Remixed Across Media

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Over the years Virgil Ortiz has built an iconic company with aesthetics that carry through multiple endeavors including pottery, prints, home decor, and fashion design. Celebrities are among his customers and models, and major museums such as the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Paris’s Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, and the National Museum of the American Indian have collected his work. Recently he created a silver outfit based on his Aeronauts characters for singer Nona Hendryx. His company’s branding and his individual artwork frequently employ a black-and-white scheme with reoccurring visuals such as corsets, boots, PVC, and body painting. “I’m goth for life!” jokes the artist, now in his early 50s. With his consistently bold aesthetics and subject matter, Ortiz carved a space for himself in the Native art scene of the Southwest and the art world at large.

Though Ortiz is established as a master ceramicist, he stays curious and open to change. He balances his individual artistic pursuits with the creative direction of his brand. “Our team members wear many hats, but we’ve mastered thinking and functioning like one person. I used to do it all myself, but as the company grew, I could no longer do it alone. With regard to the traditional clay works, I create them myself from start to end.”

Much of Ortiz’s creations flow together from different projects remixed across media. Some pottery includes images from photographs; some T-shirts feature the patterns he paints on pottery. “They all kind of mesh together and inspire ideas. I segue into many different types of media, so I am endlessly experimenting. These days, I’m going to YouTube college to figure out different techniques, mostly out of necessity. They eventually all fit together and work as one.”

The artist has recently delved into lithography while working with Gallery Hózhó in Albuquerque. “Earlier this year I spent a week at the Tamarind Institute, a leading lithography studio, and created three prints as part of my Revolt 1680/2180 series. These are my first works in this new medium. I’m really pleased at how they turned out.”

His confidence in his vision came from a childhood fascination with science fiction. “It all started a long time ago, in a Pueblo far, far away! Reminiscing about it all, the most transparent thoughts that come through are definitely loving sci-fi films and TV shows. I watched the first Star Wars film in a theater when I was seven. The film gave me the confidence to dream and create anything I could imagine.”

Often educational, Ortiz’s artwork is staunchly rooted in his culture. He descends from a notable line of Cochiti potters including Laurencita Herrera, his grandmother, and Seferina Ortiz, his mother. The two core themes that drive Ortiz’s work are, as he emailed to me, “1) Making sure that Cochiti clay work, which requires traditional methods and materials, continues and thrives for the next generation of potters; and 2) Educating the world about the 1680 Pueblo Revolt using my art.” In 1680 the Pueblos rose up in a coordinated resistance led by Po’pay against Spanish colonial rule. “Most people have not heard about the Pueblo Revolt, the first American Revolution,” says Ortiz. “It is not taught in our schools and it isn’t in our textbooks. It has been swept under the carpet because of the genocide that happened to our people. It is a history that has to be told.”

Ortiz’s screenplay, Revolt 1680/2180, shapes the world he is creating. “I've been working on my script for over two decades now. It keeps evolving as I work in different parts of the world, meet new folks, experiment with various art forms, and grow as a person. I can tell you that the storyline is all based on the revolt happening simultaneously in two different time dimensions, 1680 and 2180. This allows me to tell our history with a sci-fi element/feature to it all. With each exhibition or collection unveiling, I release more details from the revolt saga.” This world features a wide cast of characters: The historic Po’pay, Tahu and her Blind Archers, Venutian Soldiers, Aeronauts, Rez Spine Watchmen, Runners, Spirit World Army, Castilians, Stargazers, and more.

A significant character in Revolt 1680/2180, Tahu, symbolizes women’s empowerment. “She’s the heroine of the movie script,” states Ortiz. She appears frequently in his work. In Tahu, Leader of the Blind Archers, a digitally manipulated black-and-white photograph, she stands in front of a barren forest. She is wrapped in a blanket with a bow and arrows on her back. A black shield covers her eyes, and eagle feathers adorn her hair. This particular image was shot at Cochiti Canyon. “We had a forest fire, so everything was completely black, and it just looked spooky and very desolate and very dystopian—that was just [the view] from my truck driving on the road—but when you got closer and walked into the trees, even though they were all charred and black with no leaves, if you looked really close, they started to bud again. So you see these high, little half-inch green leaves coming out, and buds. It all meant rebirth to me, and strength of the woman coming back into play, and how important it is, so it was the perfect background for it.” For another image from this set that uses the same shot of Tahu, Ortiz approached his sisters and nieces to participate and asked them to wear their feast day outfits. The Cochiti women and girls stand among the trees with Tahu, dressed in mantas, moccasins, shawls, and blankets, representing the Blind Archers. Most were photographed in one session, with several family members added to the image later. “Some of my nieces were not able to make it, so I photoshopped them into it. So it’s a combination of both, of reality and digital.”

