In these pages, we have written many times about various artists here in Merida who have caught our eye. As believers in the importance of Art (yes, with a capital "A") to the enjoyment and understanding of Life Itself, we tend to focus a lot of attention on those who create art. It has occurred to us many times, however, that those who buy and collect art are as important to Art as those who create it.

Art Needs An Audience

Without an audience, the artist can only go so far. Art is expression. Most artists create because they absolutely must… because the impetus to bring forth something new and different and beautiful springs from deep within them. But if you probe a little deeper, we think you’ll find that Art is also communication. In order to continue creating, growing and expanding their art, artists must have an audience… an audience that appreciates and encourages them. Not to mention, for many artists, it is important to have an audience that supports them by actually paying them for their art. Without people who are willing to buy their creations, artists are often forced to find another way to support themselves, and the time they spend grilling hamburgers or counting beans deprives the world of their creations.

This seems to us a basic Truth about Art, and in any case, it is a handy rationalization when we find a piece of beautiful Art that we absolutely HAVE to buy.

For this story, then, we turn to the collector, the buyer, the aficionado… the person who loves, appreciates, buys and collects art. And who better to choose as an example of a collector than Paul Ziegler, who has one of the most extensive and interesting Mexican art collections we’ve seen in Merida?

Paul Ziegler, Collector

Like most of us, Paul Ziegler has a past life in the United States. Paul’s past includes owning a ski shop in Aspen, Colorado in the Seventies, and owning an antique store in Atlanta, Georgia for many years after that. Somewhere along the way, Paul, who also happens to be an intrepid traveler, started focusing on collecting Mexican pottery as he planned to someday retire in Mexico. In 2003, Paul sold his home in Atlanta and settled down in Merida, bringing his nascent collection with him.

For Paul Ziegler, settling down did not mean slowing down. It meant continuing what he has always loved to do, but with a new excitement. To find out more about Paul’s passion for collecting, we went to his home near Merida’s Plaza de Toros, the bullfighting ring located on Reforma towards the north of the centro. Paul bought a mid-century modern home and has continued renovating it over the years, creating a home that is spacious, comfortable, colorful and full of art and artful surprises.

Actually, Paul collects art of many different kinds… paintings, sculpture, folk art, etc. Most of the art in his current collection has been found either in Merida, in Mexico City, in various other places around Mexico or on eBay. Paul is a huge fan of eBay as a way to build a collection, by the way. He posits that the existence of eBay is going to create some of the best collections the world has ever seen, as it allows collectors to scour the planet in search of additions to their collections, and allows people with special pieces to reach a worldwide audience of collectors.

Touristware Pottery from Mexico

Although Paul collects many different things, on the day we visited, we were there to learn specifically about Mexican "touristware", pottery that has been created over many decades to be sold to tourists visiting Mexico. Paul says that touristware is some of the most easily collected Mexican folk art because the makers were (and still are in some places…) quite prolific, and many of the pieces were and still are affordable. What makes it difficult and challenging, however, is that pottery is fragile. The oldest pieces of Mexican touristware are from the 1920′s and 30′s, and because of their scarcity, even slightly damaged pieces from that time period are valuable today.

A Brief History of Touristware

As it turns out, Mexican popular art was extremely popular in the 20′s and 30′s in the United States. There were major Mexican art exhibits in Los Angeles and New York during that time, and there was a traveling exhibit that began at the Met in New York City and traveled to thirteen cities before it ended in September 1931. Also back then, a lot of major stores, including Macy’s in New York, imported Mexican art and sold them to the American public. More and more people became interested in Mexican art and started traveling, by car and plane, to Mexico during this time, spurring production to meet demand. Today, Mexican art is still popular and it is important to support the artists making work in modern times. But as a collector, it is also a challenge and incredibly rewarding to find older pieces that survive from earlier times.

The strange fact is that you probably won’t find tons of old touristware here in Mexico, because it was created for, well… tourists! Therefore, the vast majority of pieces ended up in the United States, Canada and Europe. Still, with persistence and patience, you can also find some lovely pieces in Merida and in other parts of Mexico.

Touristware To Die For

For our education in touristware, Paul had set out some of his collections to show us. He explained that the term "touristware" refers to the pottery made in and around Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco. The pottery could have been made in Tonalá, Tlaquepaque or Santa Cruz de las Huertas. Many times you will find works referred to as Tlaquepaque pottery because that is where the biggest market for this work has always been, but pieces could have been made in any of these towns.

While most of the artisans of this type of pottery go nameless, there are some families that have a long tradition of creating quality work. Some of the named artists signed/sign their work, while others are recognizable only by their technique. The Lucano family, for instance, is one of the most famous families of artists and still makes touristware pottery in the same workshop on Avenida Independencia #131 in Tlaquepaque. Another famous artist, Jose Bernabe, is a well-known artisan of the Tonalá style. Other artists are not known by name, but their style was so unique and beautiful that they have been collected over the years and have been referred to by nicknames like "Baby Face" who painted beautiful faces on his people, "Trailing Tendril" known for the trailing tendrils in his designs or "Delicate Dan" who painted sweet looking animals with a narrow and delicate brush.

We might add that not all collectable pottery comes from Jalisco, either. There is collectable pottery from many other states in Mexico. In Puebla, for instance, the principal makers of the area’s famous Talavera pottery is the Uriarte family. Other famous pottery comes from Ocumicho (sculptures, toys), Metepec (trees of life) and many places in the state of Michoacan, including plates and Catrina dolls from Capula and ‘pineapple’ or piña pottery from San Jose de Gracia.

