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Oaxaca Natural Dye Workshops

Oaxaca Natural Dye Workshops can be scheduled at your convenience whenever you plan to visit Oaxaca. Of course, this depends on instructor availability, too. Ideally, we would like at least two or more weeks advance notice to schedule a workshop on the dates you prefer.

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The one, two or three-day workshops, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day, are held in the historic center of Oaxaca city. The location is within a five minute taxi ride from the Zocalo or you can choose to walk 20-minutes to get there.  We send map and directions after you register and pay your deposit.

You will take home recipes/formulas for each dye and a wool sampler of colors you make during the workshop. The sample includes 5 grams of each color.  This is a workshop to learn the process.  If you want to bring your own wool to dye, the cost is 10 pesos per gram extra with a maximum of 10 grams per color.

Featuring private and small group workshops. 

Penland Indigo Workshop

 The Complete 3-day Workshop (32 colors)

Day 1–Prep for the Process:  10:00 am to about 3:00 pm — This is a preparation day. You will prepare grey and white wool with a mordant, in order to achieve 30 different colors on Day 2 and Day 3! We will talk about natural dyes in Oaxaca, and make the extract of pericón (wild marigold) and pomegranate.

Day 2–Red, Yellow, Brown: 10:00 am to 3:00 pm — You dye with pomegranate and pericón (wild marigold), then prepare extracts of cochineal (acid and neutral), the insect that produces carminic acid to give an intense, colorfast red.

Day 3–Rainbows & Overdyes: 10:00 am to 3:00 pm — You will prepare an indigo vat, make a shibori scarf design, then dye with indigo to get various shades of blue. With an indigo over-dye, you will get a range of purples and greens to master the color variations.

Private workshop fee is $470 USD for one person. $425 per person for two or more people.

The 2-day Workshop (11 colors)

Day 1: 10:00 am to about 3:00 pm — First you begin to understand the natural dye process by first applying a mordant to the white wool. This takes time, and we wait until the wool is sufficiently “cooked” so that you can prepare it to create 11 different colors. You will then dye with pericon (wild marigold) and pomegranate, and make an extract of cochineal (acid and neutral).

Day 2: 10:00 am to 3:00 pm — You will prepare an indigo dye vat and then use the wool you dyed on Day 1 to make over dyes that will yield purples and greens.

Private workshop fee is $290 for one person. $265 per person for two or more people.

The 1-Day Workshop: Cochineal Only

From 10:00 am to 3:00 pm you will start the mordant process, discuss natural dyes in Oaxaca, start the mordant process, and prepared extracts of cochineal as you change the pH of the dye vat to yield 12 different colors of red.

Private workshop fee is $235 for one person. $195 per person for two or more people.

One-day Indigo Dye Workshop—click here for details and complete description

How to Register and Pay: Send Norma Schafer an email to tell us your preferred dates. We will check about available dates and let you know. Then, you tell us you are ready to register.
 
A 25% non-refundable deposit will confirm your registration. The balance is due on the first day of the workshop in cash (USD or pesos, or you can use a credit card with a 4% service fee). 
  1. We will send you a payment request using Zelle bank transfer with NO SERVICE FEE. Tell us how your account is registered — email address or phone number.
  2. You can use a credit card to pay with a 4% service fee. We will invoice you.
  3. Tell us which payment method you prefer. 
  4. Once we receive the deposit, we confirm and send you directions.
  5. You pay the balance due in cash (US Dollars or Mexican Pesos at the exchange rate of the day) on the day of the workshop.

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Notes:

  • Days must be taken in sequence. If there is a group of 4 or more people, we can offer a group price. Please contact us.
  • Lunch is on your own. You can bring a lunch or go out in the neighborhood.
  • Please bring your own drinks and snacks.
  • We give directions to the workshop after you register and pay the registration fees.
  • Please, no children under the age of 15. 

About Your Instructor: The workshop instructor is a knowledgeable expert in the natural dye process and materials. She provides dyed wool and cotton yarns and thread for many of Oaxaca’s famous weavers and textile designers, and she works with textile designers worldwide to offer customized colors that are used in fashion and home goods.

