Celebrating life at Day of the Dead
By Bill LeVasseur

The original celebration of Day of the Dead can be traced to many Mesoamerican native traditions dedicated to children and the deceased, and in Mexico specifically to the Aztec festivities held during the month of Miccailhuitontli. 

In the Aztec calendar, this ritual fell roughly at the end of the Gregorian month of July, but in the post-conquest era it was moved by Spanish priests to coincide with the Christian holiday of All Hallows Eve…Día de Todos Santos in Spanish, or Santorum in Latin.

The result is that Mexicans today celebrate this holiday during the first two days of November, rather than at the beginning of the summer with a syncretic blend of traditional indigenous customs and introduced Christian features. November 1 is known as All Saints’ Day and November 2 is known as All Souls’ Day.

Common to all Day of the Dead celebrations is the fundamental belief that the dead are still very much part of the family, a belief quite at odds with those of many non-Latin cultures.

Three practices are common in all celebrations—attending mass, the ritual welcoming of the deceased members of the family back into their homes, and visiting the gravesites of the closest kin. 

At the cemetery, family members decorate the grave with flowers, usually marigolds and chrysanthemums, set out a picnic featuring the favorite foods of the deceased in order to attract their spirits to visit, and light many candles for the night-long vigil.

Because of the warm, welcoming environment created, the commemoration is joyous—celebrating life, not mourning death.

In homes, observant families create an altar and decorate it with items that they believe will attract the souls of their departed. Offerings include flowers and food, an article of clothing, photographs and diplomas—items that the dead prized during their lifetime. All of this is done to assure that their souls actually return to take part in the remembrance.

The Native Observance

In the rural Mexico inhabited by native Mexicans, one finds a Day of the Dead celebration quite different from those seen in urban centers. The most significant difference is the emphasis on the religious importance of the observance and masked dancing by those looking for the road to heaven.

In these more traditional settings, typically found only in native communities, the path from the street to the front door and then to the altar is strewn with marigold petals to guide the soul to the alter and the bosom of the family. In addition, a more traditional observance calls for departed children to be remembered during the first day of the festivity, Día de Los Angelitos (Day of the Little Angels), and for departed adults to be remembered on the second day.

The Xantolo Masked Dance Celebration

Xantolo is a Nahuatl word derivative of Latin resulting from the natives’ inability to easily pronounce the word Santorum. Xantolo indicates a supplicant or beggar in a dance drama where masked men go from house to house on Day of the Dead to beg for food and drink to fortify themselves in their journey from purgatory to heaven. This dance and celebration is typical of the area known as the Huasteca, corresponding to the mountainous region where the states of Hidalgo, Puebla, Veracruz and San Luis Potosi all join. 

The Xantolo masks shown here as well as many others, plus a filmed documentary of the Xantolo celebration and a decorated altar (ofrenda) can be seen at The Other Face of Mexico Mask Museum here in San Miguel. For an appointment, call 154-4324.

The new kid on the block at Fábrica la Aurora
By Edward Swift

Celebration
Día de los Muertos
Sat, Nov 3, 6–9pm
Fábrica la Aurora
Food, drink, music, altars

The William Martin Gallery, along with most of the other galleries in Fábrica la Aurora, will be open on the evening of November 3 to celebrate the Day of the Dead with music, food, altars and art. William Martin is a newcomer to the Fábrica but not to San Miguel or to Mexico. He was born in Mexico City, but at the age of three his family moved to California. He didn’t think too much about Mexico until he was eight, when his father encouraged him to spend a summer with his grandparents living in Querétaro. “I didn’t want to leave my friends for the summer,” he remembers, “so to make the visit seem more exciting, my grandfather said that he owned a ranch with lots of horses to ride. Actually, he owned a motel in what was then the country and now part of downtown Querétaro.” That was only the first of many Mexican summers that served to reintroduce the artist to his Mexican heritage.

He remembers his grandfather as a man whose adventurous spirit led him to spontaneous decisions. Suddenly he would say, “We’ve got to go to Veracruz.” And off they would go. “We’ve got to have barbecue and the best place to get it is in León.”