But, back to touristware. There are three colors of touristware plates and other pottery: red or terra cotta, black, and yellow or green. According to Paul, black is the most desirable as it is the most dramatic and many think, the most beautiful. In addition to the variation in colors, there are variations in glazes: night, fantasía, petatillo, grained and molded. "Night", as it sounds, refers to pottery with nighttime scenes painted on them, usually with stars in white on a black or dark blue background. "Fantasía" usually portrays animals (rarely people) in a sort of surrealistic way (A fantasía plate is pictured at the beginning of this article). "Petatillo" refers to a style of crosshatching that forms a background or texture to parts of the picture and is difficult to do well; therefore it is more valuable to collect, and the finer the lines, the more valuable the work (an example from Paul’s collection is pictured to the right). "Grained" glaze has multicolored dots over large areas, and "molded" is the term used when the clay has been pressed into a plaster or wood mold to create the piece.

An Affordable Hobby… At First

Paul has a vast and varied collection of these plates, most of which are not expensive to purchase, but the best of which can cost upwards of $100 a piece. He has only been collecting Mexican pottery, however, for ten years and says it is easy to do and incredibly fun, precisely because you can find it in the most random places, and it is not an expensive hobby… at least, not at first. In Merida, he says, the easiest things to find are Oaxacan dripware, recognizable by the large splashes of green, blues and reds, Michoacan piñas (pottery pineapples, usually dark green but sometimes blue or brown), patamban dishes in green and black animal and floral patterns, and the Tonalá burnished ware tiles, pitchers and animal figures (both pictured earlier in this article).

Like Paul, you may find yourself attracted to the unusual and simple beauty of many of these pieces at first, and then as you collect more, you’ll find yourself fascinated by the differences in technique and the complexities of production. Of course, when that starts happening, you will probably find yourself in the throws of a collecting addiction, searching for pieces that are more rare, more complex and of course, more expensive. (Sadly, we know of no Collectors Anonymous, but if you decide to start one, we promise to publicize it on Yucatan Living.)

Cottage Industries

In addition, Paul also points out that these works are all made by artisans usually working from their homes. These are true cottage industries. Each piece is done by hand and each design often tells a story. The stories are from their everyday lives, showing typical Mexican life, then and now, in stylized and artistic ways. Says Paul, "Whether it is dishes, chargers or vases from Tlaquepaque, sculptured "trees of life" from Metepec or religious pieces featuring devils, crosses and saints from Ocumicho, Mexican pottery is as beautiful and unique as the country it comes from."

We couldn’t agree more. Having traveled the back roads of Michoacan and bought plates from families cooking up pottery in their back yard, we too are fascinated with the beauty, variety and artistic competence that can be found in some of the most out-of-the-way places in Mexico.

Pottery in the Yucatan

In our own state of Yucatan, while there is not the wealth of pottery that you can find in other states, we do have a tradition of beautiful burnished and carved pottery from the Ticul and Muna areas. The best quality pottery from the Yucatan is found in that area, and the artist Patricia is probably the best of the best.

The pottery she creates are museum reproductions, and the designs copy the bas relief figures and styles of the Mayan paintings and steles found in the archaeological zones around the Peninsula. The beautiful and quite large vase pictured here on the left is from that area and stands in the entrance of Hacienda Chichen, a hotel next to Chichen Itza. The workmanship of these pieces is exquisite. Patricia and her brother mix their own clay, they make all the stains from minerals themselves, and they burnish the pots with polished stones to make their vessels and plates look like polished wax. In addition, these pots are not thrown, but made from coils. In fact, these museum reproductions are so well executed that they must be signed so that people are aware that they are not buying the real thing, but a reproduction of an ancient design.

To Each His Own

Some people collect Mexican touristware (and other pottery) by color. In fact, Paul displays his pottery collection sorted by color, which is quite striking to see. Others collect only plates or vases, others only those with certain glazes, like the petatillo. Others collect from a certain period or a certain artisan. Paul collects eclectically, buying and pursuing pieces that strike him for their overall beauty, while still being cognizant of their origin, the artist whenever possible and the specific techniques that are used.

Our Favorite Pot Story

Soon after we first met Paul, years ago, he had a quintessential collector’s experience right here in Merida. He was driving behind a big truck that was full of escombro, the detritus of any restoration or construction site. The truck was filled with broken pieces of stone, cement, concrete block and stray pieces of metal and other garbage. Stuck in the corner at the back were two large pots, each about three feet high.

At the stoplight, Paul got out and asked the driver of the truck if they were throwing the pots away. The driver replied that they were, and Paul offered him $100 pesos for the pots, which the driver accepted. Paul returned home with his pots, sure that he had seen a photo of something similar in one of his books on Mexican art. Sure enough, both pots were collector’s items. He kept one of them and sold the other for hundreds of dollars on eBay. The pot he kept is pictured here to the right, where it proudly stands now as one of the most beautiful pieces in his collection. As it turns out, this pot is from Tonalá, an example of burnished ware from that town. It was probably made in the 1930′s and probably collected by someone here in Merida until finally, after they died, there was nothing left to do with it but throw it away. Lucky for Paul and for us, now it is safe and valued for the beautiful work of art that it is.

It’s Easy… You Can Do It Too!

We end with this story to let you know that collecting touristware and other Mexican pottery in Merida is not just for people who can afford expensive shops or trips to other parts of Mexico. There are treasures hidden in every old home and junk store throughout Mexico. It helps, of course, to know what you are looking for. But look for beauty, whimsy, color and craft, and you will be able to find many treasures here in the Yucatan… some that were made just yesterday and some that have been around for decades.