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Reservations and Refund Policy.  To reserve, we require a 25% non-refundable registration fee. The balance is due on the first day of the workshop payable in CASH in either USD or MXN pesos at the exchange rate of the day. 

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Please let us know if you have any questions.

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Remembering Frida Kahlo: Icon of Passion and Pain

We ended the four-day Looking for Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Art History Study Tour in Mexico City with a morning at Casa Azul and the Frida Kahlo Museum followed by an afternoon at the Dolores Olmedo Patiño Museum. (I’ll be setting 2016 dates soon. Contact me to be notified.)

A few little nips

Frida Kahlo is a great source of inspiration and admiration. I see Frida differently each time I visit her home and look deeper into her art. Many are self-portraits about her accident, deformities, wish to be a mother, miscarriages and marital infidelities. Her work is honest and vulnerable.

Evoking Frida Kahlo: Making Memory Altars and Shrines

Consider making a self-portrait altar — a visual memoir!

Art historians and her admiring public describe her work as intensely personal and something we can all relate to, which is why, even today, her following is immense. She is compared to a contemporary Virgin of Guadalupe.

 

On this visit I was most interested in capturing close-up photographs of some of Frida’s most important works that are on exhibit. I am also continuing to experiment with my new Olympus OMD5 Mark II mirrorless camera that I used to take all the photos here.

 

We will repurpose the images for a 4-day mixed media art workshop, February 25-28, 2016.

Evoking Frida Kahlo: Making Memory Altars and Shrines

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In this mixed media art workshop, led by North Carolina artist Hollie Taylor, participants will build an altar or shrine to remember loved ones or to honor Frida Kahlo, feminist icon of passion and pain.

You can also use the workshop to make a self-portrait altar, incorporating images and experiences from your own life, much like a visual memoir.

 

We look at Frida’s life as an example. She was a woman of strength and complexity. While she lived with intense chronic pain, both physical and emotional, her face to the world successfully hid her deformities and shaped her identity. We see this in the Casa Azul exhibit, Appearances Can Be Deceiving.

  

A new documentary film shown at Casa Azul tells the story of Frida, a woman who has become a contemporary role model, honored for her courage and honesty, and for her ability to paint with emotion as a tool for self-reflection and healing.

Evoking Frida Kahlo: Making Memory Altars and Shrines gives us a chance to personally interpret Frida’s life and employ it as a jumping off point to create our own art altar in memory of Frida or our own special someone. Frida’s courage and obstacles, successes and set-backs are a metaphor for all of us.

  

It offers us an opportunity, through art, to explore identity, image, impression, impact, intent. To create an art altar is to interpret and to understand, to reveal what is hidden, to emotionally connect in a very visual way, and to offer homage.

  

Akin to the Mexican approach to death and dying through Day of the Dead, by building a memory altar or shrine, we create a space where we embrace and examine a loved one’s life using photos and memorabilia.

Consider making a self-portrait altar — a visual memoir!

 

Pueblo Magico Malinalco: Hand-loomed Rebozos and Pre-Aztec Pyramids

The magical town of Malinalco in the State of Mexico is a short thirty-minute ride from Tenancingo de Degollado. One of Mexico’s greatest rebozo weavers, Camila Ramos Zamora, and her family live and work here.

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Her father was a rebozo weaver from Tenancingo and he moved to Malinalco to marry Camila’s mother. They established a workshop that makes some very amazing ikat/jaspe rebozos on the back strap loom. Some use natural dyes. Most have intricate, lengthy fringes called puntas or rapacejos, that in my opinion represent fifty percent of the beauty of a rebozo.

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This week, Came’s son José Rodrigo Mancio Ramos, received the special award for a major piece using natural dyes in the National Rebozo Competition sponsored by FONART and held in Tlaxcala. He carries on the family tradition for creating and executing outstanding textile art.  The punta on his winning piece is made in the pointed style preferred by the Spanish aristocrats who came to Mexico in the 18th century.

