| De la Torre Brothers in Oaxaca! | |
| 2009/11/11 13:53 The renowned glass and mixed media artists, Jamex and Einar de la Torre just finished a week long workshop in Oaxaca at the Xa-Quixe glass art studio. Students came from all over Mexico, the USA, and even as far away as Italy. The brothers stopped by Gorilla Glass headquarters to do a demo on the torch on Saturday.
I have known the De la Torre brothers since the late nineties, when I got to watch them work at the Pilchuck Glass School above Seattle. Their style is loose, the aesthetic is over the top kitsch, and there is always a humorous element to their work. They explore their Latino identity in much of their work, and are heavily influenced by consumer culture and globalization. I remember seeing an installation they did at Urban Glass in Brooklyn, which consisted of a wall of massive glass vaginas decorated with fake fur and other niceties. On approaching the wall, you realize the vaginas are in fact windows or “portals” looking into a hidden shrine illuminated on the other side.
Ah, the gift of life!
www.delatorrebros.com
www.xaquixe.com
   
   
   
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2009/11/04 14:48 My favorite holiday of the year in Mexico is Day of the Dead. Far from being an old, outdated ceremony or commercialized sugar frenzy like Halloween, the Day of the Dead is an active, dynamic cultural event. The celebration is constantly absorbing outside influences and re-inventing itself. The party lasts three days and involves leaving offerings in the cemeteries, making altars at home, and street parties with marching bands and parading through town until the dancers literally collapse on the side of the road from exhaustion. On Friday we received the neighborhood children from the local day care in the shop, on Saturday we went to Mitla (“the City of the Dead”) exploring some of the biggest tombs in Oaxaca, and on Sunday we went to the comparsa in the small hill town of San Agustin dancing until dawn!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
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2009/10/15 05:12 I was recently at the BMXnet convention in Germany. It was located at a small but wonderful artist space called the "imperfect house" in Essen. Small and intimate, the conference was full of friends and people taking classes on body modification and socializing. In the evenings there were excellent performances and suspensions by The Saviours, Haave and Pain Solution, Operafication, Superfly, and more. My Russian friends gave me a bottle of vodka and a slab of pig fat (it tastes "just like candy" Sergey assured me), Lassi ripped out his PA piercing on stage (intentionally) with a bucket of coins, Jimmy Buddha paid $100 euros for a deflated balloon covered in snot, and I eat zebra and camel for the first time at a Mongolian restaurant. Thanks to everyone who helped organize the event! And I already miss all my friends out there!   
 
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| Search for the Lost Pyramid | |
2009/10/01 08:38 I had heard rumors about a hidden pyramid just south of Oaxaca City, and I finally decided to go on a quest to find it. The rare detail about this archeological spot is that the main pyramid is in the shape of an arrow head and has a unique alignment. Nearly all of the ancient Zapotec pyramids are aligned on a north south axis and are square or rectangular. The one notable exception is the "observatory" at Monte Alban, which is the middle of the main plaza and points towards the South West. I had always thought this pyramid at Monte Alban was the only one of its kind in all of Mesoamerica until I heard about the forgotten pyramid near Yagul. So on Sunday I set off to find it.
Located on top of a bluff called Caballito Blanco ("small white horse") there is a series of caves and cliffs and a very visible petroglyph dating back 8,000 years. This petroglph looks like somekind of human figure with antennas sticking out from his body and greca designs that are later found decorating all kinds of Zapotec buildings. Scaling up the side of the bluff I passed many remains of ceramic shards and hidden caves. Arriving on top I found a group of four or five pyramids surrounded by maguey plants (cultivated for Mezcal). It turns out that there was an amazing system of irrigation walls and ditches designed to channel rain water into agricultural fields and a series of bathes carved into the cliff. The farmers today are still using the old irrigation systems to plant their maguey.
I did manage to identify the arrowhead pyramid, considerably smaller than the one at Monte Alban, but intact more or less and pointing in the same direction. It remains a mystery what these pyramids were pointing at, but it has been theorized that they were pointing at a bright star cluster that is no longer visible in the night sky (they were built two thousand years ago and stars die and fade).
   
 
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