Monthly Archives: January 2015

Day 1: Portrait Photography in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca

I organize the Oaxaca Portrait Photography Workshop based in Teotitlan del Valle to introduce experienced and novice photographers to the beauty, kindness and culture of Oaxaca’s people.  Our workshop started today.

True to experience, instructor Matt Nager returned with lots of strategies for taking better people pictures. First we looked at and discussed examples from some of the best: Yousef Karsh, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Nadev Kander, Dan Winters and Matt’s portraits. We reviewed camera basics using manual settings and covered iPhone photography tips.  Then, we took to the streets. After taking impromptu photos on the fly — asking local people for permission to photograph them (which combines both respectfulness and courage) — we went into a family home for a more formal session.

Photography Workshop: Oaxaca Luvia Lazo  Portraits_1_Best12-8 Selling Tables, Teotitlan del Valle Grandmother & granddaughter, Teotitlan del ValleJose Buenaventura, Teotitlan del Valle Lupita and Ernestina, Teotitlan del Valle Moto Taxi, Teotitlan del Valle Matt Nager, Teotitlan del Valle La Cocinera, Teotitlan del Valle In the Church Courtyard, Teotitlan del VallePortraits_1_Best12-11 Portraits_1_Best12-9Each of us will edit each day and select our ten best photos each day. Here are what I chose for today’s best. At the end of the week, we will each present our twenty best of week after a series of feedback sessions and reviewing each others’ work.

Participants this year come from Canada and the United States of America, and one is a native of northern Italy. Our local fixer is photographer Luvia Lazo who helps us with the local Zapotec language and more complex Spanish translations. It’s wonderful to have her help!

 

4th Feria de Carrizo Continues Sunday in San Juan Guelavia, Oaxaca

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More handmade bamboo baskets than you could ever count!  Handmade cornhusk paper flowers in every color of the rainbow are yours for a dollar each. Want a bamboo airplane or dump truck for a child to play with or a birdcage to hang from your veranda? How about a market or waste basket or something grander to store laundry or anything else you want kept out of sight?

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The Feria de Carrizo in San Juan Guelavia is all this and more.  This Sunday, February 1, 2015, is the last day. Get there by ten in the morning to get first choice.  Sample great food prepared on the spot, al fresco.

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Save your breakfast until you get there. Take your pick from barbecue goat, chicken enchiladas with red sauce, chicken and pork pozole, hot chocolate, atole, homemade empanadas with tortillas fresh from the griddle. The food is all made women from local village organizations and the proceeds help fund the health center and other municipal endeavors. Notice the innovative wheel barrow stove! Mexicans are incredibly resourceful.

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What makes San Juan Guelavia special and this festival unique is that the bamboo is grown in the village, stripped by hand, woven by hand, and is a dying craft worthy of preservation. Bamboo baskets, once used throughout the farming communities of Oaxaca, have now largely been replaced by plastic. The handwork ranges from very fine to utilitarian and considered an art form.

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The local market is open, too. Last Sunday there was a farmer selling quail. Fruits and vegetables abound, including perfectly ripe avocados for five cents each. I couldn’t help myself and picked up a sapote negro, too. Stock up on garlic from neighboring Tlacochuaya or mangoes from the coast. The homemade ice cream, called nieves, was some of the best I’ve tasted anywhere in Oaxaca.  Try the mamay (a tropical fruit) and nuez (pecan nuts).

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One of the great things I discovered at the basket festival is a little tiendita on your left just before you get to the zocalo. They sell wild herb tobala mezcal, called arroqueño, produced by El Cortijo. I bought three bottles and will probably go back for more. It’s delicious and makes great gifts.

CarrizoBest-4 CarrizoBest-9Susana Harp is this year’s madrina, the benefactress of the Feria. She was there last Sunday, and though she didn’t perform live, her songs were broadcast throughout the gathering area.  CarrizoBest-5

 

Oaxaca’s Contemporary Art Museum MACO Shows Ceramic Sculpture

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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 features indigenous objects — gourds, urns, animals, gods and goddesses, cooking vessels — many of which replicate those found at the archeological sites of Monte Alban and Atzompa.

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MACO is no ordinary edifice. While conquistador Hernan Cortes never lived in Oaxaca, his son Martin Cortes, second Marquis del Valle de Oaxaca built and occupied this grand house. It is now a perfect public space to view large works created by Mexico’s masters.  The art is larger than life and fits into the more than spacious galleries.

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Innovando la Tradicion with 1050 Degrados have helped produce the exhibition. They are a nonprofit ceramics arts cooperative that helps promote indigenous ceramics in many of Oaxaca’s pre-Hispanic villages that have created functional and artistic ware for centuries.

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The artist asks us to look at how past informs present and creates future. Using indigenous Mexican icons from cooking vessels to codices images to gears and other technological devices, she creates a vertical landscape for imagining, exploring the consonance of time and its objects, memory and influence on the present.

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In addition to this wonderful show, other art in the building offers us a view into Mexico’s contemporary art scene.  Plus, the balmy January evening gave me a chance to look over the balcony onto the Andador, the pedestrian walk that connects the Zocalo to Santo Domingo Church.  In the distance a band played and a sequence of wedding parties paraded in and out of the neighborhood churches, too.

