Exploring Mexico’s Artists and Artisans

Photo Gallery: Embryography of a jeweler Raúl Ybarra

It is perhaps only in the “advanced” civilizations that artists are elevated above craftsmen, with the former thought to be leading the cultural vanguard while the latter are only practicing traditional folk crafts. This attitude often separates the artistic talent from the technical prowess of art. There is nothing wrong with a painter who relies on someone else to concoct the paints or a sculptor who depends on a foundry caster to transform a clay vision into bronze.

However, there is something fascinating about an artist who masters both the technical and artistic parts of his craft, who brings together the science and the esthetics.

Raúl Ybarra, who was born and raised in Sonora and now lives and works in San Miguel de Allende, is a silversmith with his own foundry and a jewelry designer with his own studio. In other words, he is an artist and a scientist, who works primarily with the lost-wax method, designing jewelry and small sculptures in wax, then transforming them into metal-silver, gold, copper, etc.-in his foundry.

He first designed jewelry as a hobby when he was studying biology in university. After earning his degree he worked for ten years in the US as an embryologist, the last four years as chief embryologist at the in vitro clinic at the Center for Human. Reproduction, a division of Baylor University in Dallas, Texas.

“During those years,” Raúl said, “I read everything I could find about jewelry making. When I learned that I would need a scale, I bought a scale. I continued this way till eventually I had all the equipment for a foundry.”

Then he returned to Mexico, uncrated the equipment, and taught himself how to run a foundry. His career as a jewelry maker had begun.

From the very start, his designs conjured up the word organic. His jewelry could be whimsical or witty, shamanic or seraphic. Petroglyphic designs from ancient Mexico would pop up, or printed verses of modern Spanish poetry. Parts of faces appeared, wings or a sundial sprouted from ancient torsos, or an oval stone set in silver became “Dinosaur Sperm,” the silver frame extending out to form a flagellate tail trimmed with stegosaurian ridges.

More recently whole processes from biology and embryology have insinuated their way into his designs. As the eye travels around one bracelet, its sees the wiggly sperm wooing the egg, then the growing zygote, and finally a tiny human face peering through the placental net.

One series of miniature sculptures is, somewhat formidably, called “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” which means the embryo in its development retraces the evolution of the species. Thus Raúl designs a silver crab, its claw lined with human teeth. And a human nose opens like a mollusk, which led to the speculation that maybe someday through recombinant DNA, perhaps we can train our congested sinuses to produce pearls instead of phlegm.

Raúl’s studio resembles an alchemist’s den. The equipment-the kiln, the centrifuge, etc.-are all pre-electronic. There are no digital screens or read-outs. There are notebooks everywhere because Raúl documents every step of every process, even noting the position of each item in the kiln, and uses this information to investigate any flaws and to refine his techniques. (His notebooks, a mixture of text and sketches, reminded me of the notebooks of Copernicus that I had once seen in library in St. Gallen, Switzerland.) He is also an inventor, recently redesigning the electrolysis equipment so he can electroplate clusters of jewelry instead of just one piece at a time. This disciplined approach to his craft harks as far back as college.

As an undergraduate he had no income to pay registration fees for classes, but he got permission to use the library and to take the exams. His tenacity was quickly reflected in his high marks on the first exams.

He was working toward a degree in biology in 1979 when the British produced the first test tube baby. He wanted to specialize in this branch of embryology, but no one in Mexico taught it. So, he began reading up on it at the library in all the American and European medical periodicals. None of his professors was interested, but one did give him access to a lab but offered no guidance or support. So, on his own, he began studying mice zygotes, concocting his own growth fluids, and growing them in vitro as he had read about. He even made microtools from glass to use under the microscope.

He began to publish his findings in Mexican medical journals. His reputation began to spread, and several younger students wanted to study with him. Since he was not a teacher, and no longer even an enrolled student, he struck a bargain with them. Four points he stressed with the ten students:
1) You will always be on time;
2) you will work as hard as I do;
3) when we are growing embryos, you will bring your sleeping bags because we photograph them every hour around the clock; and
4) since I have no money you will bring me something to eat – a sandwich from home or a snack from a vendor, but something decent to eat.

