Galeria Atotonilco Open House

Galeria Atotonilco Open House

Featuring ceramic jaguars from
Amatenango, Chiapas

Saturday and Sunday
Noon to 5 PM

Directions to the gallery on our website
galeriaatotonilco.com

185-2225

If you love Mexico, you will not want to miss Galeria Atotonilco’s gala Open House on March 25 and 26, noon to 5 both days, where you will see, “without doubt, the finest exhibition and sale of Mexican folk art in the entire country,” according to the editor of Artes de Mexico, Alberto Ruy Sanchez.

And the finest exhibition of authentic folk art just became finer, because the gallery managers recently returned from a buying trip for the gallery with a giant van filled to overflowing with gorgeous new items from villages in Chiapas and Oaxaca.

Tribos Mixe Wood Carvings

The workshop of the Tribos Mixe wood carvers is a pleasure to visit. Their large property, just outside of Oaxaca City, is a lush, abundant garden, beautifully manicured, with old-growth bamboo, big old trees, and hundreds of well-tended potted plants all over the place. No words can adequately capture the beauty and serenity. All the paths are pebble mosaics in a variety of lovely designs. In the back is an aviary with parrots, cockatoos, canaries – all in large cages and all super clean.  The buildings where the wood carvers work and exhibit their work are spread throughout the compound.

Tribos Mixe is an indigenous group who live in the Sierra Norte. This carving collective has about 120 people working, in three different locations. The men do the carving, primarily up in the mountain homeland, while the women do the intricate, exquisite painting. 70% of the artists are women. The wood carvings are imaginative and unusual. They capture gesture and action, give the animals personality, and are beautifully painted.

Oaxacan Black Pottery

The black pottery of San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca, is one of the more well-known varieties of Mexican folk art. The quality of the work varies greatly from workshop to workshop, and Galeria Atotonilco has made it our mission to find the finest artists working in the famous town. On this buying trip, we have returned with some stunning pieces. The tradition in the town goes back decades, its origins attributed to several different families. The most popular story is that the technique was developed by Doña Rosa, whose family still operates her workshop. The clay itself is not black but acquires its characteristic black color in the firing, where the clay is “reduced,” or starved for oxygen. We returned from this trip with figures, mermaids, and beautifully articulated vases and bottles.

Textiles from Chiapas and Guatemala

The Maya tribes who are so incredibly skilled in weaving and embroidery move freely back and forth between Chiapas and Guatemala, and the work from artists in the two countries is similar. So, though during this trip we bought primarily in villages around San Cristóbal de las Casas, some of the work might be Guatemalan. We returned with table runners, pillow covers, hand-woven scarves in gorgeous color combinations, and dazzling wall hangings, some with delightful animals and country scenes.

Ceramics by José Juan Aguilar

Since the nineteenth century, artists in Ocotlan, Oaxaca have made utilitarian items from clay. In the 20s, Isaura Alcantara Diaz and her husband began to create figures and scenes with the clay. They taught their five daughters, who each created their own innovations, and the “Aguilar Sisters” became famous for their imaginative and colorful figures. Now, the third and fourth generations are carrying on the tradition. Galeria Atotonilco features the works of José Juan Aguilar who has great skill and who creates works in a wide variety of themes.  A popular item in our gallery is his delightful skeleton bugs, and we retuned with a new selection, along with some of his beautiful women figures, mermaids, mojiganga puppets, and other items.

Galeria Atotonilco is located five miles north of town on a beautiful country property. With 5,000 square feet of exhibition space, it is widely considered the finest collection of authentic folk art in all of Mexico, and many visitors call it the highlight of their visit to San Miguel. Enter “Galeria Atotonilco” into your GPS, and it will bring you right to the gallery.

At its Open House this weekend, the gallery will feature a large collection of the stunning works of art in copper from the well-known copper village in Michoacan. The gallery will welcome visitors both Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5:00 PM.

The town of Santa Clara del Cobre near Patzcuaro in Michoacan is the source of some of the world’s most extraordinary works in copper. For over500 years, nearby sources of copper stimulated the trade of copper work, andmost of the items made were utilitarian. In 1966, an American artist, JamesMetcalf and his wife, Mexican artist Ana Pellicer, began working with the copper smiths, teaching them new techniques and decorative designs and heralding a new era in the town. Through their efforts, the town received thecommission to create the large glorious flame holder for the Olympic torchfor the 1968 Olympic games held in Mexico City. The impact of these two artists on the copper smiths of Santa Clara del Cobre has been compared tothe impact of William Spratling on the silver smiths in the town of Taxco inthe 1930s.

The copper mines near Santa Clara have since given out, and the artists now use scrap copper for their works. They smelt the copper into large flat disks. Then, using a combination of heat and laborious hammering, they flatten the disks into thin copper and shape them into stunning works of art. Specially shaped anvils and hammers help the artists create a wide variety of imaginative designs. At some points, they may fill a vessel with wax that hardens to create a surface against which they may work the copper form the outside.