The Louvre, Wapping Power Station and Casa Diana
By Carmen Gutierrez January 25, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Art Opening
Deborah Turbeville and Pedro Friedeberg
Sat, Feb 2, 6–9pm
Galería Casa Diana
Recreo 48

Galería Casa Diana will host two internationally renowned artists: photographer Deborah Turbeville and painter-sculptor Pedro Friedeberg. Turbeville will present a series of large-scale photographs representative of her “Narrative Works Photographs (1975–1997)” held at London’s Wapping Hydraulic Power Station in June of 2006.

“Turbeville reveals herself as a genuine and original artist, not only in her unique vision but in the very photographic processes by means of which she transforms her images. She exposes the lie of technique with the artist’s determination to create an imaginative content resonant with ambiguity, which is superior to any technology. Indeed their sense of going ‘against the grain’ of technology is what makes her photographs so significant.” Born in Boston, she currently lives between New York City, San Miguel and St. Petersburg, Russia.

Pedro Friedeberg, a surrealist, will exhibit numerous small-format watercolors and sculptures. The former San Miguel resident has a most impressive background—his work can be found in the Louvre, the Smithsonian Institution and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Born in Florence, Italy, Friedeberg came to Mexico at the age of three. He studied architecture in Mexico City and Boston, but left that profession under the suggestion of his former teacher Mathias Goeritz, to start exhibiting as a painter in 1959. By 1962 he was showing his work in Europe and in 1986 had his first solo museum show at the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City. Currently his whimsical and very original work delights investors at the main New York auction houses.

We are very proud to have this outstanding artist exhibit again at Casa Diana and to accompany us at the opening reception.

Percussion and painting in parallel
By Nina Wisniewski

Art Opening
Alan Tarbell
Sat, Jan 26, 7pm
Molinos de Viento
Mesones 79

Alan Tarbell’s new paintings, “Los Ritmos del Tiempo,” visually express the movement, energy, balance and rhythms that he has been working with in both his painting and his study of African drumming with master percussionist Lamine Thiam of Senegal.

Tarbell began exploring percussion in 1999 on a trip to Fiji, where he began playing a Fijian log drum. He connected strongly to making rhythms and also found them important in his painting.

From a young age, he saw with an “artist’s eye”; he found drawing and seeing things dimensionally a natural and enjoyable activity. He could perceive spatial relationships and see compositions, moving the eye with color and forms in his painting.

After returning to his home base in the San Francisco Bay Area (where he currently shows his work) in 2001, he decided to commit to painting full time and become fluent in Spanish. He was accepted in the master’s degree program at the Instituto Allende in 2002. Although dedicated to painting, he found himself again involved in percussion. He met Cuban drummer Kimani in 2003 and began studying conga, bongo and Latin rhythms. Percussion and painting became parallel studies and catalysts for each other.

After receiving his master’s degree in 2004, he began teaching at the Instituto and San Miguel became his home. In 2006, while visiting Oaxaca, he met Thiam, a musician and dancer from Senegal. Tarbell started studying African rhythms with him and learned to play the djimbe. Thiam accepted Tarbell’s invitation to come to San Miguel and Alan’s drumming studies continued. (Thiam has taught many dance and drum workshops in San Miguel and is a part of the Molinos de Viento Artist Collective.)

Tarbell feels that both painting and drumming come from the heart. He looks for visual rhythms in his colors and forms when he paints and believes that the ancient communication of drumming brings something vital and essential to his creativity and his life. “Rhythm moves us!” he says. “There is something about it that is in our ‘being,’ that resonates in us in a very vital way.”

You are invited to experience the “heartbeat-filled” paintings of Alan Tarbell on Saturday. The beat goes on!

Nina Wisniewski is the founder of the community-based children’s art program, Art in the Park, is a member of the Molinos de Viento collective and a permanent San Miguel resident.

Musicians as lovers with music
By Sae Otomo

Art Opening
Sae Otomo
Feb 1, 6pm
Café Santa Ana
Insurgentes 25

I am a painter and a photographer from Japan. I love music; I always listen to music when I work. Music gives me happiness, a warm feeling, encouragement, imagination, and much more…music is like a great friend!

I also like to observe musicians during their performance. However, I have noticed that very few times I see a spectacular performance, one that encounters the soul of the music.

It is very rare to see a good concert, which performers are able to show their inner part and to have a positive effect on each of the performers themselves. Musicians require the right amount of emotional excitement to create this kind of performance.

In a performance like those, it seems as the musicians are transforming into the music.