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I visited Camila Ramos Zamora’s two shops in Malinalco as well as the amazing Augustinian church built in 1560. I’ve never seen such detailed, dramatic frescoes as these. The church is a sight to behold.

Here’s a note from Mexico expert Silva Nielands: The Paradise Garden murals in the monastery were not painted by the Augustinians who built it, but by the indigenous people who were taught the painting process.  The murals are a mix of European (saintly) themes full of local imagery.  The plants, animals, etc. are all important to the indigenous culture and are like a full encyclopedia of the herbal/medicinal, etc.  http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/peterson-paradise-garden

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Many towns in Mexico were settled by different Catholic orders: Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, Augustinians and Jesuits, missionaries competing for converts. The Augustinian church dominates the central zocalo and is the only Catholic church in Malinalco.

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I admired the black rebozo this woman on the left was wearing as she and two friends exited the church. One friend jumped in to help her put it around her shoulders so I could see the weaving and the very long fringes. I think they were delighted that I noticed and paid them special attention!

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My friend Mary Anne hiked up to the archeological site which she reports is an easy, shaded climb up about 400 shallow steps through amazing landscape.

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Our group from Los Amigos del Arte Popular de Mexico wandered Malinalco independently to explore and discover.  We all met up at Las Placeres for a great lunch on the shaded patio complete with tamarind mezcal Margaritas — mi favorita.

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This experience has been so wonderful, that I want to bring you here with me.

  • So, I’m scheduling a study tour from February 3-11, 2016  to learn about and meet the rebozo weavers of Tenancingo.
  • Meet in Mexico City on February 3 with overnight there.
  • Travel to and stay in Tenancingo  from February 4 to 10
  • Participate in hands-on workshops and demonstrations
  • Travel to Metepec and stay overnight in Metepec on February 10
  • Travel to Mexico City on February 11 to depart for home OR stay on your own through President’s Weekend in Mexico City to enjoy the museums and world-class restaurants

In addition, we will take a day trip to the silver capitol of Mexico, Taxco, a Pueblo Magico, explore the Pueblo Magico ceramics village of Metepec and the Pueblo Magico village of Malinalco.

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We will eat great food, climb ancient pyramids at important though remote archeological sites and immerse ourselves in Mexico’s folk art. We’ll even have the option of a respite with massage and facials.

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Send me an email if you are interested in this study tour!

More information coming soon.

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Teotitlan del Valle Young Photographers Show at Oaxaca Photography Center

The work of young photographers, ages seven to twelve, from Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, were featured at a festive gallery exhibition that opened last Saturday at the Centro Fotografico Manuel Alvarez Bravo.

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They participated in a year-and-a-half photography education project called Nuevas Visiones. Narrando historias visuales en Teotitlán del Valle —  New visions: Narrating Visual Histories in Teotitlan del Valle, sponsored by the photography center and various donors.

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The students met monthly in their village learning camera techniques, lighting and composition, and were given assignments, mostly just to wander and capture what interested them most.

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Juan Enrique Mendoza Sanchez, age 12, Teotitlan del Valle, in front of his photo

Participants

  • Uriel Bazán
  • Adriana Vicente Gutierrez
  • Montserrat Vicente Gutierrez
  • Juan Enrique Mendoza Sánchez
  • Beatriz Ruíz Lazo
  • Antonio Ruiz Lazo
  • Juan Diego Gutierrez Martínez
  • Uziel Montaño Ruiz
  • Javier Lazo Gutiérrez 

The instructor is Eva Alicia Lépiz. Thanks to Javier Lazo Gutierrez, age 25, course teaching assistant, for sending me this list and to Daniel Brena, director of Centro Fotografico Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Ixchel Castellon, independent cultural manager, for producing this important program

Subjects ranged from brothers, sisters, a bedroom still life, and burros with the sacred mountain Picacho as backdrop.