Paul told us he would like to meet other collectors. He would like to share his collection with others, and have the chance to see what other people here have been collecting. He continues to collect and buy pieces to increase his collection. He says there is always something out of reach for the collector… always something a little too difficult to find or a little too expensive. If that wasn’t true, it would just be called buying, not collecting.

So, now, if this interests you… go forth and collect! If you have questions, feel free to email Paul Ziegler (his email is below) and he will gladly share his knowledge. You might also consider buying one of the books listed below that Paul recommends. Frequent the Museum of Popular Art on Calle 50 at Parque Mejorada,or the smaller one in Izamal, to see changing exhibits of popular art from around Mexico. And search out your little piece of Mexican art in the antique stores, junk shops and flea markets around town, and in towns all around the Yucatan Peninsula. Collecting, as Paul will attest, is fun… and it serves to preserve some of the beauty produced by our beloved adopted country.

*****

Popular Arts of Mexico, 1850-1950
(See all Arts & Photography Books)

Ceramica: Mexican Pottery of the 20th Century
(See all Arts & Photography Ceramics Books)

Artes de Mexico # 87. Ceramica de Tlaquepaque / Ceramics from Tlaquepaque (Spanish Edition)

Learn more about Yucatecan Pottery along the Puuc Route

Email Paul Ziegler to discuss Mexican pottery

Wherein We Meet The Artists

The first time we met them, they were sitting on the sidewalk, at the Sunday Art Walk on Paseo de Montejo. Under the shade trees, these two young artists were showing some of the most original art we had seen in months… years, maybe. Her art was whimsical and colorful, but with just a tip of the hat to darkness. His art was geometric, crystalline, straining towards the light. They were so penniless that they had little money for supplies… his most striking work was done on a cardboard giftbox, sides flattened and incorporated into a strangely-shaped canvas. That day, we had no money to spend on art, sadly, and we talked, but walked away without buying anything.

Fast forward to the second or third AANY show. The two young artists were still here in Merida, still making their art. Now they were painting on cigar boxes, jicaras (hardened gourds) and other objects. This time we had a little money and bought a few small and creatively precocious objets d’art. When we saw their work again, it was her work. Her canvas was hanging in a gallery, begging to join our collection, but alas, more expensive than we could afford.

Wherein The Artists Turn Up in Another Space

And so it has been for us with Viviana Hinojosa and Manuel Taure, just a few words here and a longing glance there, until the other day when we were invited to sit down and talk with them at Habla, the language school in Colonia Mexico. It is here that they have just completed their most ambitious work to date, a mural. This 6.4 meter by 4.2 meter painting spreads its colorful wings over the central enclosed courtyard hall inside the Habla building. Every student, teacher or passerby must pass through this space, and now when they do, they are treated to an artful delight.

Viviana’s Story

Viviana and Manuel weren’t always a couple, of course. Viviana Hinojosa was born in Mexico City and went to UNAM (National University of Mexico) there as well. She was studying literature when the student strikes of 1999 closed the campus for ten months. Not wanting to leave her apartment or her studies, she continued living there, and when boredom inevitably set in, she started painting for fun. By the time the University reopened, she had decided that painting was all she ever wanted to do. She graduated and immediately set off for Barcelona, following an inclination to learn about Spain and to learn to draw. She enrolled in night school, studied for six months and finally came up against the rather solid walls of poverty and immigration. She lost her job in a boutique because she didn’t have the proper visa to work, and she had no money to fly home until a stand-by seat opened up. She decided that her best hope was to sell her paintings on the street, which she proceeded to do.

This simple and desperate act turned out to be an act of liberation for her, giving her the understanding that people liked and would buy her art and the experience of total freedom… you know how the song goes: “nothing left to lose”.

With this act and these revelations, she felt freed from the Mexican middle class in which she had grown up. She was ready to approach her life in a more creative way. When the airline finally put her back on a flight home, months later, she had a plan. She moved in with her family, who now lived in Puebla, and picked up any job she could find (teaching, as it turned out…) while she tried to get her work shown in galleries. Finally, after a year and a half, she realized that the only thing she wanted to do was paint, and that if she wanted to do it, she had to do it completely.

She proposed to her father to let her live rent-free for a year and a half while she painted and built up a body of work. He agreed, and she spent the next eighteen months painting, morning, noon and night. One night, when taking a break, she walked into a local jazz bar, and saw a young man sitting and drawing. She liked his drawings and decided to sit down and talk to him.

Manuel’s Story

He was Manuel Taure, born and raised in Barcelona, where Viviana had just returned from. He came from a family of artists, and had gone to University in Spain, eventually acquiring a degree in graphic arts. After a few years in a traditional graphic arts job, including his favorite job painting sets for television and film, he decided that his creativity should not just be applied to his work, but to his life as well. He reasoned that he should design his life the way he wanted it.

In service to a more interesting life, the next few years found Manuel (Manu to his friends) traveling to and from Pipa, Brazil… a beautiful seaside haven, a preferred surfing destination and a place filled with his father’s fond memories… “like Ibiza in the 70′s”. Manu was bitten by the surfing bug, and at one point decided to surf the entire coast of South America, starting on Mexico’s West Coast. He started at Sayulita in Nayarit, eventually making his way down to Puerto Escondido, where he surfed and painted until one day, a wealthy patron from Puebla bought all his paintings.

This gentleman promised him a show in a gallery, if he would only come to Puebla. He promised him support, advertising and assistance. Worried about his visa status and hoping for a patron whose largesse might allow him to get a more permanent visa, Manu followed him to Puebla… only to be disappointed. The patron was wealthy and gave him a place to stay, but he had no connections and no motivation to help Manu, who found himself wandering the streets in a strange town with no surfboard, no waves, no money and dwindling hope.

