Denise Chavarria

Artist Profile

Denise Chavarria was born in the early 1960’s and is from the Pueblo of Santa Clara-Tewa. She began working with clay at the age of 16. She was inspired by her mother, Stella Chavarria, to continue the long lived family tradition of making pottery using ancient traditional methods Stella taught Denise the fundamentals of working with clay and encouraged her to continue the family tradition and add to the legacy.

Denise specializes in hand coiling traditional black on black Santa Clara pottery. She signs her pottery as: Denise Chavarria, Santa Clara Pueblo. She is related to Teresita Naranjo (grandmother) and Loretta “Sunday” Chavarria (sister).