The daughter of Linda Cain, granddaughter of Mary Cain and great-granddaughter of Christina Naranjo, Autumn Borts was born in Southern California in 1967. Her sister, Tammy Garcia, was born there 2 years later. The family returned to Santa Clara Pueblo in 1971.

Growing up in a family of famous potters, Autumn was exposed to working with clay early in life. While her mother and grandmother created vases, bowls, jars and plates from clay, Autumn was nearby sculpting animal figures and nativity scenes. She recounts how one or the other of them would now and then reach in and show her how to do something or how to fix something. Eventually, under their watchful eyes she moved into working with clay coils, and using clay that she had collected and prepared herself.

Autumn says her mother taught her to polish with a smooth river stone and to carve the ancient Tewa shapes of kiva steps, rain clouds, bear paws, feathers, lightning bolts and water serpents. Then her family's older women taught Autumn how to fire her pieces. Autumn says she is guided by their voices still: "All of this knowledge I hold very dear to my heart, because it was passed down to me from the women in my family. The clay gives me energy, and I'm grateful to be part of this tradition."

By the time she was 13, Autumn was spending her summers in Los Angeles amid surfers, Disneyland, Hollywood and Walt Disney Productions while the rest of the year was spent much closer to the real world, at Santa Clara Pueblo. Between the two influences, she was soon combining commercial art and art deco with traditional Tewa forms and designs.

Autumn's favorite designs to carve include dragonflies, hummingbirds and flowers. As a young girl she remembers, "I was completely mesmerized by the beauty of the feathers adorning the regalia of the dancers at Santa Clara Pueblo. I used to wonder where we got these feathers because I've never seen a parrot in Santa Clara Pueblo." A bit of research showed that parrots had been carried north over the ancient trade routes to Chaco Canyon, where indigenous traders from Mexico and Central America traded them for products produced by the Ancestral Puebloans of the Chaco Canyon area more than 750 years ago.

Autumn's work was featured at the 2019 Crocker Museum exhibition entitled Pueblo Dynasties: Master Potters from Matriarchs to Contemporaries and at the 2019 Yale University Art Gallery exhibition entitled Pueblo Women's Ceramics from the Patti Skigen Collection.

Autumn has participated in many shows and exhibits over the years:

Exhibits

• 2002, American Craft Museum - Changing Hands: Art without Reservation
• 2002, Peabody Essex Museum - Indian Market: New Directions in Southwestern Native American Pottery
• Cincinnati Art Museum - Sing the Clay: Pueblo Pottery of the Southwest Yesterday and Today

Shows

• Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, 2004, 2006-2010, 2012
• Originals Juried and Invitational Exhibit of NM Women Artists, 2005
• Santa Fe Indian Market, 1996-1998, 2001-2004, 2006-2014, 2018
• Eight Northern Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show, 1991, 1998, 2000-2003
• Blue Rain Gallery's Yearly Show, 1993-2001

Some of the Awards Autumn has Earned

• Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Collectors Choice Award, 2001
• O'odham Tash, Casa Grande, 2000
• Santa Fe Indian Market, 2001-2004, 2006-2010, 2012, 2014, 2015
• Heard Museum Guild Indian Art Fair and Market, 2004, 2006-2009, 2012
• 2019 - Best of Division, Traditional burnished black or red ware; incised, painted or carved, Santa Fe Indian Market
• 2019 - First Place, Carved or incised, black or red, over 8 inches, Santa Fe Indian Market