palavrasinquieta: Art in Mexico

When you visit Chiapa de Corzo, the first thing you notice, aside from the heat, are the lacquered gourds and bowls hanging from the ceiling of the portal on the west side of the plaza. Well, you might first notice the plaza and it's huge castle-like structure complete with buttresses. For sure you would notice the ancient ceiba tree that is fenced off to protect it since it may be older than the town which goes back 2000 years before Christ. The indigenous people saw the Ceiba as the tree of life, probably because they live longer than most people could imagine.

But after all that other noticing, you would surely see the gourds. The entire west side of the plaza is devoted to shops that sell artesania: clothing used by the festival goers, the flowered full skirted dresses of the women, the masks and "blond" wigs used by men during the Parachicos festivities, painted furniture and objects in lacquer with bright colors on black, red, and dark blue backgrounds, handmade ice creams and ice cream hot dogs served on platters smothered in chomoy sauce and chile powder, and carved objects like Mayan heads and Jesus nailed to the cross.

Dona Marta with a young student

Lacquer work is a local tradition revived by a woman named Dona Marta. People have been doing it for a long time, but she began to teach it and now it's wide spread. She is now 70+ years old, and still teaching in the school for traditional arts, where they also teach building and playing marimbas, pottery, and wood carving.

Brigitte and I went on Saturday to Chiapas de Corzo specifically to see a woman named Graciela, winner of numerous awards for her lacquer artistry, to view her work, take photos of her workshop, and possibly invite her to the Feria in Lake Chapala next November. Brigitte had an appointment with her for 11:00 but when we arrived at her place nobody was home. We were fashionably late, by 45 minutes, but when we called her cell, she was even more fashion conscious. She was in Tuxtla and apparently forgot about the meeting or thought it was later. Who knows? It's Mexico. She promised to return so Brigitte and I went to the plaza for lunch. We ate cochinito asado, chunks of tender pork in a rich brown chile soup with bits of potato and onions. It was fabulous. Then we sweated our way across the giant plaza to the ice cream store and got a cone to cool down. The cool lasted for a few minutes before the outside temperature returned us to dripping mode.

Polishing the Japanese "seed"

We stopped at the school to see Dona Marta and talked with her while a couple of students painted pieces. A young man was lacquering some seed-shaped wood pieces to be used by a Japanese artist for a sculpture. He spent at least an hour on each "seed" putting layer after layer of color and polish until each one shown brilliant in the sunlight.

Finally Brigitte called Graciela. She was home and waiting for us. Brigitte, in spite of living in Mexico for 13 years, still gets frustrated with the lack of business mentality. If she was ready, why didn't she call us??

Her house sits up on a hill overlooking the city, and is a pleasant plain cement block house with a long driveway. At the back of the property there is a large covered open-air studio. A helper was washing caliche, mined nearby from a hillside. This is the base for the paint they use in lacquer work. I'm not sure what they may have used in the old days for the lacquer part, but now they appear to use car polish. Graciela makes all the paint from caliche, car polish and commercially available tints. Her paints were stored in shoe polish tins. On shelves were her finished products: boxes, crosses, bowls and platters. Unfinished wood boxes and sculptures sat on other shelves, and hanging from giant garbage bags from the ceiling were dried gourds of all sizes and shapes.

Painted gourd

We spent about an hour there, setting up photo shoots of her artwork, and then I took photos of her working. She sits in a chair next to a table and paints the objects in her lap. Many of the basic flower shapes are first dabbed on with a finger tip, then other paints applied with a paintbrush she makes herself from a feather and hairs from a cat's tail. Considering the amount of time and effort that goes into each piece, it's amazing how reasonable the prices are. Small painted crosses are less than $50 pesos ($4.00 US).

She pulled out a photo album of her life's work. Even the album was gorgeous, thin wood lacquered with flowers was fastened to a plastic binder with brads. Brigitte fell in love with that idea and suggested that Graciela make some lacquered books to bring to the Feria as well as her more traditional pieces. The book contained many diplomas, awards, and photos of her receiving accolades. She is top notch. I photographed her over a period of ten minutes painting the side of a box. The development of the design was amazing. She started out putting on blobs of paint with her finger, and ended with a trail of flowers and leaves.

Graciela starting the
flowers with paint on a finger.

Forge Fire

My friend Brigitte, from Ajijic, who also has a home here, called me a few days ago. She showed up with three other women who are all interested in crafts and artists. I had taken many photos for Brigitte last April when I was here, and had of course, wanted to do more, but time ran out then for both of us.

One of her friends, Marianne Carlson, is the founder and head "honcha" of the annual Feria Maestros del Arte in Lake Chapala, an artistic exhibition that has grown to huge proportions. Their website: Feria has a lot more information. The purpose of their trip to San Cristobal (with a stop over in Puebla and Oaxaca) is to meet more local artists and find ones they want to invite. The show is unique in that artists can't apply, they must be invited, they are hosted by local families, their travel expenses are often subsidized, and being in the fair costs nothing for them. The whole idea is to provide access to a discerning public so that they might be able to make a living at their craft rather than give it up, and lose it. Brigitte has a great interest in art and knows so many of the indigenous people in San Cristobal and the surrounding countryside. She was the perfect person to show them around. So I got to tag along and take pictures!!

Guadalupe at the forge in his workshop

We went to visit Guadalupe. I met him last summer when he was in the Santa Fe Folk Arts Festival. It was truly the trip of his life. He got to meet other craftsmen from all over the world and go out drinking with them, see the United States, albiet a portion of it that bears a great resemblance to equally desert-y areas of Mexico, and his traditional crosses sold fairly well at the show. I was impressed with the variety of other items he's made; locks in the shape of animals and plants, chastity belts (I'm not kidding!), lamps, candle holders, furniture, and of course the ornate crosses.

Our little entourage also visited several women's weaving and sewing co-operatives. There are at least four shops in town where the co-ops sell their woven goods, all are beautiful and the pieces are such time-consuming works of art.

Sculpted book covers

On a different day, we visited Los Leñateros. A leñatero is a woodcutter, but in this case, they use wood pulp and other fibers to make paper, print hand made books, sculptures and other works of art. It was a fine day and many sheets of paper were drying in the back patio in the bright sunshine. Our guide said they used to employ many more people, but sales have dropped off and they are down to only 14. In the shop, we saw some of the custom work they do for others, including an incredible sculpted book for the Japanese market, featuring the Mayan story about the birth of the sun-god.

On our tour we watched some women make paper from wood pulp, saw the bicycle driven machine used to grind up cardboard and banana leaf fibers. Another woman was making book covers from pulp and black fibers into which she embedded shiny bits from broken CDs. In a little room, the guide showed us paper, stacked floor to ceiling on shelves, of every color and size you can imagine. Most of the paper was colored naturally from plants; purple from pansies, yellow from sun flowers, reddish from dirt and clay, browns from banana leaves, and red from cochineal bugs (or the modern chemical dye equivalent).