Maria Montoya Martinez (1887 – July 20, 1980) was a Native American artist who created internationally known pottery. Martinez (born Maria Poveka Montoya), her husband Julian, and other family members, including her son Popovi Da, examined traditional Pueblo pottery styles and techniques to create pieces which reflect the Pueblo people's legacy of fine artwork and crafts. The works of Maria Martinez, and especially her black ware pottery, survive in many museums, including the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, and more. The Penn Museum in Philadelphia holds eight vessels – three plates and five jars – signed either "Marie" or "Marie & Julian". Maria Martinez was from the San Ildefonso Pueblo, a community located 20 miles northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico. At an early age, she learned pottery skills from her aunt and recalls this "learning by seeing" starting at age eleven, as she watched her aunt, grandmother, and father's cousin work on their pottery during the 1890s. During this time, Spanish tinware and Anglo enamelware had become readily available in the Southwest, making the creation of traditional cooking and serving pots less necessary. Traditional pottery making techniques were being lost, but Martinez and her family experimented with different techniques and helped preserve the cultural art. Early life Born to in San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico to Tomas and Reyes Pena Montoya, Maria had four sisters: Maximiliana (Ana), Juanita, Desideria, and Clara. Maria was the middle child. Her aunt, Nicolasa, taught her clay work. Maria and all four of her sisters made pottery, and some examples of her sisters' pottery can be seen in exhibits. She told people that she saw an alien on a mountain at eight. Her given name Po've'ka in the Tewa language means pond lily or water lily. History During an excavation in 1908 led by Edgar Lee Hewett, a professor of archaeology and the founder and director of the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, examples of black-on-white biscuit ware pottery were discovered. While searching through the sandy dirt and red clay of the New Mexico desert terrain, broken pieces of biscuit ware were uncovered. It is a common misconception that, "during the end of the 18th century, the use of plant pigments and finely powdered mineral substances became the preferred technique of painting and slowly caused the extinction of glazed pottery". In reality, the nearby inhabitants of Santa