Nov

A Cultural Encounter with Mexico’s Calacas

by Janine Boylan on November 26, 2012

Oaxacan artist Carlomagno Pedro Martinez, whose calacas (skeleton sculptures) provide a cultural encounter

Sculptor Carlomagno Pedro Martinez adding texture to a skeleton’s shawl
© Janine Boylan

Symbols Abound in Skeleton Sculptures of Oaxacan Artist

Sculptor Carlomagno Pedro Martinez leans over the wooden table and meticulously adds texture to the wailing skeleton’s shawl. Loose bones, skulls, and other skeletons are scattered on the table around him.

At a cultural exhibit of Oaxacan artists in the Bowers Museum (Santa Ana, California), Martinez, the featured sculptor, is working with the unique black clay he brought from his hometown near Coyotepec in Mexico.

Once Martinez’s figures dry, he polishes details with a quartz stone and then, using a centuries-old technique, kiln-fires his creations to obsidian black with gleaming metallic-like designs.

Martinez began working with clay when he was just four years old. His artistic parents taught his siblings and him the craft. Over time he developed his own style, inspired by traditional Mexican symbols and legends.

This was not my first cultural encounter with calacas, Mexican symbols of the dead. I knew that in Mexico, death is not negative or frightening. Figures like these typically are meant to be a joyous way to honor ancestors.

Observing the Sculptures

Martinez’s sculptures appear to be simple representations of everyday life.

One of Martinez’s pieces shows five animated skeletons on a bench. They are enamored with a frolicking dog and his bones. Martinez had carefully textured each shawl, curved each hand into a meaningful pose, and added precise expressions to each face.

Five abuelas, dog, and bone sculpture, providing a cultural encounter with Mexico's calacas (skeleton sculptures) by Oaxacan artist

Five figures, dog, and bone sculpture by Carlomagno Pedro Martinez
© Janine Boylan

In another sculpture, a skeleton lies on its stomach (or, more precisely, rib cage), joyfully studying a book. A wise owl perches at the skeleton’s eye level. They appear to be engaged in an intent discussion about what they’re reading.

Skeleton and owl sculpture, providing a cultural encounter with Mexico's calacas (skeleton sculptures) by Oaxacan artist

Skeleton and owl sculpture by Carlomagno Pedro Martinez
© Janine Boylan

Nearby is a parade: a bone, a skull, a dog, and a cross-legged skeleton. A large mask necklace hangs around the skeleton’s neck. The dog is joyfully wagging its tail.

Skeleton and dog sculpture, providing a cultural encounter with Mexico's calacas (skeleton sculptures) by Oaxacan artist

Bone, skull, dog, and skeleton sculpture by Carlomagno Pedro Martinez
© Janine Boylan

An ornate turkey hovers on a shelf over the skeletons. It seems a bit out of place, but this time of year, turkeys are still in season, right?

Turkey sculpture, providing a cultural encounter with Mexico's calacas (skeleton sculptures) by Oaxacan artist

Turkey sculpture by Carlomagno Pedro Martinez
© Janine Boylan

Digging Deeper into Mexican Symbols

Being curious, I asked Martinez about the turkey.

When a turkey fluffs its feathers, he explained, it is a symbol of day turning to night.

Oh! It had nothing to do with Thanksgiving. This Oh, I see moment prompted me to ask more questions: What about the owl?

There is a traditional Mexican saying, Cuando el tecolote canta, el indio muere (When the owl cries, the Indian dies.). The owl is a symbol of death, not wisdom.

And the five figures? The dog?

Martinez explained that each figure is an abuela (grandmother) and represents 100 years of Mexican history. The dog represents the political party, and the bone represents the policies and politics. It wasn’t a park scene, but a symbol of history and politics.

The mask necklace around the neck of the cross-legged skeleton?

That is life, hanging around the neck of an ancestor.

More Than Meets the Eye

Oh, I see! What I had brought to each of his sculptures was an appreciation of his talent in crafting them and a message based only on the surface of the cultural encounter. But when he explained the deeper symbolism of each one, I had a completely different response. Each piece was a novel of symbols that deserved a more careful read.

It was a clear reminder to me of how important it is to dig deeper and gain a wider understanding. Something that appears clear and simple may have a complex message. That’s a lesson I can apply daily!

As I was leaving, I passed by the table from a different direction.

Turns out there was even more to that turkey than I first saw. Another reminder to look at something from many angles!

Back of turkey sculpture, providing a cultural encounter with Mexico's calacas (skeleton sculptures) by Oaxacan artist

Back of turkey sculpture by Carlomagno Pedro Martinez
© Janine Boylan

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Janine Boylan Comments

Cultural Heritage & Traditions/Cultural Symbols/Mexico/The World's Art & Design

Nov

Food Carving Puts Creative Expression on Your Plate

by Meredith Mullins on November 1, 2012

Jack-o'-lantern faces, made by food carving

Pumpkins carved into jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween
© Thinkstock

It’s OK to Play with your Food

Doorsteps, stores, and fields bask in the glow of orange at the moment. It’s pumpkin time again. Good for pie making. And good for carving.

The art of creating scary jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween has been a longstanding tradition for food carving fans. But pumpkins are just the tip of the garden. Now I see creative expression in a whole genre of food art, and it’s evolving at a rapid pace.

Have Your Art and Eat It, Too

O yes, I C a whole new world. We make art out of wood, stone, metal, animal hair, hide, cloth, paper, canvas, water, mud, snow, and more—just about every element you can think of. So why not food?