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¿Quién medirá el espacio,

quién me dirá el momento?

Mariana Castillo Deball

Enero 24 – abril 20, 2015

Inauguración: Sábado 24 de enero, 7 pm – 9 pm.

La exposición inicia con una pregunta sobre la consonancia entre el tiempo y los objetos, y cómo la memoria se impregna del presente.

¿Cómo contar la historia del universo en cien años?

¿Cómo contar la historia del universo en un día?

Serpiente, pochote, engrane, trompo, pelota, guerrero-cornudo, madre tierra, alfarero, olla, murciélago, tornillo, perro, mazorca, rana con celular, raíz, lagartija, calabaza, anciano, guajolote, ceiba, columna infinita.

Este repertorio de objetos, algunos de ellos arqueológicos, otros mecánicos, lúdicos o sintéticos; fueron seleccionados en el presente, junto con el Taller de Cerámica Coatlicue en Atzompa, Oaxaca. La selección fue el sustento para imaginar una serie de historias, que ahora se alzan cual columnas en el espacio expositivo.

La pregunta inicial parte de la relación que los ceramistas de Atzompa tienen con su legado arqueológico y de qué manera este se expresa, se contamina o se disuelve en el presente. Lejos de tomar una postura purista, el trabajo comenzó con una serie de discusiones en torno a las copias, las falsificaciones, los cambios de estilo y las influencias en la historia de la arqueología mexicana.

El proyecto cuestiona la idea de una tradición estática que no se debe cambiar para poder existir, ampliando el debate de lo que es la arqueología en el presente y cómo puede ser actualizada constantemente para resignificar panoramas visuales de identidad.

Este proyecto un proyecto realizado en colaboración con el Taller de Cerámica Coatlicue, de la familia Hernández Alarzón en Santa María Atzompa, e Innovando la Tradición ac. Producido por el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca.

Mariana Castillo Deball (México, 1975) vive y trabaja en la Ciudad de México y en Berlín.

Oliver Martínez Kandt, Curador (Oaxaca, 1983) Curador del programa Monogramas del MACO.

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca. MACO

Alcalá 202, Centro Histórico

Oaxaca, Oaxaca, México

http://www.museomaco.com 

info@museomaco.com

A Visit to Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca: More Than Rug Shopping

So many visitors come to Teotitlan del Valle, brought by tour guides to go rug shopping, but never know the other treasures that the village has to offer. In and out of rug galleries on the main road, off they go to the next destination without ever coming into the center of town. I recommend you don’t make that mistake!

You really need a few hours here or more to explore this wonderful Zapotec pueblo.

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Church Built Atop Ancient Zapotec Temple

Did you know there is an ancient pre-Hispanic archeological site behind the Iglesia de Preciosa Sangre de Cristo (Church of the Precious Blood) in Teotitlan del Valle?  It’s not a high pyramid like those at Monte Alban or Mitla because the Spanish conquerors used the temple stones to build the church foundation and edifice. You need to walk around to the back side to see the remains and then go inside the church courtyard to see stone carvings recovered from the original structure that are embedded in the walls.  Look closely and you will see the rain god Tlaloc and the plumed serpent Quetzalcoatl.

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Community Museum: A Living History of Zapotec Life

The community museum, known as Balaa Xtee Guech Gulal or translated from Zapotec to mean In the Shadow of the Old People, is located across from the rug market.  Next to it is the village government building called the Municipio or Palacio.  The entire square was redesigned and rebuilt several years ago into a modern public gathering space and there is ample parking.

In the community museum you can purchase important documentary videos produced by Metamorfosis Documentation Project that explain the history and culture of the village through its very important of Dance of the Feather — Danza de la Pluma.  All sales of the video benefit the ongoing non-profit projects of the museum to preserve and explain traditions. Museum exhibits include old photographs, dioramas, textiles and archeological findings.

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Daily Market: Sustenance of Village Life

You can find market vendors as early as seven or seven-thirty in the morning setting up stalls.  There really isn’t an official time for the market, but it’s going full blast by eight-thirty in the morning and begins to slow down two hours later. By eleven in the morning, only a few fruit sellers are left.  It’s worth it to come into town the day before, spend the night at one of the lovely and basic posadas/hostals, and get up early to get to the market.  I often sit at the periphery just to watch the ladies with their woven market baskets made from bamboo (called canastas) crooked through their elbows, as vendors weigh out the produce and deposit the purchase into the basket.

Here you can get fresh squeezed organic juices. My favorite is beet, carrot, pineapple and orange juice.  Belly up to a comal for a breakfast quesadilla or pick out a savory tamale Teotiteco-style — bean, amarillo, chipil — from one of the women who sell out in the open air. Peel back the husk and use your fingers to eat, just like the locals.  Then, of course, there are the handmade aprons, the uniform of local Zapotec women, sold near the bread vendors.

