In Reynaland, boredom is not an option
By Françoise Lemieux April 11, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Art Opening
“Mi Jardín” metal sculptures
Raul Reyna
Fri–Sat, Apr 11–12, 4–7pm
Free drinks, snacks & live music
Casa Reyna
Carretera a Celaya 7, across from Mega

Raul Reyna Viscaya is a master of reinvention, starting with himself. In 49 years, he’s gone from poverty on the rancho to entrepreneurial success in San Miguel, with many colorful stops along the way. Not one to rest on his laurels, he’s at it again. But this time, it’s art.

Reina’s many incarnations began in 1959, in Rancho Tres Palmas, about 25 kilometers northeast of San Miguel. The youngest of 12 children, he grew up in a rambling old adobe house with 24 bedrooms and a huge mesquite tree in the courtyard. The Viscayas had once been wealthy—a long, long, time ago. Reyna’s father inherited the century-old family home, its mysteries and rumors of buried treasure, and no money. Dad farmed and cared for livestock, while Mom ran the house and a tienda in one of the rooms. Their son, the last child left at home, helped them both.

Reyna’s education was homespun. “My mother would put me in front of a book and a notebook while she washed clothes,” he says. ‘Read me this, then write it out,’ she’d tell me. If I didn’t, I got a strong pinch.” His farmer father taught him his trade, the attendant skills and then some. “Papá made his own plows out of mesquite,” he remembers. “Then others in the rancho had him make theirs.” Not surprisingly, Reyna grew to be quite a handy young man.

After his father’s death, 19-year-old Reyna convinced his mother to sell the rancho and move to San Miguel. They bought a small house on Relox and he set out to look for work. The big city wasn’t kind to Reyna at first—nobody would hire him. To them, he says, he was just another kid from the rancho who didn’t know how to do anything useful. Out of desperation, he agreed to a plan of his sister’s, a nun at Las Monjas. She taught him another family skill and sent clients. For the next eight months, he did embroidery to support himself and his mother.

Finally, he found a job as a waiter. Not long after, more work came along from a nearby carpenter. No more embroidery! Reyna spent the next two years working literally night and day, saving as much money he could. “Some days, I‘d only get a couple of hours rest,” he recalls with a smile.

Reyna finally went to school when he was 24. “I’ve only come to learn to divide,” he warned Maestra Carmelita at the Escuela de Sollano, “and then I’ll be leaving.” He needed division in order to progress as a carpenter, so he underwent a formal education…for a couple of weeks. Then he got back to work.

His many labors paid off when he was able to buy a small carpentry workshop and quit his jobs. He began making and restoring furniture. By now a confirmed workaholic, Reyna also started selling at markets around the area—used clothing, pens and pencils, anything and everything. “People started saying to me ‘Raul, you’re good at selling things,’” he remembers. “‘I have a chair or a table,’ they’d say. ‘Will you sell it for me?’”

In 1982, Reyna heard Hotel Colonial on Canal (now the Plaza Colonial) was being remodeled. He tracked down the owner and bought all his vintage doors, on credit. Soon after, in the front room of Reyna’s house, San Miguel’s first used furniture bazaar, La Puerta Vieja, opened its (old) doors. Sensing a budding market, he kept buying beat-up doors, carrying them home on his bicycle. Soon, Reyna had five stores in town. He bought a truck and started driving all over the region, bringing back treasures to fix up and sell.

He opened Casa Reyna 14 years ago on the road to Celaya. It’s hard to miss the barn-like emporium, festooned with objects from the beautiful to the bizarre—stone carvings, ancient doors, massive “Harleys,” strange cultural relics. Even Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage was once part of its ever-changing display. In 2000, Reyna opened another roadside attraction—a second huge store on the highway to Querétaro.

His shops are a baroque blend of gallery, museum, yard sale and grandma’s attic, whose eccentric abundance would make Gabriel García Márquez blush. In Reynaland, boredom is not an option. Sensory overload, maybe, but never boredom. And we’re not just talking about the merchandise. Interspersed with antiques, bric-a-brac and oddments are Reyna’s offbeat displays of creativity (the fishing boat staircase at the main store, for example). And now there are the sculptures.

Reyna’s most recent obsession began with a case of buyer’s remorse. About three years ago, he bought the contents of a defunct silver mine, sight unseen. When a mountain of iron junk of dubious marketability (including 1,600 shovels, 160 wheelbarrows, a bunch of minecars and scores of picks and chisels) was unloaded at his place, he got a bit nervous. “What am I going to do with all this stuff?” he wondered.

