An exhibition of San Miguel artists
By Edward Swift

Art Opening
Amigos de Arte Contemporáneo de
San Miguel de Allende (AARCOSMA)
Mon, Apr 7, 5–8pm
Museo del Ayuntamiento
Plaza Principal 8

Concert
Xavier Gibler
AARCOSMA Fundraiser
Fri, Apr 11, 6:30pm
Auditorio Miguel Malo
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75
100 pesos

Amigos de Arte Contemporáneo de San Miguel de Allende (AARCOSMA) is a nonprofit organization founded for the purpose of promoting Mexican contemporary art. With the invaluable support of the Office of Education and Culture of San Miguel, AARCOSMA will sponsor its third annual exhibition April 7–30, in the Museo del Ayuntamiento, located across from the Jardín.

The AARCOSMA presidents, Javier Noriega and Esperanza Orvañanos have invited expatriate artists living in San Miguel and distinguished guests to join the exhibition. Among the more than 25 participating artists are:

Alvaro Zardoni. His work in bronze is figurative. Strong-faced men seem to be a major theme. He often incorporates elements of daily life, such as zippers worn as a headband, to enforce the concept behind each piece.

Painter and printmaker Ania Theiss sometimes works in drypoint combined with a “sugar lift,” a complicated process of mixing ink with a sugar solution and painting it directly onto the plate. The plate is then varnished and soaked in acid. Where the varnish is “lifted” the acid bites into the plate. Picasso favored this process because of the unusual textures produced.

In a separate room, Javier Noriega and Edward Swift will create an installation of spirit trees, totems, ceremonial staffs, mummies of sacred insects and a few surprises we haven’t even thought of yet. Noriega will also show several short films depicting his recent visit to a biological preserve in Veracruz. The films are beautifully edited with many frames distilling into stone-like images or line drawings.

Edina Sagert prefers to work with oil and encaustic because they allow her to scratch through the surface with spatulas and other favored kitchen tools such as the runcible spoon.

She often paints blackbirds or the spirits of blackbirds because they are “funny, intelligent and mysterious—they allow me to express different moods.” One of her recent titles “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie” could make one a little leery of accepting dinner invitations.

Kelley Vandiver uses symbols both sacred and profane in his paintings. Images associated with Christianity are often mixed with tarot symbols accompanied by animals dressed up in Renaissance costumes. I have a strange feeling that either something horrible happened to him in a Catholic church or he was once madly in love with a priest.

Fidelio Herrera, who has only recently begun to work in clay and has taken to the medium as if born to it, will show two new works. One is the bust of a Mayan warrior wearing the amulet of the jade jaguar symbolizing the interior voyage of all men. In Greek mythology the warrior is represented by Odysseus.

Edgardo Kerlegand will unveil a new painting entitled “Senador.” It is a portrait of a handsome, idealistic young man whose public face fades into an interior face with blurred, possibly animal-like, features. The artist further explains that “the senator dictates the law and imposes a new order.”

Other artists in the exhibition include Brian Care, Jesús Real, Juan Diaz Duran, Laura Begoña, Linda Vandiver and many others.

This year’s exhibition includes painting, sculpture, ceramics, object art, installation, and photography, but next year AARCOSMA hopes to expand the celebration to include music, drama and performance art.

In order to finance these ever-expanding yearly exhibitions, several fundraising events are in the works. The first will be April 11, when Xavier Gibler presents a concert of popular songs in Spanish and English. The son of an American father and a Mexican mother, he is considered one of the most important interpreters of the music of Veracruz composer Victoria Barbosa.

Tickets may be purchased at the door, if still available, or at the AARCOSMA exhibition.

Edward Swift is a resident of San Miguel de Allende.

La vida es sueño … Life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams
By Melanie Harris de Maycotte 

Art Opening
Y los sueños, sueños son
Angelina Pérez Ibargüen & Miguel Angel Morales
Sat, Apr 5, 6–8pm
Galería/Atelier
Fábrica la Aurora

The words of seventeenth-century Spanish playwright Calderón de la Barca are the inspiration for sculptors Angelina Pérez Ibargüen and Miguel Angel Morales in their upcoming show “Y los sueños, sueños son.”

