A Day of Clay: Visiting Santa Maria Atzompa with Innovando la Tradicion
In their own words, Innovando la Tradicion is a creative platform where artisans, designers and artists share skills, knowledge and stories to rethink and honor the ceramic traditions of Oaxaca. The group helps potters and pottery communities in Oaxaca with support to develop their trade. Before the new year, my sister and I joined a one-day excursion […]
Oaxaca’s Contemporary Art Museum MACO Shows Ceramic Sculpture
A second floor exhibition of ceiling-height sculptural columns that I interpret as totems are made by ceramic artist Mariana Castillo Deball, who lives and works in Mexico City and Berlin. The show opened last night at MACO, the Museo Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca on Macedonio Alcala. The work is on view until April 20 and […]
A Tribute to Potter Dolores Porras, a Documentary Movie by Michael Peed
I want to tell you that Michael Peed has made a remarkable, endearing, engaging, and beautiful film about Dolores Porras and her pottery. Michael is the perfect person to have made this documentary because he is a potter himself. That is why the narrative is laced with terrific explanations of the pot-making process, how the […]
Homage to Dolores Porras
It has been three years since I visited folk art potter Dolores Porras in her village of Santa Maria Atzompa. She was still actively creating decorative pots painted with figures of sirenas (mermaids) with wild hair and tantalizing three dimensional breasts, sculpted figures of madonnas and angels, fanciful pigs and burros. The shelves were packed […]
Santa Maria Atzompa Mercado de Artesanias
The central market in Atzompa is an artists cooperative full of ceramics of all different colors and styles that represent the work made by potters of this renown village. It is about 20 minutes outside the city of Oaxaca very close to the archeological site of Monte Alban, so you can make a day of […]