Border Crossing: Jami Porter Lara

Albuquerque-based Jami Porter Lara (b. 1969) uses a millennia-old process to make pottery resembling a ubiquitous icon of modern life—the plastic bottle. While visiting a remote area along the U.S.–Mexico border, Porter Lara found the remains of ancient pottery as well as plastic bottles discarded by migrants moving through the region. Intrigued by this juxtaposition, she began to reconceptualize the plastic bottle. Porter Lara’s art blurs the line between what we see as natural and manufactured, illuminating the bottle as a precious object—a vessel that carries life-sustaining water. Through this lens, she exposes the porous nature of many types of “borders,” including the permeable boundary between art and rubbish.