One night, he decided to go listen to music in a jazz club, and as he always did, he brought his paper and pencils to draw while he was listening.

And So It Begins…

Two weeks later, Manu was living with Viviana in her parents home. Viviana’s father was not happy with this situation. Viviana’s mother found out Manu was from Spain and bought him olive oil. No one had a clue what came next.

But Viviana was determined at least to help Manu get his papers, and was eventually able to help him become a legal Mexican resident. Eventually, they moved to their own place, barely getting by selling their paintings. But Manu missed the sea, and remembered his intended journey along the coast to Brazil. They considered Todos Santos in Baja California, but on a whim instead followed a friend’s cajoling to go visit Merida… “You’ll like it!”

Wherein the Artists Discover Merida

And like it they did, the minute they got here. The next minute, they were selling their work on the street at the Sunday Art Market to make money enough to live, and that’s where we met them so many years ago.

Since then, slowly but oh so surely, Viviana and Manu have become integrated into the fledgling Merida art community. First they sold their work on the street. They gradually became friends with the more established artists at Artists in Mexico, where their work is shown alongside the work of Melva Medina and Abel Vázquez. They met the organizers of AANY and because they did some of their most interesting work painting on objects, they have been invited to the last few AANY shows where many of their smaller works of art and objets d’art are very reasonably priced.

Wherein Habla Discovers the Artists

They also met Kurt and Marimar at Habla, who fell in love with them and their work. They both were invited to work as art teachers at Habla. And often they volunteered their artistic ideas. At one point, Kurt and Marimar were given a hand-carver butter churner by a supporter of theirs in the USA. Not quite knowing what to do with it, Kurt gave it to Manu and asked if he had any ideas. The mini-mural and art installation below on the left was Manu’s solution… a butter churner fastened to the wall painted with the quote about churning the mind and the spirit. Over time, as a result of hours spent collaborating on this and many other small projects, the idea of the mural was born.

As dedicated supporters of the arts and believers to their core in the power of art, Kurt and Marimar gave Viviana and Manu complete creative freedom. Though they had worked on a few projects together before, this one was not only the largest but comes at a time when their art has become the most integrated. As such, it is a delightful combination of Viviana’s whimsy and Manu’s construction, with the colors and creativity that both of them share.

The artists wanted the wall to be full of life, and to have a cast of characters who were communicating, but without words. Habla, the organization, is all about teaching languages through the medium of different arts… painting, drawing, theatre, crafts, dance. Communication is the goal and there are many paths that lead there.

From Humble Beginnings

Manu and Viviana collected characters and other images that they liked and began creating drafts on paper. Eventually, they had a composition that they liked, and they showed it and got approval from Kurt and Marimar.

The next task was Manu’s: translating the small 8×10 drawing to the large medium of the blank wall. His graphic art background, of course, had adequately prepared him for this, and using a grid method, he transferred their ideas to the wall. They rented scaffolding at two different heights, allowing them both to paint at the same time in different sections, and they set about painting the mural.

The entire project, from start to finish, was very much a collaboration between the two artists. If you know them and you know their work, you can perhaps recognize Viviana’s little boy or Manu’s cat. But no, as it turns out, when you talk to them, you find out that that is Manu’s women and Viviana’s sailboat. Over the years they have been sharing techniques and talent, and in this collaboration, their styles have melded in a way that has produced something greater than the two parts. Something recognizably done by the two of them combined.

As they painted, the characters evolved, the messages morphed and new, interesting figures appeared. Because painting, like any other art, is the act of communicating, and in this case, the communication was definitely two-way, between them and everyone else at Habla.

Serendipitous Additions

One of the most obvious pieces of the painting that was added through serendipity is the zumbayllu, a spinning top from the Spanish/Quechua tradition. The zumbayllu is not a well-known object in English and not very well known in this part of the Spanish-speaking world either. It is a magical spinning top… not just any top but one with a name that hints at it’s powers. On the internet, we found this quote from a Peruvian novel written in 1951 by José Maria Arguedas: “Illu represents one form of music produced by small wings in flight… inexplicable music that arises from the slight movement of objects.” The magical communication of the zumbayllu was being studied in one of the multi-dimensional classes being taught at Habla when the mural was being painted. The class was reading the book quoted above, called Deep Rivers. It is a book that talks about the rivers of Inca culture that run deep in Peruvian culture. The zumbayllu is a top, a toy that is traditional in Latino American cultures. The name of this top is composed from two words that mean the same thing: to buzz. The word is zumbar in Spanish and ayllu in Quechua. The class was discussing the meanings of this toy, and when they got out of class, Donald Niedermayer suggested that the zumbayllu should be represented in the mural. Of course, everyone loved the idea of including this symbol of communication, delight, joy and playfulness. There is it now, practically spinning off the wall and hovering in the space above you as you look at it. Zuuuumbahyoo… the sound inside your head accompanies the view.

Another time, Kurt asked a classroom of small children to paint pictures of characters they would put on the mural if they were painting it. Viviana got wind of the exercise and when the children were done, she copied their results into a conversation balloon of one of the characters in the painting. Kurt related to us the pleasure of seeing the wonder and amazement of those children when they saw their own creations so high above them on the wall. And the pride with which they pointed them out to their parents later.

Why We Love It

So now there is a mural on the wall inside Habla. Viviana says that for her, the greatest pleasure she derives from her effort is seeing people walk in, turn around, look at the painting and smile. That smile is her reward. Marimar looks and sees stories, dreams, journeys and the joy of imagination. We see fantasy and magic, possibilities and promises. We also see planning and technique and dedication and love.

