Women In Mexican Folk Art

The aim of this book is to engender Mexican folk art and locate women at its centre by studying the processes of creation, distribution, and consumption, as well as examining iconographic aspects, and elements of class and ethnicity, from the perspective of gender. The author will demonstrate that the topic provides unique insights into Mexican culture, and has enormous relevance within and without the country, given the fact that much folk art is made for the United States and Europe, either in terms of the tourists who buy it on coming to Mexico, or that which is exported.

This volume initiates a gender-based framework for analyzing the folk art of Latin America and the Caribbean. Defined here broadly as the "art of the people" and as having a primarily decorative, rather than utilitarian, purpose, folk art is not solely the province of women, but folk art by women in Latin America has received little sustained attention. Crafting Gender begins to redress this gap in scholarship. From a feminist perspective, the contributors examine not only twentieth-century and contemporary art by women, but also its production, distribution, and consumption. Exploring the roles of women as artists and consumers in specific cultural contexts, they look at a range of artistic forms across Latin America, including Panamanian molas (blouses), Andean weavings, Mexican ceramics, and Mayan hipiles (dresses). Art historians, anthropologists, and sociologists from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States discuss artwork from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Suriname, and Puerto Rico, and many of their essays focus on indigenous artists. They highlight the complex webs of social relations from which folk art emerges. For instance, while several pieces describe the similar creative and technical processes of indigenous pottery-making communities of the Amazon and of mestiza potters in Mexico and Colombia, they also reveal the widely varying functions of the ceramics and meanings of the iconography. Integrating the social, historical, political, geographical, and economic factors that shape folk art in Latin America and the Caribbean, Crafting Gender sheds much-needed light on a rich body of art and the women who create it. Contributors Eli Bartra Ronald J. Duncan Dolores Juliano Betty LaDuke Lourdes Rejón Patrón Sally Price María de Jesús Rodríguez-Shadow Mari Lyn Salvador Norma Valle Dorothea Scott Whitten

This book uses a feminist approach to analyzing gender relations in the production and distribution of folk art in four different cultures. It examines examples of women’s creativity within male-dominated societies and offers an analysis of different art forms, including clay figures, baskets, lacquer work, and dolls.

"Arden Rothstein (New York U. Psychoanalytic Institute) and daughter Anya share their love of the contemporary folk art of Oaxaca, Mexico, in this guide for beginning collectors. Ten chapters cover ceramics, textiles, woodcarving, metal work, miniatures and toys, jewelry, candles, basketry, dried flower crafts, and images from the Day of the Dead. Sample pieces by 87 artists are featured, with information on current market values included. The guide is illustrated with some 500 color photographs. Oversize: 9.5x11"." -- Publisher.

Love and friendship, art and craft, language and culture are the subjects of this look back at one woman's experiences in Mexico over a period of twenty years. What first propels Linda Grant Niemann south are the migrants she encounters in her job as a railroad brakeman in the Southwest. She decides to learn Spanish, and in Mexico she soon meets some surprising kindred spirits. An admirer of craft and expertise, Niemann seeks out individual artists who make exquisite things--Otomi papermakers, the families who produce the famous ceramics of Mata Ortiz, the man in Michoacán who knows how to fashion full-size jaguar thrones in bent cane. Some of her searches lead her to tiny villages and to artists who seldom get to meet their own fans. Niemann wonders if she is experiencing an ordinary shopaholic's obsession or if this is something more. The something more reveals itself as the connection of one artist to another.

Introduces opposites using painted wooden folk art animal sculptures made by artisans from Oaxaca, Mexico.