Lloyd and Hellen live on the Santa Domingo Pueble.
We recently vistied them and had the folowing conversations:
Hellen told us about her pottery, “These are the papoose ornament kind of thing, but they are too heavy for the tree, so they’re wall plaques. You can hang them on the wall. And then these are the friendship bowls. I have a little story on there. The circular of the bowl represents the earth; the children around represents friendship for each other; and then that turtle on the inside represents long life. And then I also just put cats and sometimes dogs on them and then different decorations—a quail, a turtle, and this is a Santo Domingo design on there. These are kokopellis, and butterflies for beauty, and this is another quail. "And this one, I got the idea—the first time I ever went to Phoenix, I saw these cactus there (saguaro), so I said, ‘Oh that would be nice to put together with my storyteller. So I do these in different sizes. That’s a kiva bowl. I’m going to put a wooden ladder in there. And then this is one of the similar storytellers over there that I didn’t finish. I put a bowl and a lizard…this is how a lizard looks before I paint the legs and all…all the detail I want to put on it. See, the lizard here, and the children and the bird and cactus on there. And then these are the storytellers; I’m just going to polish the shawl here and then paint different designs on them—whichever design pops into my mind.  This is a flower design…another storyteller, with a bunch of kids. And this of course is a Navajo basket, with kids on the back." Hellen Garcia talking about the five strand freshwater pearl and accent stone necklace, "My husband cuts the spiny oyster shell, and these nuggets we have to drill; and then these ones are grinded. These are all different stones that we have used, and then I just put them together in the necklaces. This one has freshwater pearls and different kinds of nuggets. This shape of turquoise are called nuggets, and this one is purple shiny oyster. And that’s abalone right there, the one that gives it that different color. That one is green turquoise, Nevada green.  And then that’s apple corral. That’s a new stone that we recently got here. On Monday mornings, we have market day over at the village. There are people that go to the mines and bring ...whatever… they bring it here and we buy it from them, like raw material. This is amber, and that’s corral branch. You see how tiny these branches are? They’ve grown so little, and that’s why they have banned harvesting corral now. Because it’s too little, and they want it to grow in another fifty years maybe. They banned it about three years ago. That’s why corral is getting more expensive. Whatever is out, oh man, that’s all there is out there for us to get.