We also hope we see the beginning of a culture of murals in Merida. Murals are, of course, a Mexican tradition. As every grafitti artist knows, Mexico, and Yucatan is no exception, has a wealth of walls, a panoply of panels, a cornucopia of canvases! These blank occasions for opportunity are waiting everywhere for artists like Viviana and Manu to bring them to life. In fact, Viviana and Manu themselves are hoping that there are more murals in their future. Kurt would like to see this mural, and others like it, contribute to the patrimony of Merida. And why not?

Completion

The monumental task of this particular mural is done. The last characters have been created and the last manos (coats) of varnish have been added to preserve the work of art. The scaffolding has been brought down and the artists have retired to their studio in Santiago to begin dreaming of future projects. There will be an official opening reception for the mural on Friday, May 27 and then it will become a part of the daily life of the students, teachers and visitors to Habla’s building.

There is one word on the mural. That word is “amazing”. It is a word that Kurt uses a lot in his communication and it is a tribute to his vision and commitment to art, to the school and to the role of art in learning. As the artists tell it, when they painted the bird from whom the word is escaping, he sort of looked like Kurt. So the Kurt Bird says “amazing” and the mural makes it so.

And New Beginnings…

Viviana and Manu are already thinking about future projects. In their home, which is their studio, everything from shoes to cutting boards are painted and transformed into something playful, provocative or both. On their drawing boards are spoons and cigar boxes painted with bright colors and shadowed whimsy. There are sketches for a children’s book, blocks carved to create prints on the pages of old books, antique furniture waiting to be sanded and painted into a new life. On every wall and in every corner is another creative project, a composite of thought, intuition, intention, desire and mystery.

We imagine they will continue to do that to the world around them…sanding, painting, designing, carving, transforming. Alchemists of the every day object, Viviana Hinojosa and Manuel Taure are artists in the true sense of the word… creating one thing from another thing, teasing delight out of other peoples’ discards and coaxing beauty from the light of blank canvasses.

Lucky us… They are doing it, for now, in Merida.

****

Habla’s website and the Opening Event for the Mural

Like this art? Take Manuel’s Word As Image workshop or Viviana’s workshop on Drawing Characters From Your Imagination, both at Habla of course.

Email Viviana and Manuel at perroazul [at] live [dot] com [dot] mx

The excerpt of the unpublished book that mentions the zumbayllu (Google translated into English)

April 2nd and 3rd 2011 mark the sixth "ARTE A MANO" show! As always, AANY (Amigos de Artistas/Artesanos Nuevos de Yucatan) will present a carefully chosen array of fine craft artists from all over the Yucatan Peninsula.  Work in all media will be represented, including wood, metal, fiber, glass, paper maché, clay, etc. As always, there will be a mix of rural as well as studio work. At this next show over fifty artists will exhibit, including ten new artists from Campeche and Quintana Roo that have never participated before in AANY shows.  

Three Years of AANY Successes

In three short years, ARTE A MANO has established itself as a major cultural event in Merida, presenting two shows a year (Fall and Spring).  AANY, A.C., the sponsoring organization, was formed to identify unique craft artists and to provide a venue for them to exhibit and expand their market. In the beginning the AANY board was, of course, unsure of their market and whether there was a need for this type of event. Now the group can proudly point to the following achievements: 

• the record sales at shows proves that there is a strong market for fine craft work
• the artists have proven that they can and do improve and diversify their work and presentation with each show
• there is now a public recognition of what is basically the creation of a craft movement on the Yucatan Peninsula
• the entire community, both foreign and Yucatecan, is involved in putting on the shows and working for the betterment of craft artists. 

The AANY Committees

The AANY committee of eight works year round, but there is a virtual army of volunteers that come out seasonally and make the shows possible.  AANY is a legal Mexican non-profit organization. Director Joan Farrell is involved in every aspect of producing the show. She works closely with the Selection Committee to choose participating artists, coordinates public relations, attends meeting with the artists, and travels wherever necessary to find new work. The Selection Committee consists of Craig Laberge, Lexy Benoit, Tonia Kimsey, and Joan. Craig and Lexy together arrange the placement of tables and, with other volunteers, work individually with artists to perfect their displays. Deborah Thompson is responsible for organizing volunteers at the show. Fernando Solis, our CPA, handles the finances and works intensely to raise funds from local businesses. Silvia Solis and Cristina Solis work endlessly on marketing and promotion. 

The AANY Community

Each and every board members fills in where necessary, but this could not be done without enormous assistance from the community.   The Merida Men´s Club has been critically important from the very first day. The day before each show, ten to fifteen strong Merida men are there to help place eighty-five tables and tablecloths and two hundred chairs. When the show is finished, these stalwart souls are there again to help dismantle the show – and they have it down to a science. In about an hour all tables and chairs are neatly stacked and ready for pick up. 
The International Women´s Club has always been there to publicize ARTE A MANO events and members always attend in record numbers. The Merida English Library as well can always be counted on to notify members of the events and post information at the Library.  Yucatan Living does its part by bringing the shows to their readers’ attention, with articles like this one and photos and reminders in their Events listings.

The AANY Volunteers

There is a long list of volunteers who not only help with set-up and tear-down, but also host the AANY welcome table and are available to assist artists when necessary. If the “welcome” sandwiches and drinks have to be passed out to arriving artists, volunteers are there to do it. If badges have to be distributed, volunteers are there to do it. If artists need help with their displays, again, the volunteers are there to do it.