The question dogged him for the next year, regularly waking him up at night. The elderly shovels weren’t exactly flying off the shelves. Finally, an answer came. “I got this idea to make a shovel into a mask,” explains Reyna. “And then, I thought ‘hey, maybe I can make an animal.’”

This epiphany, however, lead not to more good nights’ sleep, but to fewer. Soon after, visions of a wheelbarrow ostrich woke Reyna at two in the morning and propelled him to his workshop. “My wife thought I was crazy,” he explains, “but I didn’t want to lose the idea.” 

Inspiration routinely hauls him out of bed now, sending him to either notebook or studio. Mrs. Reyna is not as thrilled with this rampant creativity as her husband. “She is always mad at me now,” he says with a ‘what-can-I-do?’ shrug, “because I don’t let her get enough sleep.” 

Maybe he has gone a bit nuts. Or perhaps he’s a visionary. Either way, he’s turned a pile of dross into a body of work. His materials include discarded industrial equipment, dead mufflers, old rebar, junked tools and worn-out horseshoes. The resulting sculptures are large and whimsical, yet grounded in attention to detail and affection for both animals and objects. Reyna’s reincarnations run the gamut from tractor dinosaurs to a meatgrinder chandelier (a personal favorite) to the myriad manifestations of the shovel. He’s created over 100 sculptures for his first show, the latest a life-size rearing stallion made of 600 horse shoes.

Raul Reyna, the gregarious man with the booming voice—the embroiderer, salesman, junk collector, antiquarian, carpenter, artist—has always enjoyed life. But now he’s really having fun. “If you find what you really love to do, you’ll be happy for the rest of your life,” he gushes, beaming. “I’ve been very lucky.” 

Reyna’s art has transformed his life and his landscape. Ostriches now roam the grounds of Casa Reyna and firewood-laden burros loiter in the shade. Pegasus forever strains for the sky, while titan motorcycles await their mythical riders. Dinosaurs keep silent vigil over his vast and quirky empire. And Reyna? Well, he keeps waking up his wife and turning trash into art.

Françoise Lemieux is a writer, photographer and recovering thrift-store junkie living in San Miguel.

Come to see & share
By Akiko Yasuda

Omusubi Party
Sat, Apr 19, 11:30am–1:30pm
Biblioteca Pública courtyard
Insurgentes 25

What happens when 500 different artists all work on one masterpiece? Call it a community collage and the result is fantastic, not only as a piece of art, but as a piece of community development.

Sanmiguelenses will have the chance to see the results of this project along with the photographs of Russell Monk in an exposition at the Biblioteca Pública, April 14–May 5.

I saw many small stories in the making of the collage. One young couple worked very hard on their creations. She made a house, which was glued down first and then he put on the heart that he had made.

Later in the afternoon they returned because she seemed to feel bad that she had not made a heart as well. She put her heart next to his on the collage. Another young man spent a long time making a pink ribbon, the symbol for breast cancer. Volunteer Margo Godin asked him if he knew someone with breast cancer and he replied that his mother was in treatment now. So, while some people just took the activity as a fun art project, many others were experiencing a deeper connection. 

People of all ages worked together over a five-hour period to create a one-meter-square collage. I enjoyed seeing the adults becoming more like children as they started to create their forms.

In the Jardín from the early afternoon and in Plaza Cívica later in the afternoon, our group of volunteers helped residents and visitors to create the collage. Using small pieces of colored tissue paper, each “artist” created a shape while thinking about giving thanks to art. This shape was then glued onto the Plexiglas board. The layers built up and we created a beautiful stained glass look when held up to the light.

People in Plaza Cívica and the Jardín were surprised to see volunteers wearing aprons covered with 14 pockets filled with small squares of many colors of tissue paper. Too often we don’t make enough contact between foreigners and locals, tourists and residents. I chose the Jardín because it is a busy place with many Mexican and foreign tourists, while Plaza Cívica was perfect because it has more local residents. 

My original plan changed significantly. After writing the article for Atención, I received ideas from many people. First I thought that only I would bring my board with my apron, but then I discovered I had to get a permit and the project kept expanding. Luckily many people volunteered in different ways, giving their time, their ideas and their support. For me the most interesting part was communicating with the participants.

Come to the Biblioteca to find your piece and to see how the color, form and relationship changed as all the pieces became layered. I hope you will enjoy the exposition. One person is planning to put the work on the wall of her house one evening and have a big party. Perhaps other people may want to borrow the work as well and share the energy of Thank You Art.