On the side, while sitting in his room, he made simple jewelry and sold it to other students.

For nine years he lived in a tiny rooftop cubicle (50 pesos a month), spent long hours in the lab, and published 23 articles in medical journals. Then, with what he thought was a good reputation, he went looking for work with a doctor. But Mexican doctors sent all their patients with fertility problems to the States. He could find none who wanted to branch into that field.

Finally as a last resort he ran a job-wanted ad in a US medical fertility magazine. He got several offers for interviews in different parts of the US, but he could barely feed himself. He didn’t have enough money to bus to the border, much less fly anywhere for an interview. Nor did he feel sufficiently fluent in English to attempt an interview by phone.

Then the Baylor fertility center in Dallas wanted to interview him and offered him a plane ticket and reservations in a hotel. He went. At the airport a limousine driver carrying a sign with Raúl’s name on it located him. So the moneyless young man hopped in next to the driver of a vehicle that was bigger than the room he lived in. After a few moments the driver said, “I think the doctors are expecting a much older man.” Then looking at Raúl’s rather well worn jeans, he said, “Do you have a suit in that bag? If you don’t, I urge you to rent one this evening, because tonight you are dining at the finest French restaurant in Dallas.”

He spent a week in Dallas being interviewed and shown around, then he came home. Not a word for six months, then Baylor called and offered him the job. He worked there for ten years. In the sixth year he became chief embryologist, and within a year under his direction, the clinic had the highest pregnancy rate of any clinic in Texas. By the time he left to return to Mexico, it was one of the top fertility clinics in the US.

Today the art of jewelry design, the technique of the foundry, and the science of embryology all reside comfortably and without division in the mind and imagination of Ra úl Ybarra.

Raúl’s jewelry has been featured in magazines and trade journals in Mexico, the US, and Germany. In 1996 several pieces of his jewelry were chosen to appear in the Latin/Hispanic Archive of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, DC.

Raúl Ybarra had been invited to display his jewelry and sculptures at the 10th Expo-Fashion International. He set up three exhibit cases: two displaying his various jewelry lines and one displaying his one-of-a-kind jewelry and sculptures.

Expo-Fashion International, held at the Trade and Business Center of Mexico City on October 1999, is the largest and most prestigious fashion exposition in the country

PHOENIX RISING FROM THE ASHTRAY
(Author’s Sidebar)

Why would a 60-year-old man, who, thanks to Parkinson’s disease, has to wait till his pills kick in to tie his shoes every morning, shell out good money to take a class in jewelry making? We’re talking about a man whose only previous artistic efforts with malleable materials was at Lakeview Methodist Church camp in northeast Texas 50 year ago. When he was a 10-year-old camper, he attended a clay modeling class, where he rolled out a long worm of clay, curled it into an ashtray, and capped it with a v-shaped notch to hold a cigarette. He snuck home with it, wrapped it up, and presented it a month later to his dad on his birthday.

His dad unwrapped the objet d’art, looked at it with puzzlement, and finally said, “It looks like a dog dropping about to strike.” Actually, he used a terser expression than “dog dropping,” but either way, that is how my dad discouraged me-unintentionally I think-from dabbling in the plastic arts for nearly half a century.

One day in San Miguel de Allende I saw an exhibit featuring the mostly silver jewelry of Raúl Ybarra. His jewelry was eclectic, original, and intriguing. Also on exhibit were photos of his students and their works, and several of them were there wearing their own creations.

When I said, “I wish I could do that,” one of his students, the poet Ana Roy, said, “Do it! Raúl is a wonderful and encouraging teacher.”

Then I met Raúl himself and told him about my interest and my hesitation. He seemed so sure that I could manage the lost wax method that he invited me to visit a class at no cost and watch the process. After I watched other students for about ten minutes, Ra úl handed me a chunk of wax and showed me how to soften it with a hair dryer.

Over the next three hours Raúl showed me how to alter textures by impressing the surface with filigreed buttons and other objects and how to soften or even erase textures using fire. I discovered that the wax yielded to the pressures of my hand, but resisted the erratic movements of my Parkinson tremors.

