[Previous entry: "Modern Dilema"] [Next entry: "Doubts, Questions & Certainties [continued...]"]
10/29/2007: "Hunting fantastic monsters in Oaxaca" by Ron Butler
Although relatively new to the Oaxaca folk art scene, alebrijes, animals and figures carved from soft copal wood and painted with surrealistic designs in vivid colors, are already a hallmark of native craftsmanship, as distinctive to Oaxaca, say, as Haitian painting is to Haiti.While alebrijes is a catchall term meaning monsters, clearly all such carvings are not. Many are graceful forms of religious figures, churches and cactus plants done in willowy, colorful, beautiful shapes. They´re also known as animalitos (little animals).
The principal villages where they are produced are San Antonio Arrazola, behind the Monte Albán archaeological site, San Martín Ticajete and La Unión Tejalapan, not far away. Three out of every four families are involved with woodcarving, carvers, painters or part-time entrepreneurs who work in the fields during the day and in makeshift studios at night.
Shoppers go from house to house visiting each carver´s showroom to pick out their prizes, some which seem thrust from their creator´s worst nightmares.
Using the crudest of tools, from machetes to kitchen and pocket knives, the carvers bring forth saints in robes, naked bird-headed ladies, stretching cats, skeletons, mermaids, dancing chickens, Christ figures, the Virgin of Guadalupe, devils, oxcarts, musicians and churches, whatever form the shape of the wood suggests, like Michelangelo seeking Venus in a fresh block of marble.
Because of the demand, most of the copal trees in the Valley of Oaxaca have been depleted and wood is being brought in from as far away as Cuicalan, four hours from Oaxaca.
As with most folk art, quality varies from carver to carver, subject to subject. Highly prized and expensive when purchased outside of Mexico, the point-of-sale prices here seem like giveaways. All, that is, except the work of Arrazola´s master carver Manuel Jiménez who was the first to create the wooden fantasies. He died two years ago at 86, sending the prices for his original pieces soaring - from US$300 for small figures to US$2,000 or more for larger works. Monsters came to his funeral, saying goodbye to the man who created them. Even well into his 80s, he was clearly a star, with a twinkle in his eyes for pretty women and a showroom filled with testimonials and press clippings, including a whole page from the New York Times. Appropriately, his house is the only one in the village with air-conditioning, a cable satellite dish on the roof and a Mercedes in the driveway. His studio, indeed his legacy, is now maintained by his sons, Angelico and Isaias, both accomplished carvers, as are nephews Moisés and Armando.
Another well known carver in Arrazola is José (Pepe) Santiago Ibañez, one of the few such craftsmen along Calle Álvaro Obregón, literally the street of woodcarvers, whose last name isn´t Jiménez. Because of the magic of Jiménez´s name (he was also a psychic, a healer and a reformed alcoholic), even carvers who aren´t part of his prodigious family are using it.
Pepe gripes that Jiménez, who began carving in the 1960s, didn´t teach anyone the craft. With no one to give him pointers, he had to learn the technique himself, including how to hide imperfections in the wood with shavings from the same tree. Today, after 20 years, he´s content with a steady string of clients and commissions, amused that many collectors want figures of animals that don´t exist, like two-headed chickens.
Ron Butler´s "Dancing Alone In Mexico," a travel narrative, was published by the University of Arizona Press and is now heading into its third printing, He lives in Tucson.
