Alebrije
In the 1980s, British filmmaker Judith Bronowski arranged an itinerant Mexican art craft demonstration workshop in the United States featuring Pedro Linares, Manuel Jiménez, and Maria Sabina, a textile artisan from Oaxaca.
[1] The three towns most closely associated with alebrije production in Oaxaca have produced a number of notable artisans such as Manuel Jiménez, Jacobo Angeles, Julia Fuentes, and Miguel Sandiego.
[2][3] The first alebrijes, as well as the name itself, are attributed to Pedro Linares, an artisan from México City (Distrito Federal), who specialized in making piñatas, carnival masks and "Judas" figures from cartonería, an ancient and widespread papercraft often confused with papier-mâché.
In his fever dreams, he was in a forest with rocks and clouds, many of which turned into wild, unnaturally colored creatures, frequently featuring wings, horns, tails, fierce teeth and bulging eyes.
[8] For example, "Beasts and Bones: The Cartonería of the Linares Family" in Carlsbad, California, featured about seventy alebrijes and was so popular that it was extended by several weeks.
[11] Because a variety of artists and artisans have been creating alebrijes in their own styles, the craft has become part of Mexico's folk art repertoire.
[8] Known as the "Señora de los Monstruos" by the local children in Condesa, an upscale neighborhood of Mexico City, she is a native Argentine and naturalized Mexican citizen.
[8] More recent examples in Mexican culture, artist Julio Ruelas and graphics artist/commentator José Guadalupe Posada, have created fantastic and sometimes terrifying images.
[3][9] Some, like master craftsman Christian David Mendez, claim that there is a certain mysticism involved in the making and owning of alebrijes, with parts of certain animals representing human characteristics.
[14] A more recent phenomenon, the annual Monumental Alebrije Parade, has been sponsored by the Museo de Arte Popular in Mexico City since 2007.
The 2009 parade featured more than 130 giant alebrijes made of wood, cardboard, paper, wire, and other materials, and marched from the Zocalo in the historic center of the city to the Angel of Independence monument on Paseo de la Reforma.
Entries by artisans, artists, families and groups each year have gotten bigger, more creative and more numerous, with names like: They are accompanied by bands playing popular Mexican music.
[15] The 2010 alebrije parade had themes related to the Bicentennial of the Independence of Mexico and the Centennial of the Mexican Revolution, although Walter Boelsterly, head of the Museo de Artes Populares, concedes that such may require a bit of tolerance because it can lead to revered figures such as Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende with animal parts.
In the 1980s, British filmmaker, Judith Bronowski, arranged an itinerant demonstration workshop in the United States participating Pedro Linares, Manuel Jiménez and a textile artisan Maria Sabina from Oaxaca.
The first to copy the fantastic forms and bright colors was Manuel Jiménez, who carved the figures in local copal wood rather than using paper.
This started in the 1940s with the Pan-American Highway and has continued to this day with the construction of more roads, airports and other transportation coincided with the rising prosperity of the U.S. and Canada making Mexico an affordable exotic vacation.
[22] Later known for their alebrijes, carvers such as Manuel Jimenez of Arrazola, Isadoro Cruz of Tilcajete and Martin Sandiego of La Union began by carving animals as youths, often while doing other chores such as tending sheep.
[20] As more dealers shipping to other parts of Mexico and abroad visited the rural villages, more exotic animals such as lions, elephants and the like were added, and eventually came to dominate the trade.
[22] In the mid-1980s, the influence of the Linares alebrijes was becoming popular and wholesalers and store owners from the United States, began to deal with artisans in Oaxaca directly.
[25] Within Mexico, Oaxacan alebrijes are often sold in tourist locations such as Oaxaca city, La Paz, Cancún, Cozumel and Puerto Escondido.
[18] Animals are often painted with bright colors and designs and carved with exaggerated features that bear little resemblance to what occurs in the natural world.
[22] In a number of cases, carvings return to images from Mexican culture such as angels, saints, and Virgins, which will have somber faces even if they are painted in very bright colors.
[27] Almost all alebrije carvers in Oaxaca use the wood of trees from the genus Bursera (Family Burseraceae), with a preference for the species B. glabrifolia, which is locally called copal[what language is this?]
[26] The exceptions are Isidro Cruz of Tilcajete, who uses "zompantle" (Erythrina coralloides) and the Manuel Jimenez family, which carves in tropical cedar (Cedrela odorata) imported from Guatemala.
[16] Another effort involves a program designed to manage wild copal supplies in a municipality called San Juan Bautista Jayacatlán.
His work was sold locally and eventually noticed by Tonatiúh Gutierrez, the director of expositions for the Mexican National Tourist Council, later a government agency in charge of promoting crafts.
Delfino Gutierrez specializes in free-form elephants, frogs, turtles, armadillos and more[36] which are sold in stores in Chicago, California, New York and Israel.
[22] The most successful artisan is Jacobo Angeles, whose work have been prominently displayed at The Smithsonian and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago.
When this program ended, Santiago found that he could not support his family by farming and began selling woodcarvings to a shop owner in Oaxaca.
While the couple make some large and medium-sized pieces, they specialize in miniatures (around seven cm), such as dogs, cats, giraffes, rabbits and goats which will for around 30 pesos each.