It is a miracle when they have a fantastic performance!!!

These great performances inspired me to do their drawings, and through these drawings I hope to share the excitement I felt at the moment.

This show is a collaboration of the musicians who dedicated their soul for music and one music freak artist.

I hope you enjoy my show.

A proposal in contemporary space design and furniture
By Jorge Rueda

Art Opening
Miguel Peyret
Sat, Feb 2, 6pm
BU Style
Fábrica la Aurora

The Peyret family has been dedicated to ironwork for decades. The tradition began when Miguel Peyret’s grandfather and uncle were amongst those who founded one of the most preeminent metallurgical enterprises: Altos Hornos de Mexico. Later, Don Manuel Peyret, Miguel’s grandfather and founder of a prominent artistic group in Mexico City, created several of the city’s most important ironwork pieces. Some of the most popular works are on display in colonia Polanco.

Miguel’s father, Francisco Peyret, established a workshop dedicated to designing and repairing machinery. It was here that Miguel spent much of his youth, learning how to work with a wide array of metals and tools.

Miguel earned a degree in Industrial Design in Mexico City and later took courses at The Institute of Industrial Design in Havana, Cuba. He arrived in San Miguel a decade ago and established Hierro San Miguel, a company focused on furniture and lamps.

Met with success, the company expanded; now its products are scattered in and around San Miguel’s restaurants, bars and hotels. Locally, Peyret’s work can be seen in La Terraza at Mama Mia, L’Invito, La Finestra and Los Laureles. His work has also spread throughout Mexico and beyond, to places such as Celaya, Querétaro, Mexico City and even at Los Sombreros, a restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Over time, Peyret’s workshop grew to resemble a traditional iron workshop. In order to see the evolution of his craftsmanship, you can tour some of the restaurants that exhibit his work and enjoy the delightful combination of great food and remarkable furniture. Hotel Casa de Aves, Harry’s, El Viejo Topo and Casa Don Quijote are a few restaurants that boast his innovative creations.

In his own style, Miguel has simplified the lines and reduced all excess of ornamentation. By pairing simplicity with the use of diverse materials like ceramic, concrete and various types of wood, he has been able to achieve a unique style of furniture that flows well with the colonial style of San Miguel. The metal pots located on the exterior of the church of San Francisco are striking examples of this balance between innovation and antiquity.

In 2004 Miguel Peyret spent a year studying and working in Europe and returned to San Miguel with fresh ideas that would alter the direction of his work. With the collaboration of his brothers, Abraham and Francisco, his designs began to take on a broader view. He was no longer interested in creating individual pieces without regard for their application, but instead he began to design entire spaces, both interiors and exteriors, taking more control over every aspect. Examples of this kind of work are the chairs and tables in the portales surrounding the Jardín, Nirvana and the Cafe at Teatro Ángela Peralta on Mesones.

Having seen the way modern design concepts were blooming up against the ancient facades of some of Europe’s major cities, Peyret became interested in urban furniture. Some of this work you can see in the development, El Encanto, and at the new mall, La Luciérnaga. Peyret has flushed out many of his contemporary design ideas with his new work at La Coronela, which is not yet open to the public.

Starting February, Peyret will reveal his furniture proposals in a gallery dedicated to art and design: BU Style in Fábrica la Aurora. Peyret combines color, finishing and materials to create solid furniture that is both simple and unique. These pieces present a myriad of options for creating spaces that are functional, powerful and original.

Jorge Rueda, a two-year resident of San Miguel, is a writer and publicist.

Photographing the elusive artist

Art Opening
alTirado Photography
Fri, Jan 25, 7pm
Café Gallery
Correo 37-A

After 20 years in New York as an event and portrait photographer, alTirado has been a San Miguel resident for the past six months. His upcoming “Art Expressions” show catches San Miguel artists while working in their studios and homes. He managed to capture the particular gestures of artists during moments of creation. Jose Luis Arias helped him contact some of the most important artists here.

“I will show some other pictures,” says alTirado, “from other places as well as my first impressions when I arrived in San Miguel. I am doing everything in digital format, so I can manipulate my images to the point that some of them resemble a kind of oil work. I call it digital painting. It’s nothing new, but it is my way of expressing some kind of photographic art.”

The name of the show “comes from my idea of capturing the expressions of other artists. And I found those expressions in many ways.

The artists, of course, but also in the artisans, the folkloric dancers, the geese in the pond and the streets of San Miguel, to mention some of the infinite ways of art expressions.”

