plants and animals-- that continues in spite of attempts to sever it." Her work reflects on the necessity of water for human life and a concept that Porter Lara calls "reverse archeology." The reverse archaeological process refers to her digging into issues of the present and the future by applying tools of the past. Porter Lara's work also engages with the industrialized mass production that characterizes modern consumer culture, while recognizing the harmful impact of this on society, she also states "Saying that humans are only pollutants is a failure of imagination. Yes, we’re destructive, but we’re also creative. . . . I want to create the possibility that we can see things differently and contribute to the world. My work is my refusal to say that the earth would be better without me, and the determination to become equal to that claim.


Conceptual art


''Witness Whiteness, 2017''

In response to the 2016 Presidential election of
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
, Porter Lara developed a new body of work about whiteness. She says "In a time when the baroque racism of Trump and his supporters had made it easier than ever for progressives whites to claim racial innocence, it felt urgently important to interrogate whiteness not as something that described them -- the stereotyped white working-class Trump voter -- but as something that described me." The artist made a big white neon sign that flashes between W_IT_NESS and WHITENESS. For Porter Lara the sign is as literal as it seems, she wanted a giant flashing neon sign prompting her to see it - see it - see it. But whiteness is plainly manifest to all who don’t inhabit it. For people of color, the structures of whiteness are as evident as a giant flashing neon sign.


''She's a Good Person, 2018''

In 2018, Porter Lara redesigned a vintage flour sack label, replacing “All-Purpose White Flour” with “All-Purpose White Fear”, which she printed onto muslin, and sewed into a set of girls dresses. The artist wanted the work to address mothering and home as spaces supposedly innocent of ideology, but where white mothers and grandmothers are engaged in the very political work of transmitting the values of white dominance to children. Porter Lara is interested "in how white mothers who are portrayed as innocent, defenseless, and incapable of violence - perform the critical foundational work of perpetuating racism, sexism, and homophobia through the education and policing of children." This work was greatly informed by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae's Mothers of Massive Resistance. The book shows that American
white supremacy White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine ...
is a system that was co-created by the work of white women, who, using the constructed political identity of “mother”, expanded the domestic sphere far beyond the home into schools, policy, and politics. Years before the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...
,
segregationist Racial segregation is the separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, such as schools and hospitals by peopl ...
women were developing and using color-blind rhetoric, constructing a new conservative political language that disguised white supremacist values in the language of
property rights The right to property, or the right to own property (cf. ownership), is often classified as a human right for natural persons regarding their Possession (law), possessions. A general recognition of a right to private property is found more rarely ...
, states' rights, parental rights, and constitutional intent.


Selected exhibitions

Porter Lara's work was exhibited at the
New Mexico Museum of Art The New Mexico Museum of Art is an art museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe governed by the state of New Mexico, United States. It is one of four state-run museums in Santa Fe that are part of the Museum of New Mexico. It is located one bloc ...
in
Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , literal translation, lit. "Holy Faith") is the capital city, capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Santa Fe County. With over 89,000 residents, Santa Fe is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, fourt ...
, as part of ''Alcoves 16/17.'' Peters Projects, a
Santa Fe, NM Santa Fe ( ; , literal translation, lit. "Holy Faith") is the capital city, capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Santa Fe County. With over 89,000 residents, Santa Fe is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, fourt ...
gallery, presented a solo exhibition'', In Situ,'' in 2017''.'' She was represented by . Porter Lara also had a solo exhibition in 2017 at the
National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openi ...
called ''Border Crossing.'' Twenty-five pieces of Porter Lara's work were featured in the show with much of the work inspired by the plastic bottles and ancient pottery remnants (shards). The show explores questions about what classifies relics as well as the human tendency to catalog and classify. Some of her vessels look like the disposable plastic bottles they reference. Other resemble classical urns,
Pueblo pottery Pueblo pottery are ceramic objects made by the Indigenous Puebloans, Pueblo people and their antecedents, the Ancestral Puebloans and Mogollon cultures in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. For centuries, pottery has been centr ...
, or modernist sculpture. Some evoke organic associations, such as gourds, organs and birds. Each of the work's titles includes a series of numbers and letters that further identifies where Porter Lara sourced the clay and when she fired each piece. In 2019, Porter Lara was commissioned by the U.S. State Department
Art in Embassies Program Art in Embassies, an office within the U.S. Department of State, promotes cultural diplomacy through exhibitions, permanent collections, site-specific commissions and two-way artist exchanges in more than 200 U.S. Embassies and Consulates around the ...
to create an installation of her sculptures for the Matamoros Consulate.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Porter Lara, Jami 1969 births Living people 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists American women ceramists American ceramists American potters Ceramists from New Mexico American women potters University of New Mexico alumni