Art In San Miguel de Allende

I met a woman at the hostel with an interest in art. Later we met for an afternoon and went to view art, her passion, my hobby.The Fabrica La Auroria is an art center inside what was once a thread mill, maybe a weaving mill, but the machinery that remains is huge and is for winding thread. Now the complex is art, gallery after gallery, each room featuring one or two artists. Some were there with their work, others were not. This was all work of artists from SMA, Guanajuato, in other words, they were from the region. I find I can only look at so much art before I get bored. It is not really a good thing to photograph their work but some of it was so fabulous I had to break the rules.



I love Mexico's obsession with death.

A screen of retables.

This is about four feet tall, made entirely of tiny little beads.

At La Auroria we talked to a young artist who, I think, was from Guanajuato. She said that the market in SMA is based strictly on the artist's bio, having more to do with the name, number of gallery showings and exhibits rather than the quality of their work. That is a difficult market for an artist to survive in and this girl's tone revealed a certain bitterness. She also told us that the story about the street murals in town was not true. According to her, those painters were already artists and did not need formal training from the local art community. Either way, I am enamored with street art and want to include it in this post. Some of the following murals are in Queretaro, a nearby city.



This mural and the one below are from a very decorative parking lot, all by the same artist.

This is one of the saner works I've seen.

This and the following are in Queretaro.

 

Las Pozas

What is Las Pozas? It's a sculpture garden just outside of the magic town of Xilitla, in Mexico. This park sits on close to forty acres of jungle and was the brainchild of Edward James, a man who had the money to match his imagination.

The story is that Edward James was the son of a British aristocrat and an American railroad magnate. He was more inclined to art and poetry than the business world. Coming to Mexico in the mid 1940s, he paired up with Plutarco Gustelam and together they created Los Pozas with the help of a good number of skilled local workers. I've heard it called a park, but it looked to me as though it was really a surreal estate, built for a man with entertaining on his mind.

I went early Las Pozas, took a taxi to the gate, and proceeded up numerous stone steps and along many stone-paved trails. I found mosaic snakes, sculptures of odd floral designs, columns of the same, arches that support nothing, and houses that look as though they were never completed There was even a building that housed the molds used to make those concrete creations. One trail led to the water system, another to a waterfall, others led to a pool, houses for exotic pets, and various other little houses. The best known is the double set of winding staircases that seem to lead nowhere on top of the several-story structure at the main entrance which I assume was his primary residence.

I find it really sad that Edward James did not leave funds for the upkeep of his creation. Over the years, the jungle took over and Las Pozas fell into disrepair. Fortunately that is beginning to change.

When asked what I thought of the park, I fumbled through an opinion or two or three, then finally stated that I was really most impressed by the plants and flowers.

Well into the afternoon, sunburned and tired, I took my leave of Las Pozas. Since there was no taxi waiting at the gate, I walked back into town. It was hot and it much of it was uphill and steep. I'm sure I walked a couple of miles along that windy road, sweating profusely, my legs cramping. By the time the taxis started slowing down to check me out, I figured I'd gone so far I might as well walk it all. Silly me. For the next two days my leg muscles were so sore I could barely hobble, especially on steps and slopes, without being in extreme agony.

Journey to Xilitla

One early morning, I hopped a bus to Queretero then another to Xilitla, where I intended to see Las Pozas. Primera Plus, a luxury bus, took us over five hours of twisty mountain roads over the Sierra Madres. First we passed through dry flat land where the towns were supported by concrete plants and the dust was deadly. After passing a very pointed rock of considerable size, our bus got into miles and miles of curves, the kind that makes Dramamine a very good friend. The plants went from scrub and palm to tall, reach-for-the-sky cactus and nopales, high mountains where tiny towns, few and far between, clung to rocky overlooks. As we descended, the valleys got wider and a little greener, mostly pine and cedar, and the towns got a little bigger. I noticed people were cultivating agave, the base for pulque, and wondered if they had bootleggers, too. Finally, getting greener all along, we pulled into Xilitla, a small town built on the side of a rocky mountain, yet in the rainforest. On my return trip I took a second class bus that stopped for everyone that flagged it down, a big mistake.



La Pena de Bernal.

Since the guidebooks tend to ignore this town, I had no map, no directions, only the name of Guzman Hotel. I found the plaza, asked a policeman, and got escorted to the front desk. He stood around patiently while I checked in, discussed room options and paid. Then I realized that nothing has changed, you still grease the palms of the police so I slipped him twenty-five pesos. He stood a moment longer, then shook my hand and left. A street market dominates the street I'm staying on and spreads out into the plaza. There is no pastel Iglesia, or cathedral, marking the center of Xilitla, but a very plain, grey convent from some past era, now a place of worship. A funny little flower-motif statue sits in the middle of the plaza and squared off trees form an outside border. There is color in the houses up here and they are low, typical of Mexico. As the terrain gets steep, the buildings drop down the slope in a strange array of rectangles, no matching rooflines and balconies, no zoning laws here. I love it.