 It is a discourse on the blurred lines of reality that can occur in everyday life; a life that often feels surreal to the living when one lives to create his or her own truths and surroundings based on dreams. It is most notable for artists who dream and create art forms as a profession. These artists pose questions to their audience: “‘What is your home?’ ‘What is your family?’ ‘What is your persona?’ …and if these were not first dreams made into reality by your actions, and just because they have a physical shape, do they cease to be dreams?”

Angelina Pérez is presenting her signature polychromatic ceramic sculptures laced with irony and satire. In her work, the dreams remain in more of a dreamed state. The man falling through the air in her mobile “Volando” represents a man who has built paper airplanes and dreams of flying through the air alongside his paper creations.

She accepts that as an artist she is living a dream and remains faithful to her dream and this dream lives on in her daily life to the point she wonders if she is truly awake and not in a constant state of dream. For following her dreams, she has been selected as one of the top Mexican artists to collect by the Fundación Murrieta in their most recent publication of emerging artists.

Dreams come alive in Miguel Angel’s nontraditional use of color in objects which represent everyday subject matter. The pinkish-purple tones in the sculpture “House” are reminiscent of idealized children’s drawings of their homes, lovely places in which no harm can be done, where things always are of their musing. The sculpture itself is of cement, a material that the artist has mastered and is able to give textures, colors and effects that have become signatures of his work. The material works on two levels in this show. It gives a sense of permanence, but for those who know the true qualities of cement, there is no more permanence, other than the perceived one, than there is in ceramics. His sculptures are the maquettes of his dreams that, once made real, still carry with them a heavily dreamed connotation.

This artist-curated show was planned especially for the Galería/Atelier space. Enjoy a cocktail and meet the artists at the opening. 

Melanie Harris de Maycotte is the director of Galeria/Atelier.

Extraordinary arte basura “findings” of Laura Begoña
By Edward Swift

Art Opening
Laura Begoña
Mon, Apr 7, 5–8pm
Museo del Ayuntamiento
Plaza Principal 8

When I first saw Laura Begoña’s found-object sculptures, my heart accelerated. There is such order and symmetry in her work, not only in the discarded objects themselves but also in the manner in which she chooses to present them to us.

It is obvious that she respects the utilitarian past life of these old tools and mechanical parts, these nuts and bolts, spinning tops, ax blades, cannonballs and various odds and ends of scrap metal. The past life of the discarded objects is not obscured in her sculptures, and yet the objects are given a new life. She gives them a second chance.

Since early childhood in Celaya, Laura Begoña has collected things: seeds, coins, marbles, snails, balls, wheels, tops—things that amused her in daily childhood games, things she played with and still plays with. Today she cherishes her ability as an adult to play. Play is her pastime. Though her ability to play may be childlike it is never childish. Her toys are the discarded objects she finds on streets and roadsides, in junkyards and dumping grounds. It is almost as if the discarded objects are calling out to her: “Take us with you. Don’t let us be forgotten.”

I spoke to her recently in the Generator Gallery where her work was being celebrated. She told me that she considers herself an archaeologist who rescues objects from oblivion. She takes them to her taller in San Antonio. She cleans them up and studies them. “I have to unravel their character,” she said, speaking in a combination of English and Spanish, “I have to discover the pieces as individuals.”

Sometime she refers to her art as arte basura or trash art. “The found objects are like fossils,” she said. “Los objectos fosiles. When I go to the dumping grounds I think only about my findings. I rescue these parts of machines and when I take them their time has passed; time has passed through them; their time has expired. And I want them to continue. If I don’t rescue them they are going to be destroyed, so I try to give them another language to speak.”