Watermelon in the shape of a rose, made by for carving

Watermelon carving
© Thinkstock

Fruit and vegetable carving has been an art in Asia since ancient times. Now we have chocolate sculptures, biscuit cities, life-size butter figures, bok choy fish, eggplant penguins, and linguini portraits gracing our art and culinary worlds.

Pumpkin with a fish bas-relief made by food carving

Pumpkin bas-relief
© Thinkstock

Food artworks are fleeting. A natural decomposition, of course, takes place. This transience makes the work all the more beautiful.

For example, like British artist Andy Goldsworthy’s magnificent environmental sculptures, which last only as long as gravity, wind, and rain permit—time changes everything.

The Imagination Ingredient

The variety of materials in the food art medium is limited only by the imagination. And, as you can see by the creative work of the Hungarian artist Tamás Balla in this video, the imagination has no limits.

If the video does not display, watch it here.

While you watched, did you hear your parents saying, “Don’t play with your food”? Or, did you marvel at the the creative expression of an artist who works with food?

For me, in this tug of war, the artist won out, and my Oh, I see moment was clear—search for the artist within and carve away.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Meredith Mullins Comments

The World's Art & Design

Oct

Creative Ideas in a Cornfield

by Janine Boylan on October 29, 2012

Corn maze in Lodi, Wisconsin, designed as a modernized Vitruvian Man
© Treinen Farm

Get Lost in a Wisconsin Corn Maze

Angie and Alan Treinen’s corn maze in Lodi, Wisconsin, is, well, aMAZing. I had to find out how they make a field of stalks into the perfect canvas for their creative ideas.

The Kernel of the Corn Maze Idea

About twelve years ago, the Treinens wanted to expand their third-generation farming business. Families already came to their 200-acre property in the fall for hay rides and a pumpkin patch, but the Treinens considered adding a corn maze to draw more teens and young adults.

They visited other corn mazes and attended the corn maze convention (yes, there is a convention for corn mazes, and all corn maze creators know one another!). Then they decided to make their own maze.

With their decision in place, Angie was determined to make their maze a destination in Wisconsin. At first, the family worked with a designer to plot out their ideas, but they quickly learned that Angie had the talent to make the design herself. So she turned away from her veterinary practice to devote her time to the maze.

Designing a Corn Maze

Every May since then, when Alan plants the seeds, Angie sits down and works through design ideas. In past years, she found inspiration in stained glass—the lead between the colored glass is a little like the paths in a corn maze. That yielded corn mazes with mermaids and Tiffany-style dragonflies.

Angie talks about the pattern:

“It really needs to be a striking and beautiful maze.”

“It needs to be instantly recognizable.”

“You can’t have any dead ends. People get really angry and frustrated.”

The trails are usually about five feet wide; the main design has ten-foot wide trails. The Treinens have also learned to keep ten feet or more between trails so that visitors can’t see from one path through the corn to the next—otherwise, people tend to crash through the corn rather than follow the trail.

For this year’s design, Angie chose da Vinci’s Vitruvian man as inspiration simply because she finds it interesting. She modernized the figure in several ways:

She added a ray gun in one hand and a mechanical wing.
She surrounded him by a hypercube.
She included gears (a nod to steampunk) and a knotted carbon nanotube.

Angie and Alan worked through the details of the design together, as they always do. Nevertheless, his first reaction to the pattern was, “Are you kidding me? You’re going to make me cut this?”

Planting and Cutting the Corn to Match the Design

After the maze is designed, Angie prints it out on a grid. The corn is planted in a similar, much larger grid with very distinct rows. Alan starts cutting after the seedlings are fully emerged but before the stalks are about knee high—high enough to see where the plants are, but not so high that he would get lost in his own maze.

Alan marks the field with stakes. He flags and counts the rows to transfer Angie’s design to the field (each grid on the plan is fifteen rows in the field). Then he works with a crew to cut the field accurate to within a few inches of the design. This process takes three to four days.

The Treinen maze is unusually intricate and precise because Alan cuts it by hand. Angie says one year, when the field was over-planted and the seedlings were too thick to see the rows, they tried using GPS tracking to cut the design into the field.

That year’s design was a gecko with a mathematically-precise curved tail. But the GPS wasn’t accurate enough, so the tail came out as a series of straight lines! Alan has cut the field by hand ever since.

Capturing the Creativity in a Photo

Another unique thing about the Treinen’s maze is, quite frankly, the photo. Every year, Alan goes up in a plane early in the morning or late in the day to capture the perfect image. Sometimes it takes more than one trip.

Often farmers don’t go to this extreme to photo their mazes—they simply photoshop the design on an aerial photograph of their field. The Treinen images are real.

So, What’s It Like to Go Through the Treinen Maze?

Cell service isn’t reliable in their field so, while other corn mazes use QR codes or texting to provide clues along the pathways, the Treinens take a more traditional approach. When visitors arrive, they receive a map that shows the entrances and about 1/8 of the field. If they can stay focused and follow the map precisely, they will get to the first mailbox and get a map to the next mailbox.

On the first day that their first maze was open, Angie visited the maze and learned that there was a very distinct trail of footprints from one mailbox to the next. She didn’t want the path to be so obvious.

To encourage people to explore different paths, she added ten secret locations within the maze where visitors can collect paper punches. The more punches they collect, the bigger prize they can receive when they emerge. One prize is a compass, which Angie laughingly admits, is a bit after the fact.

Oh, I see so many creative ideas in this cornfield. I can’t wait to get to Lodi, Wisconsin, and get lost in the creativity!

For more about the Treinen maze, visit Angie’s blog.