Carmel Lewis

Carmel Lewis was born in 1947 into the Acoma Sky City Pueblo. She is one of the daughters of the world renowned late, Lucy M. Lewis. Lucy was Carmel's biggest inspiration for learning the ancient traditional methods of working with natural handmade pottery. Carmel gathers her clay from the pits within the Acoma Pueblo.  She cleans her clay by hand to purify the natural ingredients that mother earth has provided her with. She hand mixes, hand coils, and hand paints her pottery using the ancient traditional outdoor firing techniques. Her unique hand painted designs  are replicated from tradition symbols found on ancient pottery shards. Lucy was the driving force behind the revival of pottery making as an art in the pueblo of Acoma. The Lewis family keeps the same patterns and does not move to a contemporary style because it is very important to them to keep alive true traditions and designs of the ancient mimbres people alive. Some  of the of these designs which are replicated are the deer pot, lighting bolt pattern, and the many variations of the mimbres patterns. She is related to Emma Lewis-Mitchell, Dolores Lewis-Garcia (sisters), and Drew Lewis (brother).