We invite everyone to an Omusubi party to enjoy this art exposition. Omusubi means rice ball, a kind of “Japanese taco” with rice and a filling inside. “Musubu” means “make together,” so like the collage, we want people to join us to make the Omusubi, 10am–11:30am.

Akiko Yasuda is a San Miguel artist and art teacher who can be reached at martesartes@gmail.com.

Necessary or unnecessary?
By Sae Otomo

Art Opening
Sae Otomo installation
Fri, Apr, 18, 7pm
Los Arcos
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75

I am from Tokyo, Japan. I have been living in Mexico for nine years. About 15 years ago in Japan I saw some shocking news on television. The frozen ground called permafrost in Siberia had begun to melt.

According to the scientists it was melting because the earth’s temperature was rising. The image on television was of houses that had been built on the frozen ground. They were falling over because the solid ground was melting.

This is the first image that made me aware of the phenomenon called “global warming.”

Now I live in San Miguel de Allende. It’s hot here and the sun is very strong. This year was hotter than last year. This year’s “cold season” (called winter elsewhere) lasted only 10 days compared to last year’s cold season of two months. I ask myself, “Is this global warming”? Unfortunately, this is happening in Mexico and Japan, and all over the world. The temperature is rising and it’s getting hotter faster every year.

I am only an artist. I don’t know how to work against global warming in the way scientists are doing, but I can ask myself, “What is necessary and what isn’t in my daily life? Is there anything I am doing that is speeding up or slowing down the warming of our planet?”

We have many children in San Miguel. A couple of my close friends have new babies. When they are 20, will they have safe drinking water, enough fresh food to eat? Will they suffer from any diseases caused by an abnormal climate? Can I tell them anything, help them somehow?

It doesn’t help much to get rid of unnecessary things I already have. The only thing I know to do is to use recycled materials to express myself in my way, through art. Hopefully my optimism will reach you and not just my anxiety for our children’s heritage.

The exhibit will be open through May 31.

Enchanting ceramic glazes

Art Opening
Julio Quintanilla
Fri, Apr 11, 6–8pm
Casa Michoacán
Calzada de la Aurora

For many years Julio Quintanilla was known as a master of printmaking. His etchings in the Hayter tradition were remarkably inventive, gathering across their surfaces marks and gestures replete in their ingenuity. Printmakers in etching are ordinarily not known for their color effects.

All the while he had been experimenting with ceramics and developing a technique in which the color is as deep as it is brilliant.

Now Quintanilla works almost exclusively with ceramics and his glazed tiles are expressively stimulating in their use of glazes. The multiple layering of the glaze colors gives these tiles a unique personality and beguiling attractiveness.

Galileo’s angels
By Debra Drayton

Art Opening
Sun, Apr 13, Noon–4pm
Creación Marcella Andre Gallery
San Francisco 7

I have been asked to write something about Galileo, an artist I respect. The challenge is that this is also about my husband—what to write that doesn’t seem biased? The answer is that it is impossible to do that, because relationships, like art, are experienced subjectively. So, up front, let me just say that I am biased and then get on with it.

I met Galileo almost eight years ago and I think I fell in love with his paintings even before I fell in love with him. There was something mystical in his work that called to my own thirsting soul and I soon came to understand that the man, as well as his paintings, represented something truly, deeply beautiful that I was longing to connect with. With Gali’s encouragement, I began to really live the life of the artist that I had desired to be, but had not dared to embrace because of lack of approbation from others.

We have journeyed, and continue to do so, through time, distance and all manner of challenges and adventures that encompass the physical, spiritual and emotional realms of this life as we know it.

We have lived in Canada and Puerto Vallarta (twice), hauling artwork and pets wherever we go, and like migrating birds we always return to our dear little home in San Miguel. We’ve been nearly all things to each other: lovers, friends, sometimes antagonists and always teachers for each other.

Perhaps all of us ought to paint, draw or sculpt our innermost selves into representation through the various artistic media, and in this way come to know each other at a deeper level than language allows. There is nothing so revealing, especially for those who choose to see, as the work of a person connected to their higher, creative self. 

As a painter of metaphysical subjects, Gali at this time is inspired by angels. We invite you to visit them at the gallery, just a half block from the Jardín. He will be available to speak about his art at the reception on April 13. That day marks the beginning of the New Year in the Hindu calendar of south India and has been selected as an auspicious date by YogaPlanetJewels.

Debra Drayton was born in Vancouver and has for some years travelled as an Aquarian spirit between there and Mexico. Creative energy is expressed in the art of jewelry.