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Diego Valles | Episode 841
Diego Valles was born in the border town of Palomas Chihuahua in July 1982.Diego has been expanding the limits not only of Mata Ortiz Ceramics, but also of traditional Mexican Ceramics. In 2010 he was awarded The National Youth Award for Arts, which is Mexico’s highest honor to a young living artist, “for the combination of Science, Art and Excellence in the creation of his ceramics…”
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You use the word miracles as you tell your story. Why do you see them as miracles?
I don’t really think it is divine intervention but it is miraculous in the way that pottery developed out of necessity really, for survival. And how out of necessity it became an artform in itself. So that’s the real miracle that we have without proper education in art or any type of education for that matter. Many of the first potters did not even finish elementary school and they became these fantastic artists. That’s the miracle!
How do you see your grandmother in your work today?
Well I really don’t my mother’s grandmother’s work in my work but I acknowledge that whatever she knew and her generation knew they pass it on somehow into the next generation and it became the foundation for the Mata Ortiz pottery as we know it today.
When you dig up your own clay does that make you feel connected to ancient history or does it make you think more just about what you are doing next?
I think it goes both ways. You know walking on the ground, how can I say, it really inspires us. Nature inspires anybody and everybody, but walking on the land and walking on spaces that are sacred because it hosted generations upon generations who knew their land and knew their clay. It’s very inspiring and very uplifting and spiritual too. It becomes a big part of what the potters at Mata Ortiz are.
How does your surface design connect to history and connect history to today?
Well Mata Ortiz pottery was directly influenced by the Casas Grandes’ culture pottery . The pottery from this culture had these principal colors, only black and red and sometimes yellow, but black and red were the very traditional. Those are the colors that I use for my designs. Also I use some of the iconography from this pottery of Casas Grandes into my own but I reinterpret it and I probably try to express something that is very different than what they intended.
Do you know what those symbols stood for or meant?
The Casas Grandes culture completely disappeared and whatever relationship we might find or meaning or explanation out of these designs is because of the connections that we make with the pottery of the native American people, the southwest pottery. Some of the basic designs are basically the same.
What was another big turning point in your ceramic life?
Well I have always been very competitive and I like competitions and I think competitions make people strive to a better versions of ourselves. And I think the first competition that I entered into the Annual Pottery Competition in Mata Ortiz I won a second place in the miniatures category in 2000 and that really encouraged me.
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Instagram: @diegovallespottery