Chiapas Textile Study Tour 2026: Deep Into Textiles
Dates are set and registration is now open — March 3-11, 2026 At Oaxaca Cultural Navigator, we aim to give you an unparalleled and in-depth travel experience to participate and delve deeply into indigenous culture, folk art, and celebrations. The Maya World of Chiapas, Mexico, spans centuries and borders. Maya people weave their complex universe […]
Japan Blue and Pottery
it’s now 8:09 am. We are 13 hours ahead of you. I’m not sure how to calculate when the debate will happen or if we missed it. the started with $9 cups of coffee — price unknown to us in the Hotel Granvia lobby cafe until we were presented with the check. Saving grace is […]
Deep Into the Mixteca Alta: Oaxaca Textile + Folk Art Study Tour 2025
5 nights, 6 days, March 12-17, 2025 — Starting and ending in Oaxaca City We go deep into the Mixteca Alta, a mountainous region of the Sierra Madre del Sur in the north of Oaxaca state that is situated between the capital city and the Oaxaca coast. This area is home to Mixtec-speaking and Triqui […]
Tootling Around the Villages in Oaxaca
We weren’t exactly going off on a tangent, getting sidetracked, or wandering aimlessly. We had a plan. I spent Thursday and Friday last week taking friends to visit artisans down MEX 190 — the Panamerican Highway — to visit makers I have known for years. Oh, and did I say it’s 80 degrees Fahrenheit here […]
Travel Tips: How to Safely Pack Mezcal, Pottery for the Trip Home
It’s been some years since I wrote about how I pack mezcal bottles, pottery and other fragile artisan crafts to take back to the USA after my stay in Oaxaca. For the most part, I can claim 99.5% success that all will arrive undamaged. Only once, did a plate arrive broken! Basically, what I do […]
Deep Into the Mixteca Alta: Oaxaca Textile + Folk Art Study Tour
5 nights, 6 days, March 7-12, 2024 We go deep into the Mixteca Alta, a mountainous region of the Sierra Madre del Sur in the north of Oaxaca state that is situated between the capital city and the Oaxaca coast. Home to Mixtec-speaking people and other language groups (among them Chatino, Zapotec, Triqui). This tour […]
Bucket List Tour: Monarch Butterflies + Michoacan
February 5 – 13, 2023 – 9 days, 8 nights I never knew that visiting the Monarch butterflies in Mexico should have been on my bucket list until I got there. Tucked into the mountainous forests of Estado de Mexico is the terminus of the butterfly migration from North America where the noble Monarchs winter […]
Two BIG Oaxaca EVENTS and Special Prices for Valentine’s Day
Love Oaxaca? Love artisan makers? Mark you calendar for this Friday and Saturday, February 14 and 15 in downtown Oaxaca, Mexico. Two big expoventas feature some of Oaxaca’s top artisans. English and Spanish spoken. Debit and credit cards accepted.
To the Villages with Shuko–Backroads Oaxaca
Shuko Clouse is here. She opened Mano del Sur recently, a beautiful online shop that combines her Japanese aesthetic — simplicity and quality — with Mexican handcraft excellence. Shuko came to Oaxaca to restock the shop. She takes her time. She curates each item. She meets the makers and engages with them. She holds an […]
One-Day Ocotlan Highway Oaxaca Folk Art Study Tour
This one-day customized study tour takes you beyond Oaxaca City and into the villages along the highway to Ocotlan de Morelos, the home of famed Mexican painter and muralist Rodolfo Morales (1925-2001). We schedule this excursion based on your travel plans and our availability. You can choose to visit four (4) of the following options […]
Announcing Mano del Sur by Shuko Clouse — Curated Goods
Shuko Clouse just opened her online shop Mano del Sur. She is a friend and I want to help give her a boost. Shuko is from Japan. She loves Mexico and particularly Oaxaca. She combines her aesthetic for quality and simplicity with all unique, one-of-a-kind pieces she finds along the way during her travels south-of-the-border. […]
Feria del Barro Rojo del San Marcos Tlapazola 2018: Red Clay Pottery Fair
Who wants to join me for lunch in San Marcos Tlapazola tomorrow, Saturday, July 14? I’ll be there by 11 a.m. in time to see Lila Downs, the madrina (patron) of the celebration, cut the ribbon for the official opening. This is the third year of the festival and each year it grows bigger. In […]
Carol Beron Ceramics Exhibition Opens at ARIPO, September 30
Carol Beron is a ceramic artist who takes her inspiration from much in Oaxaca, from carved animal figures to pre-Hispanic indigenous organic forms. She lives in New York City and visits Oaxaca often. At ARIPO Opening reception: Friday, September 30, 4 to 7 p.m. Exhibition and sale until October 15, 2016. Where: ARIPO — […]
Que Supresa! Oaxaca in San Diego, California
As I drive south from my son’s home in Huntington Beach, California, on my way to visit Barbara and David, and dear friend Merry Foss in San Diego, I marvel at how the landscape looks like Mexico, how the climate feels like Mexico. Except there is development everywhere, new houses, shopping centers, freeway congestion. Infrastructure. […]
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 […]
Soft Landing Oaxaca, and Teotitlan del Valle