And they would strike out. “One summer he bought me a motorcycle and I explored every little town around Querétaro.” Those were formative summers and today he honors them by saying: “The colors, texture and beauty of Mexico expanded my perception—changed my art. In Mexico, you find interesting, contrasting textures. Brittleness with softness. Cloth with silver. Glass next to flowers. And colors—everywhere you look there are layers. It’s not just a red door; it’s red that has green and blue underneath. Although I feel comfortable in the United States, my soul is here in Mexico.”

Martin’s grandmother was another influence. She took him to the corrida and introduced him to the flamenco and Spanish music. “She didn’t dance but she did have castanets and she was very Spanish in spirit. When I was 14, my hair was long. My grandfather wanted me to cut it but my grandmother said: ‘No. That’s the style in Spain.’ So I didn’t cut my hair.”

He doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t drawing or carving wood, painting or making something with his hands. In California, he studied at the Mission Renaissance Art School. After six months he started teaching in the school and remained there for about 10 years. Then he and a friend, John Strong, opened their own school, the Martin/Strong Art Studio. While teaching he constantly read, experimented and developed along with his students. Finally he had to give up the school in order to concentrate on his painting, but he continues teaching on a limited basis. He says that teaching taught him so much and if you want to learn anything, teach it. “Degas said if he was going to teach people to paint, he’d hang up a sign: ‘Drawing Lessons.’ By drawing you increase your perception and that’s what painting is about. Fortunately, I had a good eye, but I still had to work hard on my drawing. I had to practice a lot. I drew from the model, still lifes, nature, everything. If you’re trying to draw a cup and keep making it too wide, your eye is off. You have to work on your perception of that cup. You increase your perception by drawing and then you can paint anything.”

When he first started painting, he experimented with many styles. He appreciated the impressionists, Monet particularly, but he felt drawn to the medieval painters and the old masters. “In the medieval period the colors are like sounds—like a certain note. Red is red. Blue is pure and intense. Medieval paintings have wonder and mystery.

Science was not developed. There was lots of seeking. The paintings seem to be on a quest. They’re full of wonderment and magic.”

A thorough study of the pigments and glazing mediums used by the old masters led him to create his own glazing mediums until the commercial products were improved. “The old masters,” he explains, “would do a monochrome underpainting and over it they would paint many layers of pigment mixed with a glazing medium that made the color transparent.” Martin uses the same technique with one major difference. He uses color on his underpaintings in order to obtain an intensity of hue and luminosity. “All the wood tables in my paintings start out cadmium orange. A dark background may start out yellow, and then I’ll paint layers of glazing over it to get green.”

Advice to young artists: “Many artists get held back with inferior materials and often they just don’t keep up with what materials are available. Over the years, I learned that I could add this or that to paint and it would dry quicker or it wouldn’t yellow. I learned that if I wanted red, I couldn’t use a fake red, I had to go buy the expensive cadmium red. You have to continue to study and keep up with the current materials.”

Final words of advice: “Don’t get a fine arts degree. Get a business degree. If you’re an artist, you’re a little factory. Learn to take care of yourself. Just because you’re an artist doesn’t mean that you don’t have to balance your checkbook.”

Edward Swift is a novelist and a visual artist. He was born in Texas, spent most of his life in New York City and now lives in San Miguel where he runs his own gallery in Fábrica la Aurora.

Perceiving two worlds through images
By Fernando Plasencia

Art Opening
Images
Fernando Plascenia
Sat, Nov 3, Noon
Museo Casa de Allende
Cuna de Allende 1

A perception of two parallel worlds exists— the real and the dream. In the real world, in which we pass every day, we live, work, travel and move with a speed that often prevents us from “seeing” our surroundings, and as such we can go through life simply “looking.”

In the dream world, we stop, rest, relax and see the images that life presents to us, whether we are sleeping or awake. These images also come from places, situations or wishes that reason knows not, but have the freedom to exist and are alive of their own right.

Images travel from reality to interpretation, from a line to a mass, from color to gray, from recognizable faces to unknown impressions. They present themselves as a possibility of opening a distinct door, and maybe seeing ourselves reflected in a different mirror.

