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The New Mexico Museum of Art is exhibiting its first solo show dedicated to an Indigenous woman with “O’Powa O’Meng,” a career retrospective showcasing the work of Santa Clara Pueblo contemporary potter Jody Folwell.

The exhibit features over 30 pieces of work, Katie Doyle, associate curator of art and special projects at the New Mexico Museum of Art, said.

“It tells the story of her practice over the course of many, many, many years,” Doyle said.

“O’Powa O’Meng” is a traveling exhibit organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Fralin Museum of Art. In addition, the New Mexico Museum of Art has added its own pieces by Folwell, including a brand new work.

The new piece, “Buffalo Hunt,” is a white micaceous pot with a spot cut on top where a tile was meant to go before it broke in the kiln, Doyle said.

“She did this really beautiful repair with rawhide,” Doyle said. “So it almost looks like an open book.”

Folwell is in her 80s and lives in New Mexico. She has been participating in the art scene here for decades, including the Santa Fe Indian Market. Doyle said Folwell made waves early in her career with the art she made for the market and has continued to do so over the years.

“She has these rich narrative and decorative surfaces that she has kind of brought into the greater story of Indigenous pottery and the practice of Indigenous pottery making,” Doyle said.

Folwell was one of the first to put relief on a pueblo pot, Doyle said, which is the practice of building something on the surface of another work. Several of her pieces include this method, including “Half a Step,” which depicts wolves and buffalo endlessly chasing each other around a pot.

She said the works are about understanding and knowing who Folwell is and where she comes from, stepping beyond tradition to formulate the way Folwell sees the world.

“(It shows) the world through the eyes of an Indigenous person using these traditional forms and ways of making that have been, you know, altered and maybe adjusted a bit in the contemporary eye,” she said.

Some of Fowell’s works lean toward political and social commentary, Doyle said. The pieces make comments on White House administrations, enslavement, 9/11 and more.

“There is also another piece that deals very directly with the notion of cultural appropriation,” Doyle said, “and the complicated lines of how an Indigenous artist manages themselves within, I think, a more complex ecosystem of cultural appropriation when you’re speaking of different pueblos, different clans (and) different tribes.”

Beyond showcasing the artwork, the museum wanted to honor Folwell by including elements not included at other installations of the exhibit. This includes footage of Folwell speaking in Tewa.

Doyle said it has been special to work with Folwell and to bring a piece of her into the show that adds a sense of depth.

“We really did want to honor the fact that this is the first solo show of an Indigenous woman that we have ever hosted at this museum,” she said.

Doyle said it makes it all the more meaningful that Folwell is from New Mexico.

By showcasing Folwell’s art in New Mexico, Doyle said, the museum can feature artwork not only rooted here in tradition, but in the very ground of the state.

“She’s done such a beautiful job of combining these traditional forms and the tradition of digging her own clay and making her own pigments and slips,” Doyle said, “and then combining that with this new, pictorial language that she uses to sort of describe her life and the way that she sees the world around her.”

Elizabeth Secor is an arts fellow from the New Mexico Local News Fellowship program. You can reach her at esecor@abqjournal.com.