The AANY Artists Working Together

Last, but by no means least, are the artists themselves.  In the beginning there were those that felt it would never be possible to get the Mexicans to work together, but time has proven exactly the opposite.  AANY artists are a strong, deeply bonded group that wants above all for this movement to continue and to grow. They help in a myriad of ways. They help with communications with the rural artists, who have only the use of a relative´s cell phone, and who may speak more Maya than Spanish. The artists themselves help with either providing or finding housing for those who need it. They help by sending out email announcements to their own contact lists. Artists attend regular meetings to work out guidelines for the shows and find ways that they can help with the thankless job of raising funds to cover the costs of the shows. The prevailing attitude is that they will do anything it takes to assure the future of AANY, which has become an important part of their lives. 

The Community Wins

All who participate in the ARTE A MANO shows come away feeling that the shows are indeed of, by and for the entire community. As a measure of success, it must be pointed out that attendance at the very first show was 450. Last November attendance topped 2,000 shoppers. We hope this next Spring show will continue the trend… it just doesn´t get any better than this.     

Read more about AANY here and here.

Dates: Saturday, April 2nd 2011, 10AM-7PM; Sunday April 3rd 2011, 10AM-6PM.

Location: CANACO (Chamber of Commerce) on Avenida Itzaes and Calle 31, 3 blocks south of Clinica Merida.

Admission: Free!  And free parking on Calle 31.  Food and beverages available.

Metaphors Are Everywhere

When you are looking for them, as we often do, and you enter the house of a man who makes knives for a living, the metaphors abound. If metaphors were knives, we would have been bleeding. And if they all were not so trite, we might have even started out with one or two. But talking about how this man is "on the cutting edge" or that we are bringing you a "slice of life" just seems to reduce metaphor to pun.

So we’ll skip those and get to the "point".

Jeff Ware makes knives. Beautiful, handmade knives. Allow us to tell you his story.

Philadelphia Born

In the Old Country, which in Jeff’s case is Philadelphia, Jeff grew up an inner city boy. His interest in art started with photography, back when it was debatable if photographs could even be called "art". After high school, and a brief stint at a regular college, he ended up at Philadephia College of Art, where he was exposed to the art of metalwork. The possibilities of shaping metal into beautiful tools clicked with a childhood memory of a cherished circus pocketknife and his innate "fix-it" abilities, and he set about gathering the skill and tools to make knives.

Detour to Mexico

His knife-making future might have ended when he left school, if it had not been for a chance meeting with a Mexican exchange student who befriended him and then invited him to visit a knifemaker she knew in Guerrero, Mexico. On a whim, he flew to Mexico and traveled with his friend by bus and private airplane to a small pueblito in the mountains. There he spent five days working with Don Primitivo Pablo Romano, a man who spent the days of his life making machetes.

During the day, Jeff watched as Don Primitivo and his brother alternated hammer strikes on glowing red metal that had been heated in a primitive brick oven, while Don Primitivo’s son pumped the bellows to keep the fire hot. They started with leaf-springs from old cars, and they burnt wood they gathered themselves.

At night, Jeff and his friend bedded down with the fleas in the only spare space in the village, an adobe house with dirt floors. Corn for the next season was piled up in the corner and next to the bed was an altar where candles burned all night and day. Townspeople came at all hours into their room to visit with the recently-deceased relative who had died there a few weeks earlier. After five days of this waking Mexican dream, Jeff was ferried out again by the same small airplane, never to return (well, not YET, anyway).

A Dream in his Pocket

Needless to say, that visit haunted him and soon after he returned to the States, he had a vivid dream about Mexico and a life he would live there. He wrote down the dream and he put it in his wallet, where it waited for the next twenty-something years.

Meanwhile, Life happened. Ten years or so later, Jeff found himself married with two children, running one of the East Coast’s first microbreweries. He and his partner had built the business from a small idea into a big business, and Jeff taught himself to be a businessman in a business that grew more competitive by the year. By the time things sorted themselves out, his kids were grown, he and his wife were divorced, the business was sold and Jeff was ready to write the next chapter.

One night, at a party, the conversation turned to dreaming and someone asked, "If you could be doing anything with your life, what would you be doing?" Jeff remembered the paper in his wallet and pulled it out and read it, thus beginning his journey that would end in Merida.

The Leaving

Perhaps Jeff began to leave Philadelphia that summer that he spent five days in the mountains of Guerrero. Perhaps it started even before that with the circus and the souvenir pocketknife, complete with a compass on the blade. Perhaps Mexico was in his soul from the very beginning. Ni modo… when he began to leave Philadelphia, he found himself headed instead for Miami. He wanted a warmer climate and a small space within which to renew his interest in making knives.

He had a place rented and plans to move when he stopped in Philadelphia on a busy highway in rush hour traffic to change a flat tire. At the back of the car, lifting the spare tire out of the trunk, he barely had time to turn around before he was apparently struck by a grey car barreling at him at more than 50 miles per hour.

We say "apparently" because to this day, he isn’t sure what happened. He should have been pinned between the grey car and his own trunk. If pressed, he thinks partial credit for this personal miracle might go to the five or six years of yoga he had been practicing. He should have died. Instead, he found himself flat on the pavement a few feet away. A few hours later he found himself being released from a hospital emergency room with only a few bruises and a lawsuit in the making. A year later, after physical therapy, he found himself not in Miami, but on his way to Merida.

Lining Up and Falling Into Place

When Jeff came to visit Mexico, he met some people that introduced him to some people… you know how it goes. When you are going in the direction your life wants to take you, the stars align and everything falls into place. And that’s how it happened that Jeff Ware now finds himself in a sunny home in Garcia Gineres, enjoying new relationships and friendships here in Merida. His daughter is married, his son is graduating from college and Jeff is going back to what he first loved… the magic of taking steel and shaping it into beautiful and useful tools.

The day we visited Jeff, he had a small table set up to show us his knives. Each one is unique, although he is also currently working on a set of twenty matching steak knives. The one-of-a-kind knives range from folding pocket knives to large butcher knives, and many variations in between.

