"I believe Clay Mother selected me before I was born to be her instrument in manifesting her beauty."

Lee Moquino is a grandson of Santa Clara Pueblo potter Corn Moquino. Corn's heritage was 1/2 Hopi, 1/2 Zia. He married Christine Herrera from Santa Clara and moved there to settle down. Corn became intrigued with the Santa Clara way of making blackware pottery and he was involved in the earliest days of the development of sgraffito design. He literally carved himself a large niche in that field. But even though Lee learned every aspect of the process from his grandfather, he's one of the few Santa Clara potters who regularly uses micaceous clay in his creations.

Most Santa Clara potters might use a bit of micaceous clay as a slip to accentuate something in a design but Lee uses micaceous clays like a Taos, Picuris or Jicarilla Apache potter would: his base clay is 75% clay and 25% mica/clay mix while his finishing slip is 25% base clay and 75% mica/clay mix. And he slips the entire piece, several times. This process makes for an excellent utilitarian piece, something you might want to cook beans in.

Lee probably learned to work with that mix through time he spent studying with Jicarilla Apache potter Felipe Ortega (and they both got their micaceous clay in the National Forest near La Madera, NM).

Lee is very traditional (and very secretive) in how he works. Because of that, he's often commissioned by other pueblos to make ceremonial pottery for them.

Some Awards won by Lee

• 2018 Santa Fe Indian Market: Classification II - Pottery, Division A - Traditional Unpainted Pottery, Category 502 - Micaceous Ware in the style of Taos, Nambe, Picuris, any form: Honorable Mention
• 2017 Santa Fe Indian Market: Classification II - Pottery, Division A - Traditional Unpainted Pottery, Category 502 - Micaceous Ware in the style of Taos, Nambe, Picuris, any form: Second Place

Lee's mother is Lenora B. Arrieta but we don't know which of Corn's sons was his father so we can't place Lee firmly in the Moquino family tree. All we know is his claimed heritage: Zia/Santa Clara/Apache/Yaqui, and his relationship to Corn as his grandfather.

Santa Clara Pueblo

Abandoned Dwellings at Puye Cliffs, Santa Clara Pueblo

Santa Clara Pueblo straddles the Rio Grande about 25 miles north of Santa Fe. Of all the pueblos, Santa Clara has the largest number of potters.

The ancestral roots of the Santa Clara people have been traced to ancient pueblos in the Mesa Verde region in southwestern Colorado. When that area began to get dry between about 1100 and 1300 CE, some of the people migrated eastward, then south into the Chama River Valley where they constructed several pueblos over the years. One was Poshuouinge, built about 3 miles south of what is now Abiquiu on the edge of the Jemez foothills above the Chama River. Eventually reaching two and three stories high, and with up to 700 rooms on the ground floor, Poshuouinge was occupied from about 1375 CE to about 1475. Drought then again forced the people to move, some of them going to the area of Puye (on the eastern slopes of the Pajarito Plateau of the Jemez Mountains) and others downstream to Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo, along the Rio Grande). Beginning around 1580 CE, drought forced the residents of the Puye area to relocate closer to the Rio Grande and they founded what we now know as Santa Clara Pueblo on the west bank of the river, with San Juan Pueblo to the north and San Ildefonso Pueblo to the south.

In 1598 the seat of Spanish government was established at Yunque, near San Juan Pueblo. The Spanish proceeded to antagonize the Puebloans so badly that that government was moved to Santa Fe in 1610, for their own safety.

Spanish colonists brought the first missionaries to Santa Clara in 1598. Among the many things they forced on the people, those missionaries forced the construction of the first mission church around 1622. However, like the other pueblos, the Santa Clarans chafed under the weight of Spanish rule. As a result, they were in the forefront of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. One Santa Clara resident, a mixed black and Tewa man named Domingo Naranjo, was one of the rebellion's ringleaders. However, the pueblo unity that allowed them to chase the Spanish out fell apart shortly after their success, especially after Popé died.

When Don Diego de Vargas came back to the area in 1694, he found most of the Santa Clarans on top of nearby Black Mesa (with the people of San Ildefonso). A six-month siege didn't subdue them so finally, the two sides negotiated a treaty and the people returned to their pueblos. However, successive invasions and occupations by northern Europeans took their toll on all the tribes over the next 250 years. Then the swine flu pandemic in 1918 almost wiped them out.

Today, Santa Clara Pueblo is home to as many as 2,600 people and they comprise probably the largest per capita number of artists of any North American tribe (estimates of the number of potters run as high as 1-in-4 residents).

Today's pottery from Santa Clara is typically either black or red. It is usually highly polished and designs might be deeply carved or etched ("sgraffito") into the pot's surface. The water serpent, (avanyu), is a very common traditional design motif on Santa Clara pottery. Another motif comes from the legend that a bear helped the people find water during a drought. The bear paw has appeared on much of their pottery ever since.

Santa Clara has received a lot of distinction because of the evolving artistry the potters have brought to their craft. Not only did this pueblo produce excellent black and redware, several notable innovations helped move pottery from the realm of utilitarian vessels into the domain of art. Different styles of polychrome redware emerged in the 1920s-1930s. In the early 1960s experiments with stone inlay, incising and double firing began. Modern potters have also extended the tradition with unusual shapes, slips and designs, illustrating what one Santa Clara potter said: "At Santa Clara, being non-traditional is the tradition." (This refers strictly to artistic expression; the method of creating pottery remains traditional).

Santa Clara Pueblo is home to a number of famous pottery families: Tafoya, Baca, Gutierrez, Naranjo, Suazo, Chavarria, Garcia, Vigil, and Tapia - to name a few.