An Evening at Mama's Art Café

 

Click here to visit Mamá Art Café website 

A Visit to Frank Bette Center for the Arts

Frank Bette Center for the Arts in Alameda. CA

Nena Reid, Miguel Guererro, Dick Davis

The Frank Bette Center is recognizable as a lovely yellow Victorian building in the center of Alameda. It was bequeathed to the community by Bette, a local artist and craftsman, as a place for “meetings, readings, showings and other creative doings.” Our mission is to fulfill and build upon Frank’s dream of providing a place to nurture creativity in fine arts, crafts, literary, and musical arts. The Center responds to those wishes in a number of ways.

From November 8 through December 22, 2013 the Frank Bette Center for the Arts in

Golden Gate Bridge Loom

Alameda, California hosted an unusual exhibit of oil paintings.  The paintings themselves were not unusual it was how they happened to be at the Center that is odd.  The artist, is a young Nahuatl man.  He is part of on of the indigenous groups living in the mountains of Mexico.  It's an old story, as opportunities in Mexico have improved the native peoples have been leaving their traditional homes seeking a better life by integrating into the greater Mexican population. 

Their heritage is becoming a casualty of this exodus. Dick Davis has a great love

Displays of Miguel Diaz Guerrero's Oils

for Mexico and its people and has traveled through many small pueblos.  He saw a valuable culture that was worth preserving.  In Popotohuilco he met artist Miguel Díaz Guerrero. He was so impressed with narrative paintings that Miguel was working on.  He was recording the people and events in his village.  He was painting what he new and as such was making a permanent record of the Nahuatl culture before it changed irrevocably.

Miguel's paintings have been exhibited in

Indigenous scene from mountains of Sierra Norte

various venues in the United States.  Sponsored by Dick Davis Fund donations to the Wilmette Arts Guild, Miguel has visited this country numerous times.  In his more recent paintings you will see the influence his exposure to our culture has made on his art. his art. 

Click to visit the Frank Bette Center for the Arts Website 

Extreme Makeover, Mexican Style

Article and photos by Efren Ulloa

PART ONE

Villagers meet before the roof raising

Sitting at a scenic and breathtaking 9842 ft. among the majestic and towering Sierra Norte Mountains of Mexico lies the tiny but proud indigenous village of Cuacuila.  It is home to roughly 1700 inhabitants. It is one of several indigenous communities sprinkled throughout the Sierra Norte, where Spanish, the national language, and the indigenous tongue Nahuatl are spoken. Incredibly, Cuacuila is one of 58 municipalities that belong to the city Zacatlan De Las Manzanas, about 150 km east of Mexico City. Even though each one

This house must be replaced

of these communities partakes in its own proud customs and traditions, Cuacuila finds itself as the leader of a movement that promises, in time, to benefit and improve many of these communities. Only a few days removed from the urban jungle that is the Chicagoland area, I was overwhelmed by the ubiquity and endlessness of the mountains, whose perpetuity and grandeur emanated tranquility and peace.About a 2-hr drive from Zacatlan, there is no form of public transportation that reaches Cuacuila. It is only accessible by renting or hiring a private car to trek the journey through the various winding and ascending mountain dirt roads. The town is indeed small, housing a small church, a mess hall, a small number of colonial style houses, a presidential palace, and a recently constructed room and board building for the various school children that come to Cuacuila from other communities. The one-floor but roomy building is equipped with numerous bunk beds for the kids who dorm there on weekdays and return

The stone foundation is laid

home to their respective, isolated villages and families on weekends.


Humble as it may seem, what makes Cuacuila a pioneering community amongst its peers is the impressive and respectable work it has done over the past year overseeing and authoring the construction of adobe houses for its people. Along with 16 other indigenous communities, Cuacuila formed an organization called CIUDEMAC (United Indigenous Communities in Defense of Our Corn and Our Culture) dedicated to building respectable and decent homes for its villagers. Although comprised of several communities, Cuacuila has quicklyestablished itself as the heart and soul of the organization.
The organization’s objective is to build using only local materials, such as earth, brick, and stone, abundant materials found in Cuacuila. The benefit of the project is that very little, none in some cases, of material is purchased or adversely affects the environment. 
CIUDEMAC’s reverential respect for the environment, evidenced by its use of natural resources and its globally conscious effort to produce homes in a minimally invasive manner to Mother Earth, is one of its more outstanding qualities. By exclusively using crude earth and local materials, the organization also believes that the villagers themselves become the authors of this MesoAmerican project.

