Description
This wood-fired earthenware cooking pot features stylings typical of ancestral Wyandot/Wendat pottery. Along with the usual incised markings along the castellated top, the pot includes three individually carved panels tracing our ancestral homeland in the Great Lakes, to Ohio, Kansas and eventually northeast Oklahoma along the banks of the Grand River. The bottom of the piece has been corn-stamped for texture and durability, along with a nod to the importance of corn to my ancestors. The pot rests atop a turned walnut pedestal.
Materials
Earthenware, walnut base.
Nathan McAlister
Wyandotte Nation
About the Artist
Nathan Lee McAlister (Hahręndandiʔǫh) is an artist and educator from Neosho, Missouri. Nathan is an enrolled citizen of the Wyandotte Nation in Wyandotte, Oklahoma and is a frequent presenter for his people in traditional pottery, beadwork, textiles, leatherwork, songs, and other traditional life ways. He earned two bachelor's degrees in studio art and art education from Missouri Southern State University in 2021 and leads the Visual Art Department at Carthage High School in Carthage, Missouri. When he is not in the studio creating work, he enjoys playing music, storm photography, cooking, and spending time with his family and tribe.