Part of the show’s proceeds will be donated to help Gloria Espino in her bone marrow procedure.

From a medieval French village to a colonial Mexican town
By Gabriel Mariani

Art Opening
Gabriel Mariani and Anna Mariani-Mauger
Sat, Jan 26, 2–7pm
Casa Mariani
Ignacio Allende 6
Colonia San Rafael

We are Anna Mariani-Mauger and Gabriel Mariani, two professional sculptors from the tiny medieval village of Peillon, which is perched precariously on a mountaintop in the south of France.

In Peillon, I had my working studio and gallery for the past 40 years, before which I spent eight years as a professional diver with Jacques Cousteau and previous to that eight years farming. One might suppose I was getting settled, but when Anna came into my life first as my sculpting protégé and more recently as my wife, everything changed. We are both adventurous souls and our visit to San Miguel has become part of our life adventure together.

When Gabriel and I first teamed up, I was living on the other end of the same mountain in a huge stone ruin without running water or electricity. I was trying to be an olive farmer after leaving behind a stressful life as a managing director in food manufacturing. Sculpture was always important to me and with Gabriel’s guidance my passion quickly manifested itself.

Last year we spent two months exploring Mexico and fell in love with the warm heart of this country. We were particularly attracted to San Miguel as an artistic and cultural hub and not least because of the kindness and welcome we received from other artists we met.

As sculptors, we seek to express a fourth dimension through the three-dimensional medium of our work. The classical figurative basis of our sculptures serves as a foundation for further layers of mythology and symbolism as well as spiritual and sometimes surrealistic expression. Our work is cast in bronze. We model the original either in wax or clay and cast the final sculpture by the classical lost wax process

We both regard ourselves as extremely privileged to do this kind of work which we love so much. It is our hands which are the tools and we just try to let them work with as little head interference as possible. Our art is totally to do with the heart and we love to share this.

Instituto serves up season’s arts and crafts fair

Arts and crafts fair
Sat–Sun, Feb 2–3, 10am–6pm
Instituto Allende
Ancha de San Antonio 20
Free

Instituto Allende will host the third in a series of four winter arts and crafts fairs, Saturday and Sunday, February 2–3, from 10am–6pm. Over 90 of San Miguel’s best artists and craftspeople show and sell their wares inside the Instituto’s historic courtyard. Admission is free, there’s food and the all-day entertainment features many of San Miguel’s most talented musicians in a wonderful atmosphere for locals or visitors.

The woman of metal does it again
By Beverly Russell

Art Opening
Woman of Metal
Tues Jan 29, 6–8pm
Bordello Gallery
Organos 19

After a successful one-day exhibition at the Bordello Gallery, artist Patricia Mahan and gallery owner Barbara Poole are inviting guests to another showing of Mahan’s highly original work. This event will include new pieces which were not seen previously.

The exquisite, whimsical little figures and wall decorations—all made from found objects culled from metal scrap heaps—hit a chord with collectors, who appreciate the recycling of discarded items into works of art.

“I like scavenging in the metal dumps or at garage sales, streets or artisans’ piles of throw outs,” said Mahan in her artist statement. “An object can start a dialogue with me, so to speak, from the moment I pick it out of the pile. Then a creative flow takes over that brings things together that I could never have imagined beforehand when the right piece is found or the right moment happens to finally complete the assemblage.

The process both engages and fascinates me as a mystery to be solved. Sometimes the creative flow is a wild ride, other times I need to be patient until the right moment comes to me. Nevertheless it is full of surprises and discoveries from which I continue to learn.”

Mahan adds that none of this work would be possible without the collaboration of her husband, Dan Matarazzo, who helps ensure that each piece has integrity. Matarazzo is known for his expertise in rolfing, cranial massage and visceral manipulation, which he practices in his El Centro office. His gift for attuning the body and re-aligning bones emanates from an engineering background, which accounts for his interest in carpentry, welding and refinishing metal—anything that involves working with his hands.

 “Dan welds for me and engineers support mechanisms. I am the conceptual artist, but once the initial idea is there, the assembly and detailing are vitally important to each individual piece.”

Found art assemblages were first presented in the early part of the 20th century as a reaction to conventional painting and sculpture. Artists wanted to introduce a way of bringing dignity to the commonplace, mundane discarded items of everyday life. It was first considered shocking but today the value and beauty of manipulating found objects to tell a new story is understood as an authentic creative endeavor.

Beverly Russell is an author of several books on the arts and design. She has written articles for numerous publications, including The New York Times. She came to live in San Miguel in 2006.