Porfirio “Pilo” Mora holds a small clay pot he’s formed by hand and burnishes its sides with a polished stone, adding shavings from a bar of soap to make the surface shine. He’s painted an intricate geometric pattern on the clay, a crisp maze of green circling the pot. Eventually, he’ll build a small pyramid of wood, light a match, and set the pot in the middle to fire.

Mora calls this pottery practice a “prehistoric heritage,” one he started learning more than fifty years ago in his hometown, the small rural pueblo of Mata Ortiz in Chihuahua, Mexico. He continues the tradition in Tucson, where he’s lived for the past fifteen years. And this spring he’ll share it with a group of neighbors on Tucson’s south side, engaging them in their own creativity, and planting seeds for new local economies.

Mora is one of four Tucson artists funded by the New York-based Artists At Work (AAW) program, which provides artists in six US cities with an eighteen-month salary, health care, and other benefits, as they work with community organizations to address local issues through their artistic practice. Joining Mora are Harrison Preston, a Tohono O’odham potter; Katrina Kerstetter, a mixed-media artist working with Tucson’s refugee community; and Shane Beeshligaii, an Apache and Navajo metalsmith.

To help identify artists and make sure they are locally supported, AAW partners with host organizations in each city. In Tucson the Southwest Folklife Alliance (SFA), which supports traditional and heritage-based artists (and publishes BorderLore), serves as local partner.