Preston Duwyenie

Hopi

Preston Duwyenie

Born in 1951, Preston Duwyenie is a Hopi potter from the village of Hotevilla on Third Mesa. He attended elementary and middle school at Hotevilla, then went to high school in Scottsdale, AZ. After graduating high school he studied ceramics under Otellie Loloma at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Later he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Colorado State University and completed coursework toward an MFA there. Then he accepted a position teaching modern ceramics at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and that's where he met his wife, Debra Duwyenie.

Preston no longer teaches (formally) but, in the Puebloan tradition, he lives at Santa Clara Pueblo with his wife and still produces pottery and silverwork, sometimes combining the two with silver pieces (in the "Shifting Sands" design) embedded in his pottery or fashioned into his sculpted lids. Most of his pieces are also slipped in micaceous clay, something he's been doing since the late 1980s.

Preston has exhibited at the Colorado Indian Market in Denver, the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market in Phoenix, Santa Fe Indian Market and the Eight Northern Pueblos Arts and Crafts Show in Espanola, NM. He has earned numerous awards in the traditional and contemporary pottery divisions, including 2 Best of Shows from the Colorado Indian Market and 1 Best of Show from the Heard Museum Guild & Indian Market Fair.

Preston signs his work by inscribing a hallmark known as "Carried in Beauty" (Lomaiquilvaa). His godmother gave him that name after carrying him home as he slept in her arms, late in the evening after his initiation ceremony.