Milagros Gallery

Mexican Day of the Dead.

2011-11-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

Rising and local florist artist Rebecca Law did our window display.

One of Mexican’s longest and most unusual festivals is Day of the Dead. The festival takes place on 1^st and 2^nd of November. It is a festival that has its beginning in Mexico’s Aztec past with their belief in the cycle of life and death. On the nights of the 1^st and 2^nd November the spirits of the Mexican Dead Ancestors return. So that the spirits find their way home each house is decorated with a yellow arch made from marigold flowers. The spirits are left food and water, as they are always hungry after their long journey. The dead come and join their families for food, drinking, singing and talking. In some parts of Mexico the family spend the whole night in the graveyard. They polish the tombstones and a picnic is laid on the tomb. Often the favourite meal of the departed is made. There are market stalls selling sugar skulls, tombstones, coffins and bread made into bones. Day of the Dead figures are sold. A cowboy, a skeleton, a bride and groom, a mermaid are all shown as skeletons. The message is that despite riches that we may acquire we are all bones at the end of the day.

2011-09-16T02:30:00.000-07:00

The Clovis People

This blade is shaped and used by the Clovis people who werethe first humans to inhabit the Americas. The blade is 13000 years old. Twentythousand years ago the stretch ofsea between Asia and Alaska, called the Bering Strait froze. Nomadic peoplecould now walk between the two continents American and Asia. Once they arrivedon this new continent they found it rich in large mammals such as mammoths. Theedges of the blade are so designed/ made to cause a significant loss of bloodto large mammals such as mammoths so that it dies through exhaustion.

The nomadic people constantly moving south they moved alongthe unfrozen corridor between the Pacific coast and the Rocky Mountains. Eventuallyarriving at the Southern most tip of South America in 12000.They weregenetically similarity to the people from North East Asia.Their settlementshave been found across the Americas.

The ice retreated and for 9000 years until 1519 they werecut off and unknown from the rest of the world. As for the mammoths they wereall eaten.

Marie Jimenez- painter of wooden figures

2011-05-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

Until the age of twenty Marie Jimenez was an embroiderer. She started painting wooden creatures that her brother had carved. She has a fine and intricate painting style, which reflects an eye for detail. Each piece can take up to three days to paint. Like her neighbours she started by copying the other carvers designs and covering her figures in polka dots. They did not sell well. She describes how one morning we went out into the fields. It was a beautiful day….barely raining. The desert looks wonderful in the rain. There were flowers, green leaves, yellow stalks, so many colours. And I ask myself, “ How can I paint like this? That’s how it started. That’s how we all start by seeing the beauty around us.”She is one of the most successful painters and is unusual for being a woman. We sell the work of Marie Jimenez in our shop.

Stork and elephant by Marie Jimenez.

Wood Carving from Oaxaca.

2011-04-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

It was one of the last days in April. The first rains arrived that night. As we sat in Isidoro Cruz’s house, we were cold as only you can be cold in the tropics when the temperature is 13 degrees centigrade. The excitement and relief of the rains arriving was tangible. Water is life in Mexico. It was a torrential down pour that surrounded us in white mist. We had to raise our voices to be heard Its arrival was announced with lightening that lit up the purple dessert and frightened the children. The turkeys took shelter under a tree unable to stand the noise of the rain on the tin roof. Isidoro Cruz fed us blue corn quesadillas, pork scratching, bananas from their stem and a papaya from his garden, We drank week coffee. The beans grown in his garden. He had the week before given us a papaya and had asked us to return the seeds so he could replant them. This is the story that he told. In 1970 the village of San Martin was a subsistence-farming village. As a young child he made his own masks. There was a tradition was making wooden toys and farm machinery. Ox can still be seen working the fields with a wooden yoke. The carving boom can be traced back to a couple of artists Isidoro Cruz from San Martin and Manuel Jimenez from Arrazola. Arrazola was form many years the fragment of a vast sugar hacienda, located on the plain below the ruins of Monte Alban. As a child Manual Jimenez herded goats and made models of the goats from clay. He moved from one job to another. It was when he was thirty- five years old that his carving was spotted by a local gallery owner Arthur Train. “Mine is a sacred history… I am not just anybody. I am a real tiger. I was born intelligent. Everyone here is living off my initiative. If I hadn’t started carving none would be doing anything. I invented the whole tradition. They should make a statue of me in the plaza with an arrow pointing to the house, and rename this street Jimenez Street. The carving boom started in 1985. In 1982 Mexico had devalued the pesos as oil prices dropped. The government had to pursue growth through exports. This meant the price of Mexican art work was favourable to buy and export to the USA. The wood carving boom took place in three villages San Martin, La Union and Arrazola. It transformed the lives of the carvers. Anyone born before the 1950’s in one of those villages would have been poorly fed, illiterate and lived in poor housing. The villages changed in a short time from subsistence farmers to building their own homes and sending and keeping their children at school. The wooden carvings are inspired by the villagers life, the universal world of dreams-nature, spirituality, superstitions, myths, folk stories and religion. They carve virgins, angels, animals, devils, hybrid humans and animals. Many of the villagers continue to farm, carving in their spare time. Most carvers strive for realism in their carving and fantasy in their paintings of the carvings. “ Live animals look beautiful because they are alive. Wooden animals painted the same way wood look sad.”

