Breaking the mold: 'To Make, Unmake, and Make Again' assembles the largest concentration of Rick Dillingham's works

Rick Dillingham’s pottery grew from shattered shards into intimate vessels.

Scholar, author, collector, curator and ceramic artist, the late Santa Fe fixture is making his debut at the New Mexico Museum of Art.

Located in the new wing of the museum’s Plaza building, “To Make, Unmake, and Make Again” runs through June 16, 2024. The exhibit assembles the largest concentration of Dillingham’s works from across his artistic career, including several pieces not seen in public since his 1994 death.

“He was very well-known in the LGBTQ and in the arts circles,” said curator Katie Doyle. “He was one of the preeminent scholars in Indigenous art.

“He would make the work and do bisque firing in the kiln,” Doyle continued. “He would break it into many pieces; that’s his signature. Then he would decorate each piece with different glaze designs and patterning. Then he’d put them back together, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.”

Born in Lake Forest, Illinois, and raised in Southern California, Dillingham earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico. After graduating, Dillingham went on to California’s Claremont Graduate School of Scripps College, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts.

Dillingham lectured in anthropology at UNM and worked at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology when he was a student. He spent time on New Mexico’s pueblos speaking with Native elders. He also worked for a time as a restorer of historical Native American pottery at the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe. In 1974, he curated and wrote the catalog for the Maxwell Museum’s exhibition, “Seven Families in Pueblo Pottery.”

Breaking the mold: 'To Make, Unmake, and Make Again' assembles the largest concentration of Rick Dillingham's works

As a volunteer, Dillingham restored Native American clay vessels for the Department of Anthropology at UNM. Undertaking this scrupulous conservation process inspired his own raku-fired vessels, which he broke, glazed and reassembled— an echo of the act of piecing together clay shards.

“There is a leak of an Indigenous presence” in his work, Doyle acknowledged. “A lot of his early works reach appropriation. I don’t think he was intentionally doing it. Some of his later works are beautifully painted.

“The pieces are comforting and comfortable,” she continued, “because he’s taken these forms — a square, a sphere, a cone, and he’s designing them into something just a little bit unfamiliar.”

Sick with AIDS, Dillingham continued “living well with the disease,” even riding cross-country to attend a Harley-Davidson convention with his oxygen tank strapped to the back of his motorcycle. Toward the end of his life, he worked on his “Black Bowl, AIDS Series” of blackware vessels.

“They’re all about his struggle with AIDS,” Doyle said. “They’re black with a shiny interior. You can get a glimpse of some toxic uranium.”

Academic interest in Dillingham’s work continues to grow, Doyle added.

“In the 1980s, 1970s, he was really a pioneer.”

The artist died at home at age 41 in Santa Fe in 1994.

Dillingham’s work is included in numerous private and public collections including the Los Angeles Museum of Art; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.