Jeff sources his metal (stainless steel, because carbon steel rusts in this climate) from the United States, but all the wood and bone used for handles comes from local providers. He uses woods like ciricote, sapodilla and other local hardwoods. Some of the knives have handles made from cuerno de venado (deer horn) or cuerno de vaca (cow horn). Each one is engraved with his name and the name of the city where they were made. Some of them have special patterns and icons engraved on them by artist Manuel Taure.

We have to say… they are beautiful. We especially love the organic pattern Jeff carves on the knife’s non-working edge… a delightful detail. We love that they are handmade here in Merida. We love that you can order one for yourself or for a gift. We love that when your knife is dull, there is an excellent place now to get it sharpened in a way that will not damage it.

Jeff Ware in Merida

Jeff’s life in Merida has so far been as touched by serendipity as was his convoluted journey here. He told us about his search for a yunque (anvil). Anvils are solid blocks of steel… not something he could import like his kiln or the other equipment in his shop. Jeff wanted an old anvil… in fact, he had the romantic idea of finding an antique anvil, something difficult to find anymore in the States.

As it turns out, anvils are hard to come by in Mexico as well. Especially, we suspect, in the Yucatan as there is no indigenous source of metal here, and metalworking is probably not a particularly old art in these parts.

As it turns out, Jeff did find a beautiful old anvil, but the owner was unwilling to part with it. Disappointed, he went to the mercado and asked the sellers there if they could help him. One of them eventually took him to the home of his aged parents, where his father, once a metalworker, had an old block of steel half-buried in the backyard where he had used it over the years. No longer able to work, the father sold Jeff his yunque, which is now lovingly mounted on a tree stump in Jeff’s backyard. We mused how much we appreciate the United States for how easy it is to find almost anything. But also how we appreciate Mexico for how magically things appear when they are called for, and how everything here comes with a story.

Who knows what happens next for Jeff Ware? He has told us he will teach knife-making at some point, and we look forward to his contribution to the arts community here in Merida. Whatever happens, his dream continues…

****

Rosas + Xocolate – You can buy Jeff’s knives at the gift shop at this hotel on Paseo de Montejo

Dock Street Brewing Company in Philadelphia

All About Knifemaking on Wikipedia

Jeff sells his knives at the AANY shows, or you can email him at jdclock [at] gmail [dot] com

The name of her company here in Merida, Yucatan is Huellas Designs. Huellas means footprints in Spanish; it also means handprints, pawprints… in fact, it means something along the lines of "the evidence that we leave behind that proves that we were here".

Her name is Katherine and she is an artist.

One Foot In the Midwest

Back home in Ohio, Katherine had a typical midwestern upbringing. She and her sisters lived in a town where their father owned a restaurant. Katherine showed artistic talent in high school, and watched one of her older sisters go off to Yale Univeristy to study Fine Art. Contrary to the family’s expectations, after graduation, the sister became a nurse. When it was time for Katherine to go to college, her dad was not inclined to pay for art school, so Katherine went to nursing school instead. She eventually added social work and liberal arts to her studies, but her father was adamant about one thing: No Art!

One Giant Step to the Yucatan

To be an artist is to be compelled to create something new and different. Artists are inventors and interpreters, and they are comfortable with pushing limits. That type of personality combined with the natural curiosity of a young adult doesn’t tend to find satisfaction in a small midwest town. When Katherine and her sister went on a graduation trip to Cancun, she met Luis, the man who would later become her husband… and the trajectory of her typical American life changed forever. Before she knew it, she had left Ohio and moved to Merida, Yucatan to start a life with her new love.

That life quickly expanded to take up all of her time and attention. Together, Katherine and Luis had four children (now all teenagers or older), while Luis ran the Yucatan-based family business. That left Katharine running the family, raising her children, and learning to fit into the Yucatan culture, which left little time for the art that she felt born to.

The Creative Imperative

Natural-born creativity, though, has a way of bubbling, boiling and escaping into any activity and what better place to apply creative ideas than in the service of raising children? Katherine started illustrating children’s books for her own children. She worked on a park project in La Ceiba, where she was part of a team that turned an abandoned lot into a shady park with pathways, playgrounds and whimsical touches, including the cement dinosaur fossil feet… a foreshadowing of the work she is doing today. When Gerda Gruber announced her first and only class for sculpture in 2001, Katharine applied and, referencing the various projects she had created for her children, was accepted.

Although she had never worked in clay or any sculpted medium before, within two weeks of starting the class, Katharine knew this was what she wanted to do with her energy. The tactile expressiveness that the clay invited satisfied a hunger in her that drawing in two dimensions never had. Of the twelve people that started the class, Katharine was one of the nine who graduated.

Like others in the class, Katharine was ready to begin working at her art and bringing it to the public. But before she could get started, an opportunity arose for the entire family to spend a year in France and they took it. With no ability or time to set up a studio, Katharine reverted to home and child care when she wasn’t traveling and soaking in the 24-hour-a-day art lesson that is Europe. Every museum, every garden, every plate of food was a chance to study and learn aesthetics, and Katharine returned to Merida, full of experiences and hungering to create.

Art Work

She came back determined to make art her job. She set up her studio in the back of her house, took correspondence courses from the Academy of Art in San Francisco, and started working. The project for the park had piqued her interest in fossils, and the months in Europe had sparked a fascination for the impact that historical records have upon living people. She started working with a Cretaceous fish fossil from the pycnosteroididae family. The fish had died out in the Cretaceous era, 144-65 million years ago, and had left no descendants. The fish itself had originally been very tiny, only 4.3 centimeters long, but when she enlarged the fossil and recreated it in concrete, she was struck not only by its primeval beauty but by its journey. An imprint of its skeleton was all it had left behind, and yet, here it was again, an idea being brought back into existence. Lifted from its surroundings, isolated and enlarged, the fossil was bizarre, primitive and ghostly.