Images Angels by Marie Jimenez, Wedding couple by Ventura Fabien, Devils and angels by Innocencio Vasquez

2011-04-01T04:02:00.000-07:00

Images: The Pacific Coast Mexico, Maruata and Pichilinguillo.

Paradise Route- Our trip along the Michocan Pacific Coast 2006

From Patzcuaro, we wound our way downwards past volcanoes, fields of maize, bananas, papayas, avocados and mango trees. After an hour’s driving we’d taken off our woolly jumpers and were sweltering. And then wilderness, tiny shack villages with names like Infernillo (Little Hell) and “ watch out for crossing armadillos”, signs. Finally the Pacific Ocean. We arrived at Playa Azul, not as quaint as it sounds after the 1985 earthquake had left many buildings twisted and bent, and poverty then left them empty and slowly crumbling. At a juice bar in the centre of Playa Azul we chatted to the owner who recounted his experience of the earthquake twenty-one years earlier. He was standing at his juice bar at the time. The epicenter was in Lazaro Cardenas just 10 miles down the road.

Work happens at altitude in Mexico. The beach is for relaxation.

Before leaving Playa Azul we went to the giant turtle sanctuary, a government run project. A man dug a big hole in the sand with his hands and out came about 80 baby turtles and a mass of cracked eggshells. He put the turtles into a big plastic bowl and an hour later they had woken up and were let loose into the sea.

We made our way to Caleta de Campos. Where we stayed in an air-conditioned, recently built hotel with beige interior and pool for £40 a night. Caleta de Campos itself was rough and ready. For some reason rubbish was just thrown out on to the street. We thought we saw a rubbish truck but realized three days later that it had broken down and had been used as a dustbin. However the beach was fine with a number of little restaurants selling seafood.

At this point we said goodbye to hot water, petrol stations, cash point machines, working telephones but not an Internet connection.

We moved five miles further along the coast to Nexpa. Where we stayed in lovely cabañas for 15 miles a night. This is a surfing beach and is populated by American and Canadian surfers. We were hindered by a lack of cash and fuel and returned briefly to Caleta de Campus to connect with the outside world.

We finally made our way further along the Pacific coast to a little bay called Pichilinguillo, The village was only accessible by donkey along a dirt track until 1980 when a coastal road was built. They have only had electricity for a few years. Until then everything came by boat along the Pacific coast. This is the Mexican equilivant to Cornwall in 1700 and 1800’s. Except here the contraband drugs from Columbia and the army and the navy frequent the beaches with guns, they stand on rocks peer out to see and then drive away. The sand is white and the sea is turquoise. We have seen pelicans, iguanas and numerous crabs that hang out on the cliffs, scuttling like spiders when they see us. The first evening we were watching strange spurts of water on the horizon and suddenly the black silhouette of a whale leapt and dived into the ocean. We felt blessed and despite the lack of amenities we decided to stay longer.

The fisherman land mostly red snappers. They are gutted on the boat often while they are still alive and are on our table half an hour later. One fisherman had a big catch and kindly gave us a huge fish. The restaurant cooked it for us. It was delicious like tuna. There are no freezing facilities so the fish are just sold to the three local restaurants. One of the fishermen took us out on his boat to look at the numerous sea caves along the coast. Outside of our sheltered bay, in a small boat the ocean become a dark swelling past.