Among Raúl’s most recognizable pieces of jewelry at that time were his angel pins and pendants. He showed us exactly how he made them by making one while we watched and then urged us to try one. To my surprise I came up with a raffish one I rather liked.

I also created a ring with a dog’s head, a cat pendant, a bug-eyed quadruped extraterrestrial, a fleur-de-lis, a barbaric bracelet, etc. I came up with 15 different pieces of wax jewelry. How many to cast into silver at a dollar a gram? I chose six. Incidentally, if a student wants to make a pendant for, say, $20, Raúl can weigh out the amount of wax that will cast into $20 worth of silver, and the cost is set, no matter how one shapes it.

My rebirth as an artist was complete when my friend Joan was visiting from Austin. I was showing her my jewelry creations, and she asked for the floral pendant and wore it on a chain framed in her décolletage for the remainder of her visit.

The post Embryography of a jeweler Raúl Ybarra appeared first on MexConnect.

If you would like a glimpse of several slices of Mexican history in all their messy complexity, with its heroes and villains, both local and foreign, the National Interventions Museum should be on your list of places to visit.

Located in the Ex-Convento Churubusco of Mexico City, the museum [Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones] offers exhibits covering six more or less unwelcomed visits by foreign armies: the Spanish invasion of 1829, the French invasion of 1838-39, the US invasion of 1846-48, the French invasion of 1862-67, the US invasion of 1914, and the US invasion of 1916.

The museum tells its story through numerous documents, newspapers, letters, citations, proclamations, etc., with captions when needed, plus a careful selection of artifacts. There are military medals, swords, pistols, rifles, cannons, commemorative coins, jewelry, furniture, a couple of thrones, a chandelier, and scores of pictures, including paintings and etchings and photographs of the many players.

As mentioned earlier, the museum is not presenting a tidy history of Mexico, but rather a sprawling canvas of imperial ambitions, revolutions, counterrevolutions, trade treaties, foreign meddling, and the shenanigans of politicians and military leaders.

Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821, but not independent of bad and unstable government. In 1829 the Spanish King Ferdinand VII thought he saw an opportunity to restore his empire and sent troops. They did not succeed. Then the French, viewing Mexico as still a land of gold and silver, blockaded its ports in 1838 to force a free trade agreement.

But the most dangerous-and successful-invaders were the norteamericanos [the US], impelled by two principles: the Monroe Doctrine, which warned the Europeans to keep their hands off the Americas; and Manifest Destiny, which assured the norteamericanos they could keep anything they could get their hands on. And they did, too: they got Texas via a revolution in 1836. Oh, there were nine years of being an independent republic for Texas, but US statehood was always the goal. Then in the invasion of 1846-48, the US forced Mexico to cede roughly two-fifths of its land-what became the western US, everything west of the Louisiana Purchase.

Then when the US was too bogged down in civil war to flex its Monroe Doctrine, Napoleon III sent occupation forces to Mexico in 1862, and two years later placed Maximilian and Carlotta on the Mexican throne. Their reign lasted three years. There were two more US invasions, one by sea into Veracruz to stop the Germans from shipping arms to the counterrevolutionaries, and a punitive retaliation across the Tex-Mex border against Pancho Villa, who had raided a couple of Texas border towns.

Along with the museum, the site is also well worth a visit itself. Once called el Convento de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de Churubusco, it was built on the site of a temple to the Aztec god of war. The name Churubusco is a rough Hispanicization of Huitzitipocho, or the place of the war god, Huitzitipochtli. This is all very apt, because the building, with its thick adobe walls, four feet thick and twelve feet high, looks like a fortress. And it served as a fortress in the bloodiest battle of the Mexican-American War, or what the Mexicans call the War of Intervention. This is the battle where a battalion of mostly Irish Catholic soldiers, the Saint Patricks, or San Patricios, earned a permanent place among Mexican heroes for their valor.

