Since 2017, Adrian Corona Trillo has made bats his signature subject, and this piece shows why that choice has held up. The form is a wide, perfectly rounded olla, hand-built in the Mata Ortiz tradition of Chihuahua, which Adrian learned from his mother, Ana Trillo. Everything here is done without a wheel, a kiln, or commercial tools, a tradition revived in the 1970s from the ruins of ancient Casas Grandes pottery.
The bat carries deep roots in Mexican tradition. The Zapotecs of Oaxaca, whose civilization flourished at Monte Albán, associated the bat with both the underworld and fertility, a creature of darkness that also pollinated the maguey and the ceiba. A 2,000-year-old jade bat mask found at Monte Albán is among the most celebrated objects in pre-Columbian art.
Adrian's bats are not threatening. They move through branches and flowers in fluid, overlapping arcs, wings spread wide, each figure drawn with the sgraffito technique, scratching through a black slip to reveal the white clay body beneath.
Viewed from above, the composition circles the open mouth of the olla without interruption, bats and blossoms turning endlessly around the rim. It is a piece that rewards slow looking.
Origin: Mata Ortiz Dimensions: 7"Tall 21"Circumference
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