Other characters in Ortiz’s world, the Venutian Soldiers, are “futuristic, herculean superheroes, over eight feet tall, who fight mainly at nighttime and possess extraordinary strength and magical powers,” who team up with “Tahu of the Blind Archers and her twin brother, Kootz of the Runners, after their Pueblo was destroyed by nuclear weapons during the first Castilian invasion.... They are forced to wear gas masks and oxygen tanks around their necks in order to survive.”

In Odyssey of the Venutian Soldiers, Ortiz costumed and styled eight Venutian Soldiers for a photo and film shoot at the Paint Mines Interpretive Park in Calhan, Colorado. They are in predominantly black clothing and gas masks, and several hold staffs or spears, while one holds a flag with a “turkey track ” X, Ortiz’s trademark. They stand among cream-white rocks, echoed by white clouds in the blue sky. “Some of them were professors and some were students,” reveals Ortiz. “That was pretty cool, because, working at universities and doing residencies and workshops, it’s cool to be able to incorporate the people that I’m working with and the students.” The resulting video was recently shown in the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Art’s exhibition, Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/Future. Odyssey is on view at the Montclair Art Museum through March 2021.

Venutian Soldiers Quest (2020) embodies ancestral Cochiti clay practices. Made with Cochiti red clay, white and red clay slip, and wild spinach for the black paint, the piece exemplifies the graphic style of painting for which Ortiz is known and features a three-dimensional Venutian soldier emerging from one side of a black horned vessel. Two-dimensional Venutian soldiers flank the other side, painted from characters costumed and photographed by Ortiz in a prior series. One is covered in a robe and the other wears a corset; both carry bows and arrows and wear gas masks. A looping motif with black spikes, Ortiz’s signature element, serves as a graphic detail in the piece. For Ortiz, this was an opportunity to play with three-dimensional forms joining into two-dimensional, painted surfaces. “I’ve done it before, but not on this scale—it’s a big piece.” The areas where 2D and 3D merge on the figure play with the eye; Ortiz notes how he painted the back of the jacket to make it look like it had an edge. The sculptural back foot also flows seamlessly into the painted back leg, and the figure holds a two-dimensional staff.

When asked his thoughts on COVID-19 given his post-apocalyptic themes, he sees parallels. “You know, the COVID-19 pandemic is eerily similar to the storyline behind my Venutian Soldiers—almost feels like a prediction that is becoming a reality. It’s really frightening to witness in real time. The masses are reliving, fighting for existence, as our people did. It is an awakening that we are all very much alike, more than anyone thought. I hope we can learn from our history. We are better together—align, protect, inform, and shape a new future.”

The pandemic prompted a major stylistic shift in Ortiz’s work, forcing him to add to his repertoire. In February, Ortiz was teaching at Arizona State University (ASU), working with a small group of senior ceramics students when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the studios. The students’ plans dramatically changed, and Ortiz, originally scheduled to teach for the entire semester, found himself with time on his hands. A friend connected Ortiz to the owners of the Reitz Ranch Center for Ceramic Arts, Sheryl Leigh-Davault and her husband Ted Davault. Ortiz and one of the ASU seniors, Andrew “Augusta” Smith, drove the two hours from Tempe to Reitz Ranch for residencies from March through June. In a matter of days, Smith rewrote his senior thesis to use the ranch’s resources in collaboration with Ortiz, which he presented to his main ceramics teacher.

Ortiz explains, “The professor said, ‘Yeah, that sounds good. You can do it if you can pull it off.’ So he was able to, and we just got an Airbnb close to Reitz Ranch and created a whole body of work, and he passed with flying colors. It worked out for both of us.” While at the ranch, Ortiz also collaborated with two other ceramic artists, Heidi Kreitchet and Grayson Fair. “It has been an awesome ride to learn different techniques working with contemporary, high-fire clay,” says Ortiz. “The developments in my work are significant, from size to texture to atmospheric firings.... This experience has been a blessing: traveling for artist residencies, teaching, and meeting other clay creators. Working with Heidi, Augusta, and Grayson has been the best part of it all. The collaborations feel like we have been working together for ages, yet it has been just under a year. I’ve met students that inspire me and hopefully I have taught them something as well. I cannot wait to see what develops from more collaborations.”