Rural isolation, however does equate to nylon, flowery bed sheets, no flushing toilet, a concrete unfinished ramshackle hotel, electricity power cuts and an endless diet of seafood and walkers crisp. Despite this the hotel owner as been very generous with endless cups of tea and tried to convince us to go into business with him doing up his hotel.

Before we left Pichilinguillo the grandson of the hotel owner took us along a dry riverbed where a hot spring flowed into a cold river. A beautiful walk into the mountains behind the ocean. Lots of lizards, Brahmin cows and the smell of orange blossom. The hot water from the spring was too hot until it mixed with the cool stream. Although I thought we were in the middle of nowhere, we were close to the footpath and a gentle stream of people passed herding the cattle and chatting.

A rollercoaster drive north to Maruata along the coast, on the map the route appeared as a straight line but in fact zigzagged its way in and out of steep coastal valleys. Past trees with yellow, white and green flowers with no leaves.

Going into the sea at one of Maruata’s three beaches was a little like taking a spin in the washing machine. This is a favourite haunt of the giant turtle. We didn’t see any turtles but plenty of chickens, cockerels, chicks, donkeys, cows and horses as the whole beach doubles up as a farmyard.

Today is Monday and we are in Colima which sits beneath two active volcanoes and hence a switch of neurosis from tsunami to earthquake and volcanic eruptions.

The Madness of Ocumicho

2011-03-14T03:21:00.000-07:00

The Madness of Ocumicho

Ocumicho sits at the foot of a volcano in the state of Michocan, Mexico. It is not the Mexico that you imagine of deserts and sombreros but is vast and beautiful peppered with extinct volcanoes and lakes. It wavers between looking like the Lake District with cacti to looking like August in England after a long hot summer. The women take great pride in their appearance wearing the traditional reboso and plaiting their hair. Their colourful attire is in marked contrast to the adobe , wooden and now concrete structures. Ocumicho was until recently only accessible along a dirt track, which was impassable during the wet season. At an altitude of 2800m and enjoys cold nights and warm days.

Ocumicho has a long tradition of making utilitarian in pots and that would have continued if one of the villagers had not turned his dreams into clay. He turned clay into devils. Everyone laughed a first but when he started to attract the attention of collectors and traders, the village started to mimic his style of work. He died young in a drunken brawl. However his style continues four decades later.

It is mostly the women who work the clay. Eighty percent of the men in the village work in the USA. They have pit kilns in their houses and keep the completed pottery preciously wrapped in the bedrooms. They give free reign to their imagination and no two pieces are alike.

After the Spanish conquest images of native gods were replaced with Virgins, saints, devils and angels. They work with their own myths folklore but also weave in ideas from contemporary culture seen on the television and ideas brought by foreign buyers. When we went their the was a representation of the 9/11 with a plane crashing into the twin towers, women screaming for help on their mobiles and flames licking the towers while a crowd of horrified onlookers just stared. A Bayeaux tapestry of today. There was also a reworking of the Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci with mermaids eating watermelons.

Hand made tin decorations

2010-11-22T04:21:00.000-08:00

Tin Decorations.

The tin decorations are hand made in Mexico from a family of tinsmiths.

The decorations are inspired by the Milagros that adorn the church walls of Mexico. Milagros are the small silver of gold votive offering that come in the shape of body parts, animals, foods, houses and plots of land. Milagros would have traditionally been given to the preferred saint in the hope of a pray answered or to give thanks for a pray answered. Hearts would represent a romantic connection.

The objects are made from tin, a metal that is light, has strength and has similar visual qualities as silver.

In the 1824 Cornish tin miners left England for Mexico to mine the tin. There is one particular town, Pachuca in Mexico where the residents have blue eyes and a passing resemblance to their Cornish ancestors. They introduced the Mexicans to the Cornish pasty, which has since become a delicacy. The miners would have taught their Mexican wives how to make Cornish pasties. Over time the pasta, as is called in Mexico, has been adapted to a Mexican pallet and is now considered a delicacy. The pasties are filled chicken, tuna, beef, sausage, beans and pineapples all served with a salsa. Aside from introducing the Cornish pasty they also introduced football, which has since become a national obsession.