Cultural Preservation Comes to Chicagoland

Mary Carmen - Pedro Martin - Miguel Diaz Guerrero

With a grant from Dick Davis Cultural Preservation Foundation, The Wilmette Arts Guild brought three guests from Mexico to celebrate the Fine Art of Fiber.  They visited the Wilmette Library on November 5th for our monthly "Critique" where they discussed with our members their fibers, their yarns, their weaving and their fabric and garment designs.  Then it was off to the Chicago Botanic Gardens for the Fine Art of Fiber Show.  After that it was off to San Francisco for exhibits of their painting of indigenous scenes and

Pedro Martin Weaving on his loom at Chicago Botanic Gardens

more fiber art.

Chicago Botanic Gardens

Fine Art of Fiber

"Stunning quilts, lovely knitted artwear, woven wonders, and breathtaking beadwork are among the abundant handcrafted items on view and for sale during the Fine Art of Fiber, held at the Garden's Regenstein Center. The area's oldest, largest, and most unique fiber art event, the Fine Art of Fiber is hosted by Illinois Quilters, Inc., North Suburban NeedleArts Guild, and the Weavers Guild of the North Shore."

Pedro Martin imparting skills to other fiber artists

At Chicago Botanic Gardens

Ceja Vineyard

Holy Week Procession Grows into Mexico's Largest such Event

By Margaret Fago  Special to The Catholic Voice May 5, 2014

Las Mujeres con rebozo especial de SLP

   My husband and I have come from Alameda to experience Semana Santa (Holy Week) in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. 



The most elaborate event of the week is the Procession of Silence during the evening of Good Friday. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the procession, which was started by the Carmelite church, El Carmen, in the historic Centro where there are cathedrals on nearly every block.

Cofrades del Encuentro

All week, special altars, each depicting una estacion del Via Crucis, the Stations of the Cross, or Misterio Doloroso del Rosario, Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, are set up in churches and neighborhoods to be viewed. Some of these altars will be carried on elaborate wooden platforms, called andas, during the procession.

The San Luis Potosi Procession of Silence has grown from a small event to act out the catechesis of Via Crucis in devotion to Our Lady of Solitude by a guild of bullfighters from El Carmen Church in

Los Costaleros del Cristo Roto

1961, to become the largest and only procession in Mexico to include Altars for all the stations of the cross and the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary.
 

Twenty-four guilds from the communities and churches in San Luis Potosi participate with so many members in the procession that it takes two hours to pass through El Carmen Church. All ages participate from young to old, on a four hour walk in solemn slow steps to the drum beats and bugles through the streets of the historic Centro. 


 
Each guild, dressed in its distinctive colors, carries their special “anda,” adorned with

Los Costaleros del Cristo Roto

fresh flowers. It can weigh up to 500 kilos (1,100 pounds). Local artists have carved some and others were imported from Seville Spain, where the traditions for the procession originated. 



Crowds gather hours before the procession starts. Many streets are closed to cars and are lined with rows of chairs for the viewers. Vendors with food stands, toys and other goods pop up in the streets and plazas. A festive, but somber mood pervades the area. 


 
At 8 o'clock the church bells ring, then a bugler calls. Charros (cowboys) on horseback begin the procession of walkers. Drums beat out the slow measured steps. Women, wearing Potosino shawls, carry candles. Men called cofrades who have covered faces carry lighted staffs, drums or horns. The andas are carried by up to 30 men called costaleros (bearers). Horquilleros carry the forked poles placed to hold the anda during the stops. It is a moving sight.

Los costaleros del Tlaxcala con El Cirineo ayuda a Jesus

Museum of Contemporary Art - San Luis Potosi

 

Click here to visit the museum's website.