Tales From The Road Blog

Molcajete Bubbling Meal

mexicanfolkart — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:35:52 +0000

This is something everyone should try some day.
A bubbling hot molcajete dish with arrachera, chorizo, fried cheese, avocado, onion and nopales in tomatillo sauce and cilantro. Serve with tortillas, a beer or a margarita!

New Church Announcement

mexicanfolkart — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:32:06 +0000

They came by at 6am this morning, rockets and all. The procession wound through town, past all the other churches for a blessing, then returned to our street about 1pm.

The new church in our neighborhood opened its doors today and this is the formal announcement, followed by the man with the black collection box. If you open your door to watch, you are expected to make a donation.

Virgen de Guadalupe

mexicanfolkart — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:11:17 +0000

Last night was the 6th Novena for the Guadalupe in our neighborhood. Each day more people come and live music arrived on the fourth Novena. (Video below)

Don’t let the peacefulness of it fool you or make you nostalgic for simpler times because once it got started, about 30 boys under 12 showed up.

Half of them went down into the arroyo behind me to play soccer and yell, lighting sparklers that caused a raging bonfire, causing every rooftop dog to bark like crazy while everyone recited prayers and sang and ignored the cacophony.

The rest of the boys stood in front of me pushing and shoving each other around for fun, their mothers slapping at them as they ducked away. By the end of the night, it was almost an old time religious revival with people singing, clapping and dancing, every bit of it heartfelt with love.

These novenas are a crescendo building toward the big party they have at the end, you can feel it coming.

If it’s anything like last year’s party on the 12th, it’s going to be fun, locos and all.

Festival of San Miguel

mexicanfolkart — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 13:38:10 +0000

Pilgrimage of San Miguel to the Parroquia to be blessed for the upcoming town celebration - The Festival of San Miguel

This Weekend’s Festivities:
Midnight Friday: Procession of the estrellas to the Parroquia for las mañanitas
4 a.m Saturday: The Alborada and fireworks in the Jardin
2 p.m Saturday: Parade of los monos to the Jardin to be blown up
5 p.m Saturday: The procession of the Xúchiles and dancers
9:30 – 10 p.m Saturday night: Castillo fireworks in the Jardin
11 a.m. Sunday: The big parade of dancers up Zacateros, around town and to the Jardin
9:30 – 10 p.m Saturday night: Castillo fireworks in the Jardin

Throughout the day the Voladores perform in front of the Parroquia

Museo Antropologia

mexicanfolkart — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:27:06 +0000

Mexico city

Lorenzo Family Retablos

mexicanfolkart — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:07:19 +0000

This weekend we’ll be meeting up with the Lorenzo family of Guerrero to pick up a new collection of their wonderful folk art retablos. Here’s a few photos from our last trip there. The new pieces will be on our retablo page of our store, ready for pre- order by next Tuesday.

Their designs reflect the village, religious, historic and cultural life of their town, as represented in the images below

Nicolas Lorenzo

Locos Parade

mexicanfolkart — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:51:56 +0000

Every June in San Miguel de Allende, they celebrate the feast day of San Antonio de Padua with first, Rockets beginning at about 4am, followed by religious processions and masses and a full size carnival with lots of kiddie rides, ending a week later with the Locos Liturgy and Parade.

Ten years ago this parade lasted about twenty minutes and was a rag tag group of neighborhood youth dresses as indians, pirates, skeletons.. all the typical characters.

It has grown into a full blown thanksgiving style parade with whole neighborhoods spending the entire year creating colorful elaborate costumes around a theme.

They say about 10,000 people participate in it now. They begin about a mile and a half outside of the center of town, ending up in the Jardin (the town plaza) to dance and have some fun. The parade itself takes a good couple of hours or more to loop through the town.

Here’s a video of parts from this year’s parade.

And the slideshow
Click to view slideshow.

Have You Tried Out Our New Store?

mexicanfolkart — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 15:39:12 +0000

After many months of getting it ready, the shopping area is up and running. We are concurrently running our old and new store but want you to switch over and bookmark our new store asap because our old store will go down in a few weeks. Read below for some of our new features.

The new URL is Here: http://shop.mexicanfolkart.com/

FEATURES:
Sign up for an account to access the following features:
1. Wishlist
2. Access online your order status, shipping and tracking.
3. Access online return authorizations
4. Compare products with other products.
5. Mobile access through your iphone, ipad, blackberry.
6. Request new merchandise or special orders
7. Live Chat
8. Updated zoom photo features
9. Customer loyalty program, coming in July – repeat customers will receive special discounts.
10. Click the facebook like button to show your friends pieces that you like
11. Watch videos of your favorite artisans making pieces that you can purchase
12. Tales from the Road Blog – go to Info/Tales From The Road
Coming over the next several years:
Watch for new videos of artisans working as we re-live the first few years of our travels through Mexico in search of Mexican Folk Art. In the next several years, we will be visiting all of our old artisans to capture their stories on video and in words. We’ll be focusing on how their lives have changed over the last 15 years and how their work is changing. Artisans such as the Aguilar families of Oaxaca, the Jimenez families in Arrazola, the Castillo families of Izucar plus papel amate artisans, tin workers of both Oaxaca and San Miguel de Allende and more. Watch for new merchandise from all of these artisans over the next year.

We’ll update you with the stories here, as we travel throughout Mexico.

Tin Luminarias

mexicanfolkart — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 08:00:53 +0000

José Luz, master tin artisan making tin luminarias.

Design time: 2 hours
Fabrication time: 4 hours

Corazon Amoroso

mexicanfolkart — Thu, 19 May 2011 18:24:33 +0000

Master tin artisan José Luz has been working in tin for fifty years. The piece shown in the four minute video below is a culmination of hours of design time, over six hours in the studio creating the heart – cutting, stamping and working the tin in various ways in order to create a piece with both beauty and texture, finished in the evening hours with layers of paint and antiquing.

Meet our latest creation – Corazon Amoroso de Jesus Sacramento, a piece inspired by his love of art, mixed with religious faith.
Available in our store now.