Once she was in a junkyard where something was burning. The smell was awful. Then she saw what was burning—boots. Dozens of old, worn-out boots used by hard laborers. The only parts of the boots that didn’t burn were the metal toes. She raked them out of the fire and strung them on a wire. The metal toes fit easily one inside the other.

The bottom of the sculpture rests on the floor like a tired serpent. “Those people who wore these boots; they worked so hard,” she said. “We paid them so little and this is all that is left—the toes of their boots. The same for this,” she said, pointing to a sculpture more than six feet tall. It was constructed of pickax blades stacked one on top of the other like a spine of a prehistoric creature. “Like a fossil.” she said again. “I am like an archaeologist. I collect fossils.”

We left the Generator Gallery and drove to her taller in San Antonio. The taller is a vacant lot. Some of her findings are arranged on the ground in precise order; others are collected in heaps and piles. Each object has its own personality and spirit. Now the findings are waiting, not to be discovered but to be put to use in another way. In July Begoña plans to host her first exhibition in this vacant lot. “Maybe,” she said, “I will cut the weeds.”

“No,” I said. “Let the weeds grow. Place your sculpture among the weeds. The entire town will come to see this.” Another San Miguel event to look forward to.

Currently Begoña’s work can be seen at the AARCOSMA exhibition (Amigos de Arte Contemporáneo de San Miguel de Allende). The exhibition is located in the old municipal building across from the Jardín.

Edward Swift is a San Miguel writer and artist.

Visiting artist donates painting to Biblioteca
By Sam Decker

“It’s not always safe when you got into the unknown, but it’s the time when the magic happens,” said Jacques Desgagnés, the man referred to by some as the “Wizard of Energy.”

The French-Canadian painter does seem to have a remarkable talent for summoning great quantities of energy into each of his explosive works. One leaves the Biblioteca Pública’s Café Santa Ana, where his paintings were on display throughout March, with the odd sensation of having sipped a cappuccino in the company of a dozen or so miniature universes bursting into existence.

Desgagnés departed San Miguel this week, concluding a five-week stay. During his visit he held a well-received exhibition and taught a creativity course. But he has not left us entirely—his presence remains in the form of a vibrant US$9,000 painting, entitled “La Fiesta,” which he donated to the Biblioteca Pública. “I received so much from the people here,” said Desgagnés. “Donating the painting is a way for me to pay them back for everything they have done.”

Desgagnés was thrilled with the response to his exhibition, which opened in the beginning of March. “I observed that the people of San Miguel are more awake to the arts than in a lot of other places I have visited,” remarked the artist who has shown work throughout Canada and the US.

Desgagnés’ current body of work is the result of his experimentation with what he referrers to as “new energy.” The mood of his paintings is one of unbridled elation, reflecting his belief that the universe is meant to be experienced and not understood. “We were taught to define and understand everything,” he explained. “This is not true anymore.”

In his three-day class, held in the art space above the Biblioteca, Desgagnés used painting as a medium for teaching about the creative process. He believes that the techniques and philosophies he passed on can be applied to any life pursuit, from art to business. 

Flor Dengreville, a resident of San Miguel, convinced him to do the course. “I wanted to learn from him because I love his style. I’d never painted and I’ve been waiting for the right circumstance to learn.

I love his energy and the colors that he uses. He gives you a lot of tips that are not necessarily about painting.” 

For the class’s final project, each student worked on one section of a large painting; Desgagnés’ contribution was to unify the four parts. The piece also also has been donated to the Biblioteca, except, unlike his own painting, this one he wishes to be sold. “They can do what they want with the money,” he said in his characteristic laidback tone. “But it would be best if they bought art supplies for the kids.”

Sam Decker is a recent graduate of Oberlin College and is currently interning in the editorial department of Atención.