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What amazed me in looking at the work through the eyes of young people was what they chose to focus on. Subjects we might consider mundane became, in their eyes, beautiful, dramatic and meaningful. A lesson for adults to learn.

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Family members and friends mostly gathered in the courtyard of the Centro Fotografico Manuel Alvarez Bravo to celebrate the accomplishments.

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The center helped with cameras and instruction. The village provided meeting space and local people gave support.

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Above left: instructor Eva Alicia Lepiz.

This is an excellent way to bring young people in closer touch with the visual senses around them and give emphasis to a creative form of personal expression.

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Other communities whose young people participate in this innovative outreach program include San Bartolo Coyotepec, Rancho Tejas and El Rosario Temextitlan.

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Above left is Javier Lazo Gutierrez, age 25, who was the teaching assistant for the course. He is a very accomplished photographer!

Funding is made possible through a generous grant from Homeruns Banamex 2014 and the Fundacion Alfredo Harp Helu de Oaxaca.

[Chiapas Faces and Festivals: Photography Workshop produced by Oaxaca Cultural Navigator, set for end of January 2016]

Don’t miss this exhibition. It’s a fresh view of the world.

Evoking Frida Kahlo: Making Memory Altars and Shrines

Mexico is filled with altars that usually include sacred images and a Virgin of Guadalupe retablo. During Day of the Dead a family altar displays photographs of departed loved ones. We are taking this mixed media art workshop, based in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico, beyond the norm to create a three-dimensional altar suitable for display. Frida Kahlo is our muse.

4 Days, February 25 – 28, 2016

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e·voke. əˈvōk/. verb

bring or recall to the conscious mind, conjure up, summon up, invoke, elicit, induce, kindle, stimulate, awaken, arouse, call forth

Frida offers us inspiration for constructing an altar about life, womanhood, loved ones, family, health issues, successes and set-backs. We hold up Frida’s image, perhaps in self-reflection, to imagine her life and its challenges and to evoke meaning for our own. We then translate these concepts into an altar or shrine that can be used for wall art, to display on a surface or to design as a shelving unit for collected objects.

Consider making this a self-portrait altar!

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Frida was an avid collector of exvotos and perhaps you would like to merge this simple expression of thanksgiving and devotion in your work, too.

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When we think of Frida Kahlo, we may conjure up many images and words to describe her: a woman of strength, power, frailty, independence, weakness, accomplishment, talent. Biographers say she was fierce, passionate, defiant, innovative, creative, vulnerable. We know she was deformed, in pain, proud.

 

Your personal altar can be based on your own experience. We embrace Frida as a metaphor to jump into a new creative realm. Your altar might be a tribute to someone you love who is living or passed on. Your altar might contain a message to send or include as a gift. It can be about you, friends, family or Frida herself.

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About Hollie Taylor, MFA, Workshop Leader

Hollie Taylor earned the BFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill focusing on painting and printmaking. She then went on to the University of Georgia and received the MFA with a concentration in printmaking.

Hollie taught drawing, printmaking, painting and ceramics at the college, middle and high school levels. For over 20 years, she has taught adult workshops in handmade paper-making, screen-printing, woodcutting, photo-imaging on clay, ceramic hand-building, mixed media art and art journaling.  

She is a recipient of the North Carolina Museum of Art annual artist scholarship award. Her work is published in Art Voices South and The Village Rambler. She earned the prestigious National Board Certification for Teaching Excellence and her students placed repeatedly in national shows. 

Hollie encourages deep personal exploration, offers demonstrations and samples of finished products.  Art produced at her workshops is highly individualistic, broad ranging in style and expressive of the maker. Participants come to the table with varied past creative experiences and she accommodates fully for this range of novice to accomplished artist. She gives personal feedback and encouragement and holds informal discussions to compare intent with outcome, noting what has been learned. A workshop with Hollie is engaging and fun!

A new project for Hollie involves making a book using found family letters and archival photos from Brazil during World War II. This will become a mixed media art show installation based on composites she is rendering in Photoshop to glean new meaning from the material. 