Tin has traditionally mined in Mexico since Pre- Cortes. The Aztecs used it for possibly as a form of currency. The Spanish although primarily interested in gold and silver also found tin to mines. The Spanish needed tin to make bronze armaments with their continued war efforts in Europe so tin was exported to Spain. Before modern mining methods the tin in Mexico was found in river deposits, which made it labour intensive to mine. The quality was described as being as good as English tin. Tin was initially imported into Mexico from England in sheets. It was with the advent of modern mining methods that a significant tin enterprise developed in the late 18th Century to early 19th Century. Prior to that he had been used for bells, armaments, scientific and industrial apparatus and equipment.
Tin is lightweight, it has strength and is cheap and has similar visual qualities to silver, it not toxic and has a low melting point. It is highly resistant to corrosion and friction. Therefore it was initially used for functional, utilitarian items such as containers, lamps. Candlestick, toys, trays. These items have an ephemeral quality and were quickly replaced.

It was only in the 1930’s that intellectuals and artists collected these items. There was a surge in the popularity of tin and folk art. Tinsmiths who had initially just made functionally tin objects expanded their repertoire. In the 1960’s with the advent of tourism tinwork expanded further. Ideas for new tin products came from all areas of the globe and the tinsmiths happily tried out new designs.

Most Mexican tinwork is now made in the Mexican states of Guanajuato, Jalisco and Oaxaca in small family run workshops. We buy and commission work from one such workshop in Guanajuato and Oaxaca

Trees of Life

2010-11-07T23:14:00.000-08:00

The trees of life are from Mexico. They are vivid in colour and joyful in design. They are made of tin, iron and clay. They influence of the Aztec past and the Catholic present can be seen in the choice of colours and imagery. They offer a tree at Christmas time without the lost of space and abundance of needles. They can be used year after year so it could be said have a green advantage.

One village in Mexico called Metepec is particularly renowned for making painted terracotta Trees of Life. However trees of life are made all over Mexico, each region having it's own distinctive style. Trees of life are present in all civilisations. They represent fertility, a motif for religions, philosophy: a concept for interconnectedness on our planet. In Christian art Trees of Life represent earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit.

After the Spanish invasion of Mexico, 500 years ago, Mexican art has become a hybrid art embracing several cultures. The Spanish introduced a Christian take on Moorish styles and traditions. The indigenous contribution can be seen in a preference for strong colours, the abstracted figures and the syncretism of Aztec and Mayan Gods into Christian Art.

The Mexican Trees of Life traditionally represent the myth of Adam and Eve’s banishment from Earth but interpreted through indigenous religious beliefs. They also represent Earth’s fertility, which involves dying to be reborn. The tree form is now used to depict many different stories including trees of death.

Milagros has an ever-changing collection of trees of life made from tin, iron and clay, from various regions of Mexico and by different artists in those regions.

2010-11-04T01:30:00.000-07:00

Late Night Christmas Shopping on Columbia Road, E2

Every year myself and a few other shop keepers organize the Christmas Wednesday Shopping Evenings. Our gallery/ shop is situated in the street so I have taken the liberty of including it in the blog.
For five years, the independent shopkeepers of Columbia Road have been opening their doors on Wednesday evenings in December to offer a seasonal oasis for savvy Christmas shoppers. This year over forty independent shops will be open between 5 and 9pm on December 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd, accompanied by festivities on the street including seasonal food, yuletide fun and live music.

Columbia Road is one of the few streets in the country composed entirely of independent shops. Small art galleries sit next to cup cake parlors and vintage clothes stores, while English and Italian delis trade alongside garden and antiques outlets. This eclectic variety of shops is complemented by a wealth of award winning pubs, cafés and restaurants.
The shops have a common thread; a love of the flower market and its history, and a refusal to be dictated by a retail world where a sense of fun has all but gone.

Columbia Road is one of the few streets in the country composed entirely of independent shops. Small art galleries sit next to cup cake parlors and vintage clothes stores, while English and Italian delis trade alongside garden and antiques outlets. This eclectic variety of shops is complemented by a wealth of award winning pubs, cafés and restaurants.
The shops have a common thread; a love of the flower market and its history, and a refusal to be dictated by a retail world where a sense of fun has all but gone.

Other transport information can be found at http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk
Directions and parking details on our website at http://www.columbiaroad.info/
map.html

[Dates]:
Christmas Wednesdays take place on December 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd. 5pm to 9pm.