Hula jugetes and Guanajuato ‘scapes
By Miriam de Uriarte

Art Opening
Joseph Slusky & Katie Hawkinson
Sat, Apr 5, 6–8pm
Generator Gallery
Fábrica la Aurora

Remember the mercados during fiesta seasons years ago when the stalls were filled with hand-cut tin toys? The strange little helicopters, trumpeting elephants, kitchen stoves and steam engines next to miniature carriages, trucks and Ferris wheels? And the spinning tin acrobats? Until the last week of April, the Generator Gallery will display drawings and paintings by two artists whose work evokes both the playful gusto of bygone Mexican toys and the colorful abstract colonial landscapes of Guanajuato where craftsmen spent hours cutting, shaping and painting the small metal jugetes.

Sculptor Joseph Slusky recalls the playful objects in the wiggling, bopping, abstract forms he draws. “Innerscapes” refers to a private world replicating only the ground lines of the real one. That conventional perspective is floated on a pale blue background. Anything goes in the foreground: hula-hula pillars struggling with slinky snaking wraps, behind a whizzing, walloping geometry of cubes, rectangles—whatever. The lack of gravity releases the shapes, reproducing land-like “scapes” of the inner world. Slusky, who grew up in LA, suggests the humor of Krazy Kat cartoons and Mexico’s José Posada prints where the unexpected is no big deal. In fact, the drawings are Slusky’s own Conquista of his inner visions where rhomboids are pounded into metaphorical cityscapes of wobbling gelatin forms. The two groups of his prints on exhibit, “Innerscapes” and “Newsworthy,” could even allude to what might be Klee’s fun park. 

On the other hand, Katie Hawkinson presents carefully stacked shapes that recall the architectural forms of aqueducts, bovedas, cobbled pathways, tiny doors and windows all fancifully jumbled and colorfully arranged in a packed space that suggests the colonial towns of central Mexico. The large oil-on-paper works are done with cut-out shapes that are rearranged to reinvent the familiar in new, colorful ways suggesting the ups and downs we walk every day in Guanajuato.

These paintings were displayed recently at the Casa Museo Gene Byron in Guanajuato, where Hawkinson also presented a workshop that led her students through the history of early twentieth-century abstract art movements, particularly the paintings of Kandinsky, Picasso and Matisse, artists whose approach is recognizable in Hawkinson’s own compositions. The town itself reminds her of early Roman paintings of buildings and Cubism with a more vibrant coloration. The connection of ancient, modern and current life and art is an ongoing focus in her work.

Hawkinson and Slusky work in studios at their home in Berkeley, where they teach at the University of California. Both have spent time in Mexico and take inspiration from the vibrancy of the culture and place.

Miriam Diuarte is a freelance writer, translator and consultant in fine arts. She resides in Guanajuato, where she works with various public museums and galleries.

Bigger is better
By Richard Lourie

Studio Opening
San Antonio Studios
Tue, Apr 8, 6–8pm
Refugio Sur 35
Colonia San Antonio
154-5645

How does the latest technology get to San Miguel? By the magic of chance.

Two years ago New York artist Jod Lourie returned to San Miguel for the first time since the seventies just for a vacation and a quick look-see.

One day, choosing an out-of-the-way table at La Gruta, she ran into an old friend, a Boston art dealer who introduced her to photographer Ri Anderson. With only days left in her stay and without in the least intending to, Lourie bought a house on Calle Beneficiencia. The few words she exchanged with Anderson at La Gruta have blossomed into a friendship and a partnership—the two women have joined forces to create San Antonio Studios, which specializes in large-scale and giclee printing using a 44-inch printer, the biggest in San Miguel.

Lourie has degrees from Columbia University and Boston Museum School and has been artist-in-residence in Padua, Italy, and at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. She creates composite prints of southwestern and Mexican landscape imagery. She also designs furniture and has created sculptural installations in buildings and parks in the US.

Her work is shown in print and studio furniture galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Award-winning photographer Ri Anderson received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Massachusetts College of Art and has lectured at Harvard, Tufts and Massachusetts College of Art. Included in the permanent collection of the DeCordova Museum, Anderson’s work shows in galleries in Boston, New York, Atlanta and Ottawa.

