Olla

Traditional Iipay Pottery by Heidi Osuna

Heidi Osuna today continues the pottery-making tradition pioneered by the Kumeyaay (Iipay, as they called themselves). It is an ages-old tradition passed from her great-grandmother to her father, the well-known Erwin Augustine “Yellow Sky” Osuna.

When you think about it, it should come as no surprise that Yellow Sky enjoyed helping his grandmother make pottery when he was a child.

Yellow Sky’s grandmother made pottery according to a traditional method called Eskaay or aaskay which means mud work. Young Yellow Sky followed his grandmother into the mountains near their home in the Santa Ysabel Reservation to collect clay soil which they sifted, then carefully mixed with water to form clay.

You can just about see the mud on the little boy’s hands. You can imagine what fun it must have been. But then he got serious. He told his grandmother that he too would make the pots one day, and he did, single-handedly reviving an ancient tradition, to the delight of cognoscenti who know their Native-American art.

Collectors were saddened in August 2005 to hear of the death of Yellow Sky who was born in 1935 and lived all his life in the Santa Ysabel-Mesa Grande hills. A state firefighter for 15 years, he was a past spokesman for the Santa Ysabel Band of Mission Indians in the 1960s.

But he made his name, and was best known to knowledgeable collectors and those who value one-of-a-kind pieces of art, as a serious craftsman, a maker of rare if not unique Indian pottery. He had a store in Julian.

Some years ago, Yellow Sky passed the tradition to his artist-daughter Heidi, and now it is Heidi who now finds herself sought out by discriminating collectors with an eye for the unusual. She enjoys more requests than she can keep up with.

In creating her pieces, Heidi rolls out the clay she has made (as her father did), then coils it into the shape of a pot, olla, or other vessel. Next she rubs a stone over it to remove air bubbles which would cause weakness and allow the pot the break.

After she smooths the coils with a wooden paddle, the firing begins, in a fire of wood pieces topped with evergreen bark and dry cow manure. Heidi builds her fires in a pit she has dug outside her kitchen door. Firing of the red clay can last for several hours as the flames create their one-of-a-kind black designs.

Heidi's work is available for sale in the Borrego Springs Nature Center.

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