Imelda's cafe is right next to my hotel and there I stopped for dinner. There is no English spoken here, in fact there is almost none spoken in all of Xilitla. I stepped into a tiny dining area with three small tables, eight chairs. Four is full, five is a crowd. This is where the town's vet, accountant, and other such dignitaries take their noon meal. Imelda greeted me at the door and seated me with someone halfway through his meal. When her Spanish resulted in a blank look, she picked up the phone and dialed an interpreter, maybe the only permanent American in town. He is from West Virginia and works for a non-profit dealing somehow with energy. I ate every day at Imelda's having huevos con chorizo (eggs and sausage) with avocado and tomato on the side served with fresh warm tortillas. I bought sopas for dinners in the mercado.

Sopas, five pesos each.



Decor in Imelda's Cafe.

I spent one day wandering, hiking the highway out of town where buildings shared space with large grey rocks. I was amazed, even impressed, at the way people carved a home and life around them. The outskirts of town are odd in that new, larger housing co-exists with tiny little homesteads complete with plantings, fruit trees, flowers, and chickens. The main highway coming into town forms a horseshoe and in the center, way down there, are more and more dwellings. It isn't just the poor folk, though. My English speaking friend told me there was housing for teachers down there, a privilege of their honored profession. Around town, men hang around on the corners and I take that to be a sign that employment opportunities are limited. 

An older man nodding out in front of his little house.

His house.

It is hot in Xilitla. It doesn't take much to make me sweat profusely. In the mornings the tiled floor of my room feels wet underfoot. My clothes are all damp from the moisture. On the upside, the birds are so loud and plentiful they wake me up too early in the morning and the flowers are beautiful and strange. I found myself thinking I could stay forever.

San Miguel de Allende Revisited

I took a taxi to El Charco de Ingenio, a nature preserve on the outskirts of San Miguel. The park is located on the mountain above town where people will pay millions of dollars for a house with a view. It isn't an impressive park. There are several species of cactus growing. One has the flat, ovoid leaves that those of us who eat them call napoles; another is tree-like with branches that look braided; some are straight and reach for the sky, and a round spiky cactus growing in the area for rescue plants. A resident tree has delicate ferny leaves and little grey air plants growing along the branches. There are several varieties of what I assume to be palm, and others unknown to me, but mostly this land is dry and dusty. I hiked the trails, walked beside the reservoir that I hope isn't the town water supply, and stood at the edge of a rocky little canyon. I left when I felt thoroughly sun-baked and sweat-blinded and hiked down the hill into town. While walking, I couldn't help but notice that the same plants I just paid to see were growing outside the walls of the houses I passed. Go figure.

Looking out over San Miguel .

 

The following day, I followed Henrik, a German staying at the hostel, to a public park a few blocks from the plaza. This park has a basketball court, public restrooms, a few sculptures and a lot of green, green trees. The bird song from among those trees was loud and very lyrical. I was able to spot one that landed on the side of the trunk like a woodpecker. I was very impressed with this green space and made a mental note to go back with my sketch book.

My friend took me to the weekly flea market in the part of town with shopping malls. The market was big, all under canvas and had no particular order to it. Vegie booths were mixed with tools; new clothing faced tables piled high with used clothing; and an occasional craft booth was tucked between tables of plastics and bric-brac. One woman, holding an umbrella to shade her, sold nuts from a wheelbarrow. A man walked around with a stack of caged birds strapped to his back. A girl fed grass to young bunnies in a cage. One vendor sold chicharronas, small pieces of deep fried pork rind, as well as the whole fried side of the hog. I was surprised to see a few gringos there other than myself and my friend, but darned few. This is truly a local affair.   

San Miguel de Allende - Round Two

It’s been a year since I last saw San Miguel de Allende and not much has changed. I discovered that I haven't either. Due to my Spanish language skills that are still best described as terrible despite the tapes I've been parroting for months, I boggled bus connections and found myself trundling my wheelie down dark but familiar streets at ten o'clock at night. I went to a small cafe for breakfast with a Mexican girl from my hostel who was practicing her English on me while coaching me in Spanish. A well-dressed Mexican man stopped at our table to tell me how amused he was listening to me misinterpret her. He softened the blow a bit by telling me he was pleased that I was trying to learn the culture. How embarrassing.

It's impossible to take too many pictures of this cathedral.

Life still goes on in the Plaza Principal under the neo-Gothic "wedding cake" spires of the Parroquia de San Miguel Archangel Cathedral. People gather, especially on the weekends when all the hawkers and beggars come into town. No matter, every town has them and I even have favorites. One is an older woman with one leg amputated below the knee who saws away energetically at her harmonica every time anyone passes. She is terrible but I feel that if she has the guts to put it out there she certainly deserves my pesos. On a regular basis the nighttime square activities include real musicians, men in their tight black outfits, braided to the hilt, that play traditional Mexican music. Let us not forget the ex pats on the benches facing the cathedral and the lovers heating up any empty bench they can find.

 

A young American I met at the bus station in Queretero told me about the graffiti that was mucking up the Guadelupe neighborhood in SMA. Since this is a town with a tradition in fine art, it only made sense to improve the neighborhood by giving these young scribblers some real art lessons. So they did and the results are impressive. I've tried to get more information about the project but have had little luck. I was told later by an artist from Guanajuato, that this story is not true because these street painters were already artists. One never knows what to believe.