Ancestry is of the essence for all Native creatives. San Ildefonso Pubelo’s Cavan Gonzales captures it as a celebrated artist and the great, great-grandson of renowned potter Maria Martinez. Like his maternal masters, he is highly prized for his black-on-black vessels. National recognition led him to the White House as a presidential scholar, and after studying the science of ceramics at university he returned home, as his mother and artist Barbara Gonzalez proudly recounts, to continue potting in the traditional way. The artist’s work is in many important collections, including the New Mexico State Capitol in Santa Fe, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the Kennedy Center and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. He usually signs his pottery with his Tewa name, Tse-Whang.