 

Process and Materials

Using found objects, copies of photographs, paint, paper, memorabilia and embellishments, you will construct either a 8” x 10” three-dimensional sculptural piece or a 12” x 16” flat art wall piece.

Materials We Provide: We provide step-by-step altar-making directions and construction materials, plus selected art supplies such as self-healing cutting mats, box cutters, some acrylic inks, assorted decorative papers, handmade clay medallions and selected ephemera art associated with Frida Kahlo.

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Materials To Bring: A sharp pencil, rubber bands, assorted size small brushes, embellishments such as stamps, charms, shells, milagros, copies of photographs, textiles. Try to imagine what will symbolize the different attribute’s of your altar’s theme and bring what will enhance its meaning. After you register, we will send you a complete list of supplementary supplies to bring. Participants often share for a wider range of choice.

 

Resources: Hollie recommends Crafting Personal SHRINES, Using Photos, Mementos & Treasures to Create Artful Displays, by Carol Owen, Lark Books, 2004.

Our Schedule: Daily, 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. includes catered lunch  

Day One, Thursday, February 25: We look at images of altars and sacred boxes, visit church and private home altars, and talk about Frida Kahlo – her style and what she valued. You will come with a concept for your creation, and with Hollie’s guidance you will finish the design and begin to build your project.

Day Two, Friday, February 26: Continue to build your altar, wrapping it, painting it, and gluing it together to form a completed container for what will come next. You may also want to add a door and small shadow boxes to display memorabilia reflecting your concept.

Rolling on Matte Medium to seal the foam core.

Rolling on Matte Medium to seal the foam core.

Day Three, Saturday, February 27: Finish altar construction. Begin to decorate and embellish your altar with photos (copies), writing, drawing, found objects and memorabilia you have brought with you.

Day Four, Sunday, February 28: You will add the finishing touches before we hang your finished work for a group show and presentation of your piece, followed by a grand finale mezcal margarita cocktail reception.

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Workshop Cost

Base Cost – Workshop Only: $495 per person, includes all instruction, materials to construct your altar or wall art, hand-outs, guided visits to family homes and churches for altar research, 4 lunches and cocktail reception. This option is designed for people who do not need lodging, and want to travel back and forth daily from Oaxaca city.

Upgrade 1 – Workshop + Share Room: $665 per person shared room with private bath en suite. Includes all of the above plus 4 nights lodging, arriving on Wednesday, February 24 and departing Sunday, February 28 by 6 p.m. Includes 4 continental breakfasts. We assign rooms in order of registrations received. Contact us for availability.

Upgrade 2 — Workshop and Private Room/Bath: $795. Includes all of the above.

How to Register

The workshop does NOT include airfare, taxes, tips, travel insurance, liquor or alcoholic beverages, some meals, and local transportation to and from Oaxaca city.  We can arrange taxi pick-up and return from/to the Oaxaca airport at your own expense (approximately 280 pesos).

Reservations and Cancellations A 50% deposit is required to guarantee your spot. The last payment for the balance due (including any add-ons) shall be paid by January 6, 2016. We accept payment with PayPal only. We will send you an itemized invoice when you tell us you are ready to register.  After January 6, refunds are not possible.  You may send a substitute in your place.  If you cancel before January 6, we will refund 50% of your deposit.

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Required–Travel Health/Accident Insurance:  We require that you carry international accident/health/emergency evacuation insurance. Proof of insurance must be sent at least two weeks before departure.  If you do not wish to do this, we ask you email a PDF of a witnessed waiver of responsibility, holding harmless Norma Hawthorne Schafer and Oaxaca Cultural Navigator LLC. Unforeseen circumstances happen!

Workshop Details and Travel Tips.  Before the workshop begins, we will email you a map, instructions to get to the workshop site from the airport, and documents that includes extensive travel tips and information. To get your questions answered and to register, contact: oaxacaculture@me.com

This retreat is produced by Norma Schafer, Oaxaca Cultural Navigator LLC. We reserve the right to make itinerary changes and substitutions as necessary.

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