~OTRO ESPIRITU~ANOTHER SPIRIT~

Featured next in the house spirit series. This Quetzalcoatl has carnelian eyes and plenty of fire to protect you. Small but mighty... and travels well! Made of Calafia's treasures gleaned from the Sea of Cortez.

Scroll down to learn more about this series.

~LIVE...ON STAGE...MARIACHI RANA!!!~

~At Galeria Colibri, where the sublime meets the ridiculous~


A little 'alebrige' from Oaxaca gets his big break on this special stage from Guanajuato!

~LA MANO de MUJER~~THE WOMAN'S HAND~

               
                                                                   
       
What a woman puts her hand to...things made by or used by women is the theme. The little street vendor is camped outside the public market next to the market shrine, selling her wares, sheltered under it's portico.

I call these story boxes. This is my 3rd one. The first 2 are sold. These first 3 are housed in handmade mason's boxes. The masons and tilesetters of Mexico use these to work small batches of plaster or tile mortar. I put feet on them and used a picture framing wire system on the back so they can be displayed either sitting or hanging. You can see the worn wood of the front edge, from the repeated washing of the tool at day's end. After the boxes are too worn to use, they'll just make a new one. In Mexico, most buildings are of masonry, so there is alot of form-wood handy. I love the saw-horses (burros) and other useful things they just whip up! In my role of tile designer for our custom homes in Puerto Peñasco, I had easy access to these boxes and since my husband enjoys his Cerveza Victoria, I have access to lots of yellow bottle-caps as well!  ¡¡¡Ahhh...Victoria!!!


     
CLICK on the image to get a closer look. (This pic will enlarge because of the horizontal format)

                     

              ~HOUSE SPIRIT~ESPIRITU de la CASA~

This is an example of what I made last Summer, while we were back in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora.

I absolutely LOVE my beach there! It's so peaceful & an amazing source of materials for a confirmed collage artist.

My inspiration came from an old Tastoan mask that we found & sold last year. It was 10 years old. It was made using a dog's pelvis as the main part of the face. The openings where the leg bones had been attached served as the eye sockets. It had a dried lizard over the 'nose' which held a tiny bird's skull in it's open mouth. The paint was almost completely worn off and it was topped off with a wig of multicolored horse tails. Quite ugly...but, well that's the point of a Tastoan mask.
Anyway, my husband just had to have it for the shop...I hated it! After we hung it in the shop, I shuddered when people would look at it. I wished it would go away...quickly! One day, someone wanted a closer look at it. I decided to model it. Gazing upon my transformation in the mirror was an amazing experience! All at once I felt the magic that it held! That's when I knew what I just had to do with all those fascinating bones and bits of treasure that I'd been collecting from the seashore for all those years!

Even though my collection is quite large, many times I must make a special search for just that right 'something' to complete the vision. This piece was one of those. I had to put it on the back burner because I was stuck at a certain point. As luck would have it, the very next morning on my beach walk, Calafia tossed it right at my feet...something rare at our end of the Sea of Cortez. You can see it there in the crown, just above the pearly oyster, a piece of very large scallop shell weathered to a bluish/pinkish cast. on it flowed from there. The face is made of a pelican's pelvis with eyes of  glass marbles washed up from somewhere. There are lots of 'twirly-middles'...snail shells worn down to resemble flowers and vines, or...? The dragon's breath is made of 'worm shell'. She sports a fish vertebra, pink barnacles and even a pearl.