The Boston Globe wrote of her work: “…her black-and-white images have had a film-noir edge and a persistent, bruised vulnerability. …in her [newer work] she’s moved into color to explore the depth and rawness of mother-daughter relationships, focusing on the women in her own family. The photos have a potent, fairy-tale mix of succor and threat.”

Living with artist Larimer Richards and their two daughters, age five and two, she divides her time among San Miguel, Pozos and Cambridge.

Using a 44-inch giclee printer, Lourie and Anderson are able to create luscious prints on photo, watercolor and fine-art paper, as well as materials like canvas and silk. Best of all, the inks and papers are archival and will last between 100 and 200 years without fading.

Their studio is at Refugio Sur 35 above Lavinia’s Frame Shop. The printing studio and the frame shop will enjoy a symbiotic relationship where artists and art lovers may drop off files and pick up beautifully printed and framed treasures. Artists and art lovers are invited to an opening party co-hosted by San Antonio Studios and Lavinia’s Frame Shop.

Richard Lourie, a columnist for The Moscow Times, is the author of a new novel, A Hatred for Tulips.

Magenta moves!
By Rebecca Peterson

Art Opening
Elvia Montibeller & Judit Gimbel
Sat, Apr 5, 5–8pm
Galería Magenta
Mesones 57, Interior B

Galería Magenta begins a new life cycle. Just as exciting as our move to a new location on Mesones is the gallery’s opportunity to welcome two new artists as we approach our fourth anniversary.

Elvia Montibeller, a native of Irapuato, Guanajuato, once specialized in figurative oil painting and learned the fresco technique of mural painting. Exhausted by the pressures of mural painting but still wanting to work in the plastic arts, she began exploring sculpture at Bellas Artes in San Miguel. However, unable to leave the paintbrush behind, she continued her exploration in paint and color on canvas, developing an abstract language that is guided by her forms in sculpture. Her current painting style can be described as “vigorous abstract expressionism,” which allows us to see her strong spirit in search of self-knowledge.

Magenta also welcomes Judit Gimbel, a colorist who has finally found her palette in San Miguel after years of painting in other parts of the world. Gimbel’s landscape paintings are representative of expressionism, pushing toward abstraction. Her use of wild colors and apparent distortions of form are reminiscent of Les Fauves. Her emphasis on artistic intuition to draw out a spiritual element in nature makes her a compatriot of earlier artists who sought to join the spiritual with the matter of paint. Gimbel’s painting “Beyond the Trees I” depicts this love for nature, guided by harmony of form and contrast of bright color.

Rosa Torres, a founding partner of Magenta, will exhibit new work in her fine ceramic craft. Her previous work—utilitarian pieces combined with the playfulness of bright colors—has evolved into an exploration of the medium to create nonfunctional forms and sculpture. With her present work, her aim is to create a space where the unconscious self can be expressed and acknowledged as a counterpart to the daily concerns of life. She plans to show her functional works along with her sculpture as, she says, “Among the things I enjoy most in the morning is to drink tea from a cup that I created with my own hands.”

Rebecca Peterson, another founding partner of Magenta, will continue to show her one-of-a-kind assemblages in the form of embellished tin nichos, with a recent series centering around insects—monarch butterflies, beetles, a walking stick, a praying mantis—as well as other images from nature: supernovas, orchards, roots and branches. She finds inspiration in the poetry of Mary Oliver: “…the world offers itself to thee….”

Jo Brenzo also continues to exhibit her photographs including her “Island of the Dolls” series, as well as her artistic documentation of popular festivals in Oaxaca and San Miguel. Her partner Gary Berkowitz shows his prints and together they continue to create their “Ray-Maiz,” corn-husk and bamboo “sunglasses” inspired by the folk-art of Oaxaca. This truly is a unique gift for the person who has everything, because—who has a pair of corn-husk eyeglasses?

Look for us in our new location and watch for special events to unfold this summer as we take advantage of our more spacious gallery for presentations, demonstrations and other surprises.