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Smell the fragrant lilies. Take in the piles of roses. Pay attention to the grandmothers whose braids, interwoven with ribbon, hang down their backs. Catch a whiff of the copal incense coming from the church. Feel your feet on ancient cobblestones.  Immerse yourself and take your time.  The life here is rich and rewarding.

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A Walk to the Presa: The Reservoir Awaits

Egrets, heron, grazing cattle and sheep, herders on horseback or walking with staff in hand are part of everyday life here.  From the village market, walk along Avenida 2 de Abril toward the sacred mountain called Picacho.  When you come to the T, which is Avenida Revolucion, make a right turn and continue along the wide dirt road until you come to the reservoir and dam.  This is the water source for the village’s agricultural endeavors. It is also very scenic and a perfect place for an afternoon picnic.  Did you remember to buy cheese and bread the market?  If you do this, please don’t forget to pack out your refuse!

Gracias y adios!

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Wandering Oaxaca and Teotitlan del Valle

Casita Roof Sunset-3 Casita Roof Sunset-2 After our Art Huipil Workshop ended, I retreated to the rooftop terrace where I live in Teotitlan del Valle to finish The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. The views of the surrounding Tlacolula valley are glorious from there, especially at sunset. Casita Roof Sunset-4It’s winter, the dry season. The night air is clear and cold. The star field is glorious. During the day, sun provides enough heat that we have to hide from it by walking on the shady side of the street. So many northerners are here to seek shelter from the winter cold in the warmth of Oaxaca’s sun.Art Huipil Workshop-9Around and about Teotitlan del Valle, the daily village market, from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., gives us bread, fresh vegetables, meats and poultry, handcrafts and the essentials of daily life, like soap and bathroom tissue! The space is a source of constant fascination and appreciation for me. It’s where my food comes from! Art Huipil Workshop-99 For those without vehicles and sturdy legs, the tuk-tuks (or moto-taxis, as some call them) are an essential for getting home from the market with the daily bundle that always includes fresh flowers for the altar.Art Huipil Workshop-111 When the market closes at 10:30 a.m. not much happens there until mid-afternoon when the nieves (ice cream) vendors come to open their stalls. Ices made from tropical fruits like mango, papaya, strawberry and pineapple are muy rico. And, yes, they are made with purified water.Art Huipil Workshop-22After resting for a few days, I went to Oaxaca city to meet up with friends for a series of lunches and dinners. Social life here during the season can be intense. But not as intense as the color of this yellow flowering tree that punctuates the skyline throughout the city.

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Everyone along the cobblestone sidewalks have their heads lifted skyward to take in the brilliant yellow blossoms of the Primavera tree of the genus Tabebuia, also called Ipe or Trumpet tree.  Not me, though. With my new knee replacement only two months behind me, I’m very careful to step lightly. If I want to take something in, I stop and plant myself on terra firma.

ArtHuipilMezcalChoc-2 Late afternoon brings us to Santo Domingo Church where vendors gather and weddings and quinceañieras are scheduled throughout the day. Bring it on!

Pink Hummer-3 Later that same night, with Pink Hummer stretch limo in waiting, a fifteen year old princess emerges from Santo Domingo complete with her men in waiting to escort her into the cavernous vehicle. There’s lots of poverty in Oaxaca and visible wealth, too. I see many more Audi’s, Mercedes and BMW’s on the streets now than ever before.

ArtHuipilMezcalChoc-4As we emerge from a delicious dinner at La Zandunga on Garcia Virgil, we stop in to Casa Crespo for a Oaxaca chocolate tasting. I think my favorite is the one flavored with chipotle chili. Trees on the avenue are illuminated in changing colors of red, green, yellow and purple. It’s a warm and festive evening for strolling.

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So we stroll on over to Mezcaleria El Cortijo for a nightcap of my favorite reposado, an aged mezcal that goes down smooth and easy.  Ellen sniffs the bottle while our host Raul Mendez talks about mezcal culture.

Anri Okada Artist-4 Anri Okada Artist-2Oaxaca is pretty quiet most Sundays, and in my meanderings I notice an artist through an open doorway painting what appears to be a sign.  Meet Anri Okada. She has been in Oaxaca for six months, is an artist from Japan who studied painting. She speaks Spanish and English and is delightful.  Curiosity is what keeps the world exciting and imaginative.  You never know who you will meet next!Art Huipil Workshop-89Back in Teotitlan del Valle, weaving continues, surrounded by the paraphernalia of the craft — bags of wool, unwarped looms, cotton warp thread, a baby’s rocking horse and a dog’s water bowl.

Pochote_CKnox-2 Ultimately, it’s time to eat and what could be better than blue corn tortillas on the comal with your choice of chorizo and cheese, beans, or potatoes and spinach topped with a fresh egg. The health of Mexicans depends upon unadulterated non-genetically modified corn. It’s a constant battle here between the small farmers and the mega-producers like Monsanto. Indigenous corn, grown in the Oaxaca valley for 8,000 years, is laden with nutrition.

As we say in Mexico, buen provecho!

Two spaces open now in the Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing & Yoga Retreat. And, you may want to come with me as we go Looking for Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in April in Mexico City.