Encouraged by her results, Katherine’s experimentation took two directions. She experimented in materials and techniques, while simultaneously experimenting in shapes, concepts and design. Her kiln wasn’t large enough to hold the pieces she had in mind, so she began with concrete, learning the recipe from an albañile, and expanding upon it. She experimented with sand, ground stone and even saskab, a stone ingredient the Mayans used in building their monuments. She bought her own cement mixer, and experimented with formulas and mixing techniques. When cement proved to be too brittle for the large but delicate pieces she had in mind, she experimented with old newspaper, ground shells and other materials. She eventually turned to resin, adding in cement, saskab and pigments to expand her options for texture, color and finishes. The resin she works with now is not as ecologically friendly as she would like it to be, because it can be dangerous (she wears a gas mask to avoid inhaling the resin dust when she works). But resin provides the lightness and flexibility she needed to create the large, lacy structures that she envisioned.

Some of her latest work has been with butterfly wings… but wings so magnified and abstracted that they are not recognizable at first. The structure of the decoration of the wing informs the resin pieces… they can be mounted as sconces or sculptures on the wall, or used on a table as sculptures or even as a plate to hold fruit. Katherine has no preconceived ideas about how you are going to use her work. She purposely creates it to be both strong and light. Unlike the clay she started with, resin makes the pieces durable enough to do almost anything you have in mind, inviting you to join her in the neverending creative process. In fact, Katherine’s art bends at times toward the practical, crossing that blurry line between art and design, and Katherine has no problem with that.

Her latest project began with the fossil of a fish called Seymouria, a reptile-like tetrapod (according to Wikipedia) whose skeleton is found in Texas. Katharine’s stylized version of Seymouria is being rendered in resin, but Katharine is still experimenting with the right mix that will allow her to sculpt both sides, creating a three-dimensional representation of a two-dimensional fossil record. She intends to work both sides of the finished product, so the fellow’s ribs and feet and other characteristics will be detailed on both sides. The end result will be a quasi-fossil, as if the animal it represents is itself rising out of the record it left behind millions of years ago.

With most of her fossil-based works, she starts from the photograph of the fossil, then draws it. From the drawing she forms a sculpture in clay and plastilina, from which she makes a silicon mold. The mold is used to make just ten reproductions, each one of which is then cleaned, polished, and detailed by hand. Each piece may also be painted and all are sealed.

She has created works in color, although most of our favorites were the ones in black, greys and white. She has created works with finishes that resemble bronze, stone or paper. Some of the works in her studio the day we photographed were multiples of her original fish fossil, a concrete version of an enlarged shell, a broken version of another fish fossil sculpture done on commission, multiple butterfly-wing sculptures in round, bent and linear forms, floral designs lifted from Nasstrom fabrics especially for their store, and the beginnings of the Seymouria series.

Her studio is filled with the dust of activity, and everywhere are molds, failed experiments, sculptures ready to ship and treasured remembrances. She finds herself with a studio that most artists would envy, looking out over the manicured garden, swimming pool and children’s jungle gym that frame her life. Inside the frame, there is not a sedentary painting, but a three-dimensional menagerie that is shifting in time, magnification, color and material, straining to escape two dimensionality and history.

As many women do, Katharine admits to sublimating her creative ideas and desires to the daily responsibilities of motherhood and marriage. She created a beautiful, art-filled home with creative touches everywhere, but as many women have, she found herself straining at the millions of spiderweb ties that each day held her back from making her art. Now, with grown children, she is brimming with ideas and plans for larger sculptures, like one that will fill a room with the twisting bones of a serpent. She has placed some of her sculptural pieces at the local Nasstrom store, where they beautifully complement the modern furniture sold there. She has visions of integrating her designs into the walls of houses, or laying them end-to-end to become the walls themselves. Now finally, with education, experience, travel and time inside her and with her own permission, Katherine de Barrueta is picking up speed and momentum, quietly exploding into hypercreativity.

Like the woman who created it, Katherine’s art speaks quietly. When Katherine speaks out in the world, she is a soft-spoken woman who seems to have effortlessly absorbed into her personality the famous Yucatecan graciousness. In her studio, where she opens her heart to her work and her ideas, she communicates her passion, her fierce love for the natural world and her even fiercer need to share the beauty of it with others.

Katherine’s pieces are deceptively decorative at first. Like many things in nature, when you quiet your mind and spend time with them, they speak. They whisper of places and events far, far away in time and space. They invite a child’s wonder for fossils and dinosaurs and butterflies and a scientific fascination for the worlds found in a microscope. And they pose the ubiquitous questions that we all live with, but seldom allow ourselves to ask… Why are we here, if the only thing we leave behind are these huellas? What is the impact of what we leave behind? Why does it matter and who does it matter to? What is it exactly that survives? And what will I leave behind? What will be MY legacy that someday, someone, somewhere will see and appreciate?

Katherine de Barrueta and her art invite us first and foremost, to enjoy their intrinsic beauty, lifted from nature and enhanced by the hands of the artist. And then her pieces invite us to question and reflect. And when we walk away, we find the pieces themselves and the questions they ask have left their huellas in our memories.

*****

The Foundation of Gerda Gruber, Katherine’s teacher and a local sculptor. Katherine’s page

Huellas Designs website

Nasstrom furniture store in Merida

The last available of Katherine’s original Fish Fossil pieces is available for sale at Colomer.