The work of Don Reitz (1929–2014), the former owner of the ranch and a major Euro-American ceramicist, was a major influence on Ortiz’s latest pieces. Don’s ceramics surrounded the house, the studio, and the kilns, able to withstand all kinds of weather conditions. Ortiz “could immediately feel his presence there” and he asked Don Reitz to guide him. His artworks, dramatically unlike Cochiti’s pottery, surprised Ortiz. “He had walls that were like five inches thick, and just very textured and cut. He really manhandled the clay,” Ortiz says, comparing Ritz’s creations to volcanic rocks.

In Cochiti, the pottery would typically be hand built, dried, sanded, meticulously painted, and then fired once outdoors in a specially made kiln, fueled by wood. If the piece has an air bubble, it will burst during the firing—there’s only one shot. Cochiti pottery uses a low-fire process with low-fire clay. At Reitz Ranch, raw clay pieces are first bisque-fired at 1800°F. Layers of glaze may be added through multiple firings for a final piece. The process of soda firing in a gas kiln, which has Asian origins, can dramatically affect the look and feel of a piece as ashes land on the pottery and create texture. Ortiz focused on the form of his sculptures and allowed the firings to decorate them, diverging from his usual precise painting. With the high-fire process, temperatures can get up to 2300°F. It takes a team to fire pottery in one of the large wood kilns at the ranch. Together, they keep the fire going 24/7 for over a week.

“This is just a whole new education that I never expected, but I so love it now, and it just works really well to continue to tell the story. It looks like we just excavated all these pieces.... And it’s just fun, because now it fits into the storyline where the Aeronauts are coming back from the future to the present time to collect artifacts and designs and shards and taking them back to the future to store them, protect them, and keep them safe until we get to that time, and so that our traditions of designs, or shapes, or anything that is in clay, stays alive in the future,” Ortiz explains.

Ortiz released a new series this August, The Revolt Chargers, created during the Reitz Ranch residency. He shared an excerpt from the new chapter:

Chargers are armored secret passkeys to gain entrance to the Aeronauts Survivorship Armada Stargate. Those who possess the Chargers can find gates that are located throughout Earth’s lithosphere. Aeronauts Cuda and Steu originally owned the Chargers. They are highly coveted and protected, hiding in plain sight. The Aeronauts shared this primordial knowledge with the Watchmen, who are stationed around Earth’s realm surveying for any advances of the Castilian Army.

The inspiration for the Rez Spine Watchmen’s patrol areas is cultural. “Of course it’s talking about the Native traditions—the four directions,” notes Ortiz.

The Revolt Chargers series departs from Ortiz’s typical black-and-white scheme with a wide array of shifting earth tones. Within the series are seven high-fired, atmospheric-fired plates called “Chargers,” representing the passkeys in Ortiz’s world and created in collaboration with Smith. Ortiz points out a particular piece, Omtua. “That’s a Tesuque name for an actual runner that was part of the actual revolt,” he says. The piece is roughly formed and etched and overlaid with pieces of clay. The overall effect is akin to stone. A small face representing a runner, a foot messenger in the Pueblo Revolt, accents the plate’s edge. Ashes fell on and fused to the piece, creating additional texture. “It looks like dirt just dropped on the face,” Ortiz observes.

Ortiz introduces several new Watchmen in the form of a jar in the case of Ion, and six hand-built, sculpted busts and heads for Dorn, Rainor, Rayl, Saasha, Sy, and Talus. Ortiz has been sculpting faces lately, and he continues to amp up the realism with this series. The underlying goal is for the characters to potentially serve as models for movie prosthetics.

Rainor, Admiral of the East Realm Rez Spine Watchmen, a mottled grey-green sculpture with three tubes connecting to the head and tusks around the mouth, is one of his favorites. Ortiz stresses that Rainor and other pieces have details and a physicality that need to be experienced in person: “Everybody needs to hold them, feel the weight, touch them—the texture— and look really close, and see some parts in the crevices are super watery-looking, even though they look matte.” With Rainor, tiny crystals are embedded in the surface. “And it’s really hard to capture the real texture of it, because if you were to see any of these pieces in person, it looks like his nose is sweating. It looks like it’s moist. If you see when he’s looking left, the profile left, you can slightly see the reflection on his nose,” Ortiz explains.