The muddy earth below the Ex-Convento Churubusco has not supported the structure evenly, and in some of the rooms the floor may be several inches lower at one end than the other. And when you look down a corridor each archway and door facing is tilted independently of the others, giving one almost a drunken feeling. Nothing is quite plumb, and vertical edges are seldom parallel. But then the history depicted there is never quite plumb or parallel either.

Within the walls there is a fairly formal courtyard with numerous benches and a huge lovely garden with a great variety of flowering plants and some of the largest palm trees in Mexico City.

A minor caveat: Some of the display captions are in small fuzzy type and not easy to read. Also, if the captions are ever redone, it might be nice to have English and French translations, so the touring descendants of all the invaders can more easily digest this portion of the history of Mexico.

Sidebar: Antonio López de Santa Anna, Mexican general and dictator, pops up repeatedly in Mexican history from 1824 to 1855. He took over the government eleven times, emptied the public treasury eleven times, held a formal state funeral for a leg he lost in battle, and was overthrown eleven times. In Texas he’s remembered as the villainous general who overthrew the Alamo and took no prisoners. He was captured in the Battle of San Jacinto that freed Texas from Mexico, and the Texas General Sam Houston was going to have Santa Anna shot until he found out he was a fellow Mason.

Among many other things, Santa Anna was also a chewer of chicle, the sap of the chicle tree; and when he went to New York to plot one of his overthrows of the Mexican government, he took along chicle hoping to find investors and market it as a rubber substitute. He met a Dr. Adams who prescribed it as a palliative for a patient who couldn’t tolerate sugar. She liked it, so Adams prescribed it as a medical “chewing” gum. But it was a soap manufacturer named Wrigley who thought it could be marketed as a popular non-medical confection with the same name – chewing gum. So the US has one of Mexico’s premier scoundrels to thank – or blame – for a habit that has irked elementary school teachers for generations and that the pre-McDonald Soviets used to call a prime example of “western bourgeois decadence.”

The post Churubusco, Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones appeared first on MexConnect.

In the preface to his monumental biography Sor Juana, the late Octavio Paz wrote, “In her lifetime [1651 to 1695], Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was read and admired not only in Mexico but in Spain and all the countries where Spanish and Portuguese were spoken. Then for nearly two hundred years her works were forgotten. After the turn of this century taste changed again and she began to be seen for what she really is: a universal poet. When I started writing, around 1930, her poetry was no longer a mere historical relic but had once again become a “living text.”

Juana Ramírez de Asbaje entered the convent of St. Jerome (San Jerónimo) in 1669 as a cloistered nun. Once she took her vows, she became Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. As Paz points out, the cloistered life in those days was not as severe as we might imagine it: “[T]he convents were small cities and the cells were apartments or even at times, small houses constructed around enormous patios.” Sor Juana’s quarters consisted of an upper and lower floor, in which each cell had a bathroom, a kitchen, and a sitting room. The nuns often brought along maids and slaves, and at St. Jerome there were three helpers to every nun.

Officially known as the Convent of Santa Paula of the Order of San Jerónimo, it was founded in 1585 by Isabel de Barrios, daughter of conquistador Andrés de Barrios, husband of the sister of Cortés. It was built in an austere style known as herreriano, named for Juan de Herrera, architect of El Escorial in Spain. After its life as a convent was ended, the building went through several transformations, once even housing a famous cabaret, the Smyrna Dancing Club.

Under the guidance of Licenciada Carmen Beatríz López-Portillo, daughter of President López-Portillo, the site was opened as a Center for the Investigation of the Life of Sor Juana, and soon evolved into its present-day incarnation as the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana [La Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana]. The building is part of the patrimony of Mexico; the school is owned by Licenciada López-Portillo.

None of our guidebooks made any mention of the convent or the university, so we set out to find it, not sure what to expect, but hoping to find remnants of the original convent. The entrance is on José María Izazaga, halfway between metro stations Isabel la Católica and Pino Suárez in the Centro Histórico, and the entrance is very inauspicious, looking much like the opening to a parking lot. [From the other three sides, the convent looks like an abandoned boarded-up fortress, and in a graffiti-lined courtyard. On the backside is a huge statue of the sitting Sor Juana that looks much like the space aliens of Roswell, New Mexico.

