ARTIST PROFILE
Blessing from Earth A LOCAL ARTIST WITH AN ENORMOUS SPIRIT SPREADS HER GIFT OF CREATIVITY AND STORIES
Senora Lynch and her husband Dalton pose with a beautiful work of art.
M
ore than 20 years ago I met Senora Lynch at the Haliwa Saponi powwow standing at a table with her pottery. Made from the red earth and painted with white etchings, her work was remarkable. I couldn’t decipher their meanings, but the symbols were familiar t o m e - d o g wo o d f l o we r, corn, tobacco, and various animals. I stopped and examined each unique piece and though each seemed to hold its own story I was ignorant and could only guess until the master potter revealed her secret. A small woman, Senora was even more remarkable than her work and no one could have guessed that such a great deal of talent could be held in such a small vessel. She was real and made you feel as though you should hold on to every word she uttered. Standing in the meadows that day peering up through the pines, watching the dancers, and listening to the drums was a blessed experience.At the time, Senora's work 25 Summer 2020 Hearth & Vine
had already been featured in numerous exhibits. Later she would be featured at the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Women’s Museum of Arts and the permanent collection in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, The NC Museum of History in Raleigh, Wesleyan College's Mims Gallery, Hanging Rock State Park in Danbury and the Piscataway Indian Museum in Brandywine, MD. She recently joked that you might never expect anything like this from small town Hollister, NC. Senora said that for as long as she remembers she loved to play in the mud, recalling that one of her first memories was of broken shards of pottery in the workshop of her grandfather, teacher and friend James Mills. Mills told her that those shards were the history of her people. It was from that pivotal moment that Senora began the journey of making a history of her own. “I think somehow that stayed inside me,” Senora confided. She talked about how her grandfather taught her about the simple things in life and how they relate to life in the moment. Things like a corn cob or dirt dauber’s nest took on a greater significance than childhood curiosities. “I could see the different textures and patterns and it stayed with me,” she said. “The spirit of clay has always inspired me.” Senora calls her pottery 'Living Traditions'. “Working in clay takes me back to my childhood days of playing in the mud as a free spirit,” she relayed. It wasn’t until Senora was 14, that the urge to create developed while assisting tribal elders with a pottery class. Later, she met a tribal potter that taught her the fine art of “hand coiling.” In this technique red clay is rolled out by hand into long tubes, coiled into the desired shape, then smoothed and polished with expert hands and a stone. White clay is added atop the red for a striking embellishment. She said that she weaves a tale through the embellishments while imagining that the new owner receives a blessing from it. She said most of her pieces are inspired by nature and its connection with the spiritual elements. Creatures like turtles, hawks, owls, bear as well as tobacco, the dogwood flower and corn enliven each piece. One story, tells of the bear who comes to a field. He walks through the corn, destroying the stalk but trods its seed into the ground so