Talus, Recon of the South Realm Rez Spine Watchman (2020) depicts a tusked, helmeted being. The high-gloss sculpture is colored an oily black with sections of cream and caramel “drips” moving down the piece, forming glass. “I had no idea this goes down,” admits Ortiz. “But once you work with people that do this for a living and have studied this, they’re like, ‘Oh my God! You got the drips! It’s so juicy!’ They’re so excited. I’m like, ‘What the hell are you guys talking about?’ Then, ‘Ooh, now I get it.’” The most prominent aspect of the sculpture is the ridged helmet that, combined with the effect of the glaze, looks almost insectlike. A knob representing hair tied in a bun extends from the back of the head. Ortiz made the bust in April 2019 during a workshop at ASU, where it was first bisque-fired then fired again after glazing at the Reitz Ranch. He wanted to sand the piece, as is customary in his process, but his colleagues told him to leave the marks where he worked the clay, as the texture would produce a more dramatic result. The piece was covered with a dark glaze, then ashes were sprinkled directly on it, which created the cream areas.

Saasha, Recon of the East Realm Rez Spine Watchmen (2020), features a sandy-colored bust with a feminine face. A long, dark scratch runs down her forehead, across her left eye, and down her chest. Ortiz’s “turkey track” mark etches her forehead. Tusks emerge from each side of her mouth with an additional horn on her right shoulder. A slab of clay rests against the left side of her face and neck. Melded to the top of Saasha’s head is a rounded shape with an opening and a triad of spines. This serves as a head crest, the inspiration for which Ortiz says is “basically updating what our women wear for feast day dances, and turning them into warriors as well.” She communicates telepathically from the future into the past with Po’pay and Tahu.

With this piece, Ortiz attempted to re-create an atmospheric firing in an electric kiln. “It came out pretty cool. She reminded me of bread—like feast day bread,” he laughs. In a more serious tone, he explains the meaning behind his stylistic decisions. “The circular motions, the scrapes that I put on the headdress, are supposed to represent the universe and a black hole, basically, and then the little white speckles are stars and all—the galaxy,” Ortiz explains. “But within the tiny scratches, down the face or around her eyes, I put black slip in it.” She was fired three times to achieve her coloration, as the process of high-fire pottery allows for multiple firings and layers of glazing. First was the bisque, then a matte black underglaze and a white outer glaze, “so once it got super-hot, then it blended it together, and just the reduction or smoke made it a tan color and black.”

One of the other watchmen, Dorn, Magnate of the East Realm Rez Spine Watchmen (2020), a glossy, olive-green bust with a masculine face and a headdress that echoes Saasha’s, shows how different processes produce different results. “If you look at Dorn, that piece is one of my favorite, favorite pieces, because that one came out of the soda fire, and it did its own thing, like it just completely transformed.... All the holes that I poked in it, all the texture I gave it, that’s just Don Reitz’s aesthetic coming through....”

“Maybe in the movie these pieces could come alive from rock, from stone,” Ortiz considers. “I don’t know. There’s just so many options. That’s why it’s never-ending, that’s why I keep saying that. It just keeps going and going!”

What’s next for Ortiz? “I thought I was going to get a little time off, but it’s actually amped up. We all have to move forward, given the circumstances,” says Ortiz. Several monumental pieces are waiting to be fired. “These are the largest pieces that I have attempted. I made some that are drying at ASU and more at Reitz Ranch. It will take at least six months to dry before we bisque them. They have internal structures for support so they have to dry slowly. We are planning to fire them in the Reitzagama [a specially modified, oversized kiln]. I’m really excited for this!” He further shares his plans for winter 2020 to spring 2021. “As soon as it’s safe to travel again, I look forward to a residency at the iconic Archie Bray in Montana to create a new body of work,” says Ortiz. Several exhibitions are in the works for 2021 and 2022.

Ortiz encourages a spirit of experimentation for Native creatives looking to push their art to the next level. “Learn as much as you can of any subject you want to pursue. The internet is a goldmine to figure anything out. Do not be intimidated by failing; these are our best teachers. Focus, manifest, and never stop creating.”