Rachel and Eric on tue 13 jul 99
Alright, yesterday, or was it the day before, I told all you folks that I'm
putting on some Fine Oaxacan Pottery workshops this winter. For those of you
who've never heard of Oaxaca, get out the AAA Mexico map. Oaxaca, dully
defined, is a state in the Mexican Republic. Look down there on the bottom
of your map where Mexico starts getting skinny and pinched looking and has
no roads. That is eastern Oaxaca, low, humid jungles full of
narcotraficantes and jaguars (jaguars are not cars driven by
narcotraficantes). That's not the part of Oaxaca where we'll be going for
the workshops. The pottery is lousy there. Head west from there to where the
roads start getting squiggly, now your climbing out of the rank jungleland
up the very bumpy Southern Sierra Madre mountains, into the Oaxacan
highlands. You'll note that the jaguars and narcos have withered with the
altitude and cooling air. The mountains all around, covered in oak, pine and
cactusv with banana trees poking out of the wet hollows (remember, this is
way south of the Tropic of Cancer- bananas grow all over) are filled with
little villages of mountain folks who've been getting by here for the last
century or dozen. Columbus called them Indians. He was brave, but had a
lousy map. They call themselves Zapotec, Nahuatl, Ayu'uk, Chontal, Zoque,
Mixtec, Chatino, etc. There are about sixteen languages spoken in Oaxaca and
if you get into counting dialects, well its something like 100. Native
languages spoken in all of Mexico, by the way, number around 240. They also
speak Spanish here.
Anyway, Oaxacan folks are up in the mountains and down in the valleys and
just about everywhere in between. Oaxaca isn't crowded, not at all, but
there are little villages everywhere. Not a one of them has a mall or a
McDonald's, though some of them do have a telephone. What they all do have
though is an old time way of living that pre-dates malls and is based mostly
on what you can grow, when you can grow it and how to keep yourself occupied
while it's growing. The what is corn, the when is rain-a-falling and the
what to do while you watch the corn grow is.. well there are lots of things;
the population of Mexico is growing nicely, for example. And, in some
places, here and there and with a lot of landscape between, folks pass their
corn growing time making pottery.
This isn't really a garage hobby type of pottery. Nor is it a well equipped
studio and years of collage training type of pottery. And I've never heard
the potters get twisted around trying to figure if it's an art or a craft
that they're working on. They call it their trade, and the pots are made out
front in the porch shade where Ma taught you how and where Grandma taught
her and as far as anyone can tell they've been making pots just about forever.
The University Guys from the first world call it Mesoamerican pottery
dating back about 4,000 years to the rise of settled, agrarian societies. A
fine example of adaption and use of available resources in the creation of
necessary, utilitarian housewares. It is one of the few Pre-Columbian art
forms to survive the 15th century Spanish conquest and domination. Its
essential role in the traditional, indigenous household has insured its
survival to the present. In the poorer, rural states of Southern Mexico,
there continues to be an abundance and diversity of Mesoamerican pottery.
The potters just shrug at all this wind blowing and fancy wording. -It's
pottery, hombre, it brings in some money and helps pass the time while the
corn grows. And they wouldn't tell you much about art forms. If it works
it's right seems to be the understanding.
Of course there's more than just potters in Oaxaca. There really is quite a
bit more that goes on here. After all, corn grows slowly. But this is a
pottery forum so I'll keep it to clay.
So, among other things and in short Oaxaca is a state where corn grows
filled with old time potters who speak a variety of languages.
I know all this that I'm sharing with you about Oaxaca because I happen to
like watching corn grow, and don't mind pottery either. This was such a
coincidental and fine combination of gustos that I've made this place my
home for the last.., well it's damn near a decade now.
I offered a Watch the Corn Grow workshop a while back and didn't get much
response. I guess folks have corn growing back home to. So then I decided to
give a shot at putting on some workshops based around this Mesoamerican
pottery. That went pretty well- must not be much Mesoamerican pottery
happening up North. The Oaxacan potters and I have enjoyed it quite a bit.
Gives us something to do while the corn is doing its work.
So, if you were wondering, in the back of your mind while driving to work,
what the heck Oaxaca was, well, there you have one fairly skewed
interpretation. If you want to strighten it out some, come and see for
yourself. I'd be glad to show you this winter in one of those corn watching
weeks I offer parading as a pottery workshop.
I appreciate your time in getting to the bottom of this prattle.
Atentamente, Eric
Rachel Werling
and/or
Eric Mindling
Manos de Oaxaca
AP 1452
Oaxaca, Oax.
CP 68000
M E X I C O
http://www.foothill.net/~mindling
fax 011 52 (952) 1-4186
email: rayeric@antequera.com
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