[Contact]:
If you require any more details, don’t hesitate to contact me, Juliette, on 0207 613
0876 or by email, christmas@columbiaroad.info

Alvaro de la Cruz skeletons.

2010-10-18T01:24:00.001-07:00

This skeleton bride is hand made from clay in the state of Michoacan in Mexico. The artist, Alvaro de la Cruz, draws on the tradition of Mexico. The Aztec past and the subsequent Spanish influence. The skeletons are directly inspired by the work of the graphic artist Posada, as is much current Day of the Dead imagery.

Posada was a link between the pre-Columbia past, the folk art traditions and the art of the muralists. There was a revolution against the art of Spain and Europe. They wanted to create art that would go back beyond before the Conquest, which would be original to Mexico popular and authentic.

Alvaro De La Cruz uses the decorative techniques from the pottery-making village where he lives and grew up.

The skeletons come in all many guises- nuns, guitarists, brides, fishermen, cowboys and Catrinas. We have a constant procession of them gracing our shop.

Saulo Moreno sculptures

2010-10-15T04:01:00.000-07:00

Saulo Moreno’s sculptures are made of wire and paper. His method of working is distinctively unique. The wire and paper create a framework upon which the characters animals, skeletons, birds, fish are made. The initially wire cage is beautiful in its own right. The wire cage is clad with paper leaving a visibly hollow structure. These unanimated figures are imbued with life, vitality and energy. He draws his ideas and inspiration from the distinctive hybrid art that emerged from the Aztec and Spanish past but also the everyday, the farmyard and Mexican countryside.

Saulo is now 76 and has been working in this medium since his teens. He believes some of his early work was bought by Frida Kahlo and is now in her house/museum but he says, '' It is so long ago and I didn’t sign my work in those days so I’m not sure ''. Saulo has never produced large quantities of work however he now has his son, Mario Saulo Moreno who is in his early 20s, working with him in a similar style

Milagros has a few of Saulo Moreno sculptures in their shop and for sale from November 2010.

Leonora Carrington at The Centre for Visual Arts Norwich

2010-09-29T07:05:00.000-07:00

Leonora Carrington, an English Surrealist artist who has lived in Mexico for sixty years work will be at Chichester. The exhibition Surreal Friends, is the work of Leonora Carrington and that of her friends the Spanish painter Remedios Varo and the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna, is at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, June 19 to September 12, then the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, September 28 to December 12.

Her painting is a hybrid between Mexico and England. The setting is formal rooms, gardens, and landscapes but within these backdrops, dreamlike creatures and animals play out rituals. The paintings are mysterious defying interpretation, suggestive of fairytales and myths. They bridge real and the imagined world creating a perpetual tension between the two. They are personal interpretations of philosophical and magical ideas. Resisting interpretation, while delighting, perplexing and haunting the viewer.

Mexico isolated from the world for 13000 years until 1492 was rudely made aware of a world outside of their grasp by Cortes and his men in 1519. The Aztecs and Mayans if they escaped the small pox brought by the invaders, they were put to work as slaves. Africans were sent to South America as part of the slave trade. It was the merging of the Pre-Cortes religions, the Spanish religion (influenced by the Arab tradition via the Moors) and syncretism of the African Gods that create this enriched art form that we see today in Mexico.

Mexico’s past and the emergence of a distinct iconography informs her paintings. The paintings are indebted to Surrealism but resist classification.

Leonora Carrington was born in Lancashire, England in 1917, the daughter of a rich industrialist and Irish mother. As a child she was surrounded by Irish folklore, the books of Edward Lear and Alice in Wonderland, catholic literature, riddles and rhymes, and ghost stories. The Lancashire has a rich history of witchcraft, which maybe infiltrated her imagination. She was expelled from many schools and managed to escape ‘being sold to the highest bidder’, as a debutant. She instead ran off to France and joined Max Ernest and the other surrealists. At the start of the war in 1940 Max Ernest was imprisoned for being a German. Leonora alone in France at the start of the war disowned by her family she suffered a nervous breakdown. She escaped to New York and then subsequently to Mexico.

Mexico liberated her from the parents, her relationship with Ernest and being in a new country with a diverse, rich and dynamic culture led her to develop her personal vision.

Now 93 years old. She continues to live in Mexico City. Quintessentially still English, she apparently drinks tea and lives in a cold house in Mexico City.