But once inside, we found a cozy labyrinth of patios, courtyards, classrooms and meeting rooms, a theater, a chapel, and offices. The largest courtyard is enclosed by classrooms, offices, and ruins of the old convent. One door opens into a modern classroom, the next into 16th-Century ruins. In these rooms the stone floors have sunk about two meters, giving them a half-basement look. Remnants of tile ovens and tile baths can still be seen.

We visited with Licenciada Soledad López Perèz, the school’s information officer, who told us about the university. The classes are tutorial (one on one) or seminar (group discussion) rather than traditional lectures. The philosophy of the institution is humanistic, and students are encouraged to investigate and think for themselves, according to the licenciada. Enrollment is about 700 students, mostly upper middle class. Humanistic degrees are offered in nine subjects: art, cultural sciences, philosophy, humanities, literature and science of language, psychology, editorial design, audio-visual communications, and gastronomy.

If you get an intellectual itch while visiting the school, there is an excellent collegiate bookstore. And if you mention Paz’s book about Sor Juana, as we did, you will discover quickly that Sor Juana, who she was and what she was like, is still a subject of lively debate. More than three hundred years ago, Sor Juana herself wrote:

I am not who you think I am
But you have given me
Another being with your pens
Another breath through your lips,
And unlike my own self
I wander among your pens,
Not as I really am
But as you want me to be.

No soy yo la que pensáis,
sino es que allá me habéis dado
otro sér en vuestras plumas
y otro aliento en vuestros labios,
y diversa de mí misma
entre vuestras plumas ando,
no como soy, sino como
quisisteis imaginario.

Or if you are just hungry, there is even a bargain restaurant on the premises that serves meals prepared by the gastronomy students.

We asked Licenciada López about restorations at the site, and she said the parts of the building that were restored had been restored to their 18th Century version, not their 16th Century one. Although the university has all the modern accoutrements-electricity and running water, telephones, computers, TV monitors, fire extinguishers, and a student population as modern, modish, and intellectual as you might see at, say, the University of Chicago, there was still the feeling that the 20th Century was just camping there.

Yet, when we walked through the ruins in one of the patios, we couldn’t get rid of the feeling that we were walking where Sor Juana had walked. We saw in the chapel an amazing thing however-a mirrored multi-tiered pyramid, its tiers lined with rows of skulls nestled in nests of pink and orange flowers. Above it were garlands of the same flowers festooning the inside of the dome over the altar. All these decorations were part of an elaborate ofrenda, or altar, inviting the spirit of Sor Juana to visit on the Day of the Dead.

There was a conference going on while we were there called Six Days of Culture with workshops on such topics as “The Feminine from a Psychological Perspective,” “The Feminine in Education,” “The Brain-Masculine? Feminine?” and “Woman: Virgin Mother or Prostitute? A Masculine Vision of the Feminine.” If the spirit of Sor Juana had come back for a visit, we wondered if she might be lingering for the conference.

Books by and about Sor Juana

Sor Juana Or, the Traps of Faith,

By Octavio Paz, Margaret Sayers Peden (Translator) Reprint 1990

Paperback

Poems, Protest, and a Dream : Selected Writings

By Sor Juana Ines De LA Cruz, Margaret Sayers Peden (Translator) 1997

Paperback

The Answer/LA Respuesta : Including a Selection of Poems

By Sor Juana Ines Dela Cruz, Sor Juana Cruz, Amanda Powell (Translator) 1994

Paperback

Sor Juana’s Love Poems : In Spanish and English

By Juana Ines De LA Cruz, Joan Larkin (Translator), Jaime Manrique (Translator) 1997

Paperback

Sor Juana : A Trailblazing Thinker (Hispanicherit Age)

By Elizabeth Coonrod Martinez. 1994

Hardcopy

Woman of Genius : The Intellectual Autobiography of Sor Juana De La Cruz

Gabriel N. Seymour, Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz, Margaret Sayers Peden (Translator) 1982

Paperback

Early Modern Women’s Writing and Sor Juana Ines De LA Cruz

By Stephanie Merrim, 1999

Harcover

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