It’s a four-and-a-half hour bus ride from Puebla CAPU to Oaxaca ADO bus station. Taxi from Puebla historic center to CAPU is 80 pesos. Bus ticket is about 450 pesos on ADO GL deluxe service. Easy. Scenic. The road dips and rises through mountains studded with mature saguaro and nopal cactus, flowing river beds (it’s […]
Red Pottery of San Marcos Tlapazola, Tlacolula, Oaxaca
My dad was a potter and I grew up with a potter’s wheel and an electric kiln in our garage. Tools were piled on the table, where also sat clay forms drying to the leather hard before he put them into the oven. This is where he would go to work when he came home from […]
Penland School of Crafts in Ocotlan de Morales, Oaxaca
Our Penland School of Crafts group travels through Oaxaca arts and artisan villages this week. One destination is the regional town of Ocotlan de Morales where we met artist Rodolfo Morales through the murals he painted in the municipal building during the mid-century. These frescoes depict the rich agricultural tradition of the Ocotlan valley and […]
Sleek, Functional Contemporary Oaxaca Pottery with Classical Influences: Innovating Tradition
Oaxaca’s cultural identity is defined, in part, by her ceramic arts. For thousands of years before the Spanish conquest, indigenous artisans were giving shape to local clay to form functional cooking and eating vessels, images of dieties for worship and jewelry for personal adornment. Now, after six years of operating from various temporary locations, La Tiendita […]
Oaxaca Folk Art: Jose Garcia Antonio Ceramic Figures
Jose Garcia Antonio, one of Oaxaca’s best clay sculptors, participated in the 2014 International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this July. This is no small accomplishment. This juried exhibition invites only the most accomplished artisans from all over the world to show and demonstrate their craft. Last Friday, we drove out […]
Oaxaca’s Grand Master of Pottery Angelica Delfina Vasquez Cruz
Overlooking the Oaxaca valley at the top of the Santa Maria Atzompa hill is the pottery studio of Angelica Delfina Vasquez Cruz. She has been recognized as one of the great masters of Oaxaca folk art by Fomento Cultural Banamex, the foundation that recognizes the best crafts people of Mexico. We visited Angelica at […]
Oaxaca Show & Sale, July 25-26: To Benefit Artisans and Artists at Las Bugambilias B&B
Don Jose Garcia Antonino: In the Pottery Studio
If you blink you will miss the turn-off to the village of San Antonino Castillo Velasco, just before arriving in Ocotlan de Morelos, where our friend Don Jose Garcia, known as the blind potter, lives and works. Some years ago, Don Jose developed cataracts and without expensive treatment, he lost most of his vision. […]
Extraordinary: Yanhuitlan, Oaxaca and Ceramic Artist Manuel Reyes
Off the beaten path and definitely a must-see, Santo Domingo Yanhuitlan is a small Mixtec pueblo located about an hour-and-a-half north of Oaxaca city, off the Carretera Nacional toll road to Mexico City. It is the home of an extraordinary Dominican Church whose massive stone architecture is reminiscent of the finest European churches, complete with flying […]
Sunday Tlacolula Market: Getting There, Being There
Every Sunday, with the exception of Easter, all the Teotitlan del Valle buses and collectivos go back and forth from the village to the tianguis at Tlacolula de Matamoros. If you want to get from Oaxaca City to Teotitlan on a Sunday, that’s a different story (see below). The regional street market draws thousands of […]
Shop Mexico–Josefina Aguilar Clay Figures, Oaxaca
Here is an amazing assortment from my personal collection of Josefina Aguilar clay figures for sale. Josefina is from Ocotlan, Oaxaca, and creates clay sculptures in herr home pottery studio on the road leading into town. She is famed for her whimsical interpretation of the world, including the life of Frida Kahlo. I also have […]
Shopping in San Antonino Castillo Velasco, Oaxaca
My sister and I set out for San Antonino Castillo Velasco, Oaxaca, to visit the potter Don Jose Garcia Antonino who makes life-size human figures sculpted from local red clay called barro rojo. We decided to go before everyone arrived for the wedding so that we could focus on the shopping day at hand. Barbara has […]
Chiapas Pottery Village Amatenango del Valle
Bela, of Bela’s B&B, our favorite San Cristobal de las Casas home away from home, invited us to go along with her to the pottery village of Amatenango del Valle on a quest to replace a ceramic chiminea. The village is about an hour from the city by taxi in the pine forest highlands where sheep graze […]
Order Dolores Porras Video on New Website: Ceramics Education
Dolores Porras: Artista Artesana de Barro is a 31-minute documentary video made by Michael Peed, a university ceramics professor. This link takes you to a new website where you can buy the DVD. When the DVD was released in 2010, I reviewed it here on my blog because it offers an outstanding discussion of the […]
Shop Mexico–The Artisan Sisters Week 14: Tequila or Mezcal Shot Glasses
Well, these are not really “shot glasses” but beautifully hand-formed and painted, one of a kind majolica pottery cups from Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato. They are just perfect for sipping tequila or mezcal. The patterns are complementary and because they are hand-painted, their loveliness is in their uniqueness — they are not exactly alike! They measure […]