The “Images” show by Fernando Plasencia opens November 3 at noon and runs throughout the month. Plasencia has resided on and off in San Miguel for 30 years and has studied painting at the Instituto Allende and at Bellas Artes, as well as the National University and the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. Abroad, Fernando has taken classes in Myrtle Beach, Santa Fe, Houston, Kerrville and Barcelona. This is his eighth solo exhibit. He has participated in more than 25 group exhibits.

Transfigurations: A Japanese-Mexican interpretation of reality
By Melanie Harris de Maycotte

Art Opening
Eiki Ito
Transfigurations
Sat, Nov 3, 6–9pm
Galeria/Atelier
Fábrica la Aurora

After completing eight years of art education at the Shinjuku Art Academy and the Soukei Academy of Fine Art and Design in Tokyo with a master’s degree in painting, Eiki Ito journeyed to Mexico in 1976 at the age of 28. His visit turned to a lifetime, when in San Miguel his path fortuitously crossed that of a young woman name Dolores, who would soon become his wife. The couple lived in San Miguel briefly, but eventually settled in Dolores’ hometown of León, where they continue to live and work today.

In a rare exhibit by a Japanese artist living in Mexico, Galeria/Atelier presents Eiki Ito’s visionary new show Transfigurations at Fábrica La Aurora, November 3 through December 8.

Eiki is now as much Mexican as he is Japanese. Having been charmed by Mexican folklore and immersed in the Mexican way of life, a cultural dichotomy is unmistakably reflected in his artwork. The landscapes in much of Eiki’s work recall the works of Mexican painter Dr. Atl. Eiki’s is also influenced by styles as diverse as those of Japanese artist Misao Yakoyama’s volcanoes, Henri Rousseau’s scenes of exotic lands and Remedios Varo’s fascination with pre-Columbian cultures mixed with European tendencies.

To be able to admire Eiki’s artwork fully, one must also have an understanding of Japanese art history and a perspective of Japan’s rich, but strict cultural heritage that allowed for little deviation or variation in subject matter and style for centuries. It was only after the 1923 Tokyo earthquake devastated and completely changed the city, leading to the subsequent rise of a new middle-class, that subject matter started to change. Japanese artist Murayama Tomoyoshi began applying Russian constructivism to his avant-garde art that extracted conflicts and episodes from urban life in service of an artistic revolution.

Prewar avant-garde art had two major trends— surrealism and abstract expressionism; it was also primarily proletarian.

An increasing number of artists were now able to study and live abroad in Paris and New York and their works displayed some characteristics free from the restraint of national boundaries, thereby setting the stage for the next generation to move out even further. From the late sixties, when the mood for changes in society and consciousness heightened, artists began extensively incorporating letters, signs, photographic images and natural objects such as stones, trees and water in their works. In the seventies, it seemed that paintings and sculptures in traditional forms disappeared from the center stage of contemporary art. It was only in the late seventies that, as artists tried to reconsider the meaning of the act of producing art, the space of the painting deepened and revived, and sculpture resurfaced. By the eighties, artists focused primarily on paintings, sculptures and photographs aiming at disclosing, through presentation of pure forms, the “depth” of visual experience as the space where various functions of consciousness, such as memory, association and language, entangle each other (Source: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo).

While it would be tempting to refer to Eiki’s art as surrealist, comparing him to Dali or Bosch would be incorrect, as surrealism belongs to another time and Bosch’s themes of hell and sin are not themes important to Eiki. To answer where Eiki draws his inspiration from is to answer something the artist himself does not know. Eiki works transfixed, in a sort of subconscious purging, not knowing what he will draw until his pencil or charcoal touches the surface of the paper or canvas. Some recurrent themes such as horses, however, point to obsessions in Eiki’s life. Eiki is an avid horseman, raising and training jumping horses to compete at an international level. He also employs his artistic talents in producing a line of unique artisan cowboy and riding boots which are sold internationally.

It is rare for Eiki to show outside of museums, so don’t miss this opportunity to see and collect his remarkable work in this special San Miguel showing. For more information, contact the gallery at info@galeriaatelier.com