This month’s cover features an etching by local artist and graphoanalyst, Rita Pomade, who admits to having a life-long fascination with lines and their potential for expression. Rita works in pen and ink, printmaking, linocuts, and pastel, as well as interpreting the lines of her client’s handwriting, for which she studied two and a half years in […]
Continue ReadingEfren Gonzalez was born and raised in Ajijic, a student of the Santos Degollado Secondary School, at the top of Encarnacion Rosas. Never did the artist dream he would be the painter commissioned to adorn the huge wall facing the main entrance. The town of Chapala agreed to pay 1500 pesos, hardly the cost of […]
Continue ReadingQ: Jude tell us about yourself: A: I was born in Chicago and grew up in the 50’s in a small suburb. I married young, had four kids, a son and three daughters. Fourteen years later in Seattle, I found myself divorced, enrolling as a freshman at University of Washington. I spent eight very successful […]
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This month’s cover is a digital photo of papier-mâché chili peppers taken in Ajijic. These strings of papier-mâché items are known as ristras and are just one of several Mexican paper, art forms. Typically, ristras are fruit, vegetables, garlic, birds and other animals. Paper crafts have a long history in this country. Everywhere you look there are paper articles […]
Continue ReadingWhen a certain 17-year-old Bronco gave up the ghost in Dallas last September, every mechanic in the garage it was towed to wiped their tools, shook their heads, and talked about one thing. Bass fishing. Bass fishing? While I was grieving in the ashtray-strewn waiting room where several old naugahyde recliners had gathered to die, […]
Continue ReadingTraveling to Mexico is like having a fling, a stunning romance, a love affair so intense that everything becomes a romantic vision. Senses are heightened, feelings revive, and travelers find themselves newly innocent and unfettered by the constraints of their own societies. Depending upon our temperament, we are at once profoundly carried away so that we […]
Continue ReadingI think that it is time to cover some of the Spanish terms used in construction. There isn’t room in the space I have for this column to cover all the terms but perhaps a brief primer is in order. First, the proper term to use to address any worker is not “usted” but “tu”. If you use usted you send […]
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Mazatlan has the virtues and vices of any tourist destination. But all the bad stuff – or good, depending on how you plan to spend the evening – is buffered by the decency and solidity of a working town. Unlike the hotel cities dreamed up by governments beholden to tourist dollars, Mazatlan, the second city […]
Continue ReadingA gourd is a member of the squash family. Grown in corn fields here between the stalks, they are harvested and stored in a bodega to dry. Indigenous people used the casings as practical implements like plates, bowls and water vessels. Here in Ajijic at Avant Gourd Gallery, they are lovingly carved, painted, decorated and transformed into […]
Continue ReadingMany of the things we take for granted today didn’t exist in the last century. A case in point is the railroad from Manzanillo to Guadalajara. The grand celebrations for the inauguration of this line, completed in 1908, were among the finest ever seen in Colima. The Mexican President of the time, Porfirio Diaz, attended […]
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