Obama’s Mama Collected Textiles and So Do I

  

  In the “Antiques and The Arts” newspaper, some years ago, I came across a small item that thrilled me.  It said that Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, wove textiles for wall hangings early in her life, and when she moved to Indonesia with her son in the 1960’s, she began to amass a collection of the vibrant batik textiles of the country.  “She did not acquire rare or expensive pieces, but rather contemporary examples that were an expression of a living tradition, patterned with both classic designs and those of passing fashion.”

Later, I learned, when Ann was studying anthropology at the University of Hawaii, she tried to find ways to help craftspeople.  She worked with the Ford Foundation in Jakarta and with USAID and the World Bank, and set up micro-credit projects in Indonesia, Pakistan and Kenya to benefit poor women making textiles.

I have always considered textile-making (weaving and embroidery) a fascinating art form. In many countries this is the only medium of artistic expression available to women and the only way they can earn money.  Whenever I travel, I buy textiles –ideally from the women who created them. Now my walls are covered with antique American quilts, Mexican huipils, Haitian voodoo flags and Greek embroidered table runners.

 Most pieces cost under $100 but they’re priceless, because they embody the maker’s artistic talent as well as (in some cases) their religious or political beliefs and their dreams, for example the wedding couple on a tablecloth that a young Greek girl embroidered as part of her dowry. (The teapot is also from an Anatolian tablecloth.) 

Around 1970 I got interested in antique American quilts. On our second floor stair landing I hung a “Tumbling Blocks” quilt behind a sea captain’s chest full of teddy bears.

The section from an unfinished velvet and silk Victorian quilt is called “Windmill Blades” and the large “Barn Raising” quilt on the staircase wall is from a very old variation on the Log Cabin pattern.

Mexican and Guatemalan embroideries fascinate me with their sophisticated and wild use of color. I’ve decorated the wall of my studio (shown at top) with antique, wonderfully embroidered Mexican huipils.  The design of each blouse indicates the native village of the woman who wears it. 

The lady posing above with her work is Maria, whom we met in the marketplace of San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico.  She was the best among the many women weavers and embroiderers who crowded the marketplace.  (San Cristobal is heaven for the collector of textiles.) 

Near the border of Guatemala I found the embroidery at left made by a Sandinista woman who was also selling dolls with faces masked like Comandante  Marcos. The pillow at the right, made in Guatemala, looks to me like a man walking in a graveyard.  Could this be a memorial or something to do with the Day of the Dead? 

Daughter Eleni, who studied folklore and mythology, introduced me to the sequined voodoo flags made in Haiti and used in religious rites.  They are usually made (and signed) by men and they represent the gods who take possession of the worshiper.  These sequin flags and the artists who make them are taken very seriously as art now, which means they can be very expensive. The two large ones represent La Sirene—-The Enchantress—and Baron Samedi—who mitigates between life and death.

 

Textile artists reflect the life they see around them—the Greek wall hanging is an island scene with table, chairs and cat. The festive wedding scene (brought from Pakistan by Eleni) shows a wedding party celebrating beneath an umbrella.  

 

This exquisite, antique Chinese embroidery (now framed under glass) was in a box of textiles that I bought for $75.  The detailed work and the wonderful reproduction of all those birds, animals and flowers make it beyond price. The knots are so small, I think it must include the “forbidden knot” that would make the sewers eventually lose their sight. 

 

  

 Finally there is lace: a simple lace handkerchief and lace runner that I'm told represents French cathedrals.  It may sound silly to buy pieces like this for a few dollars and then spend a great deal more to frame them, but I do it, because I consider them found art.

It cost a lot more than a few dollars when I encountered this stunning set of Madeira lace work – ten place mats and a table runner—at a summer yard sale near our village common.  They came with their own blue brocade carrying case plus a handwritten note that it was “Made on the Island of Madeira for the Beede Family, makers of Madeira Wines”.

I couldn’t resist, telling myself it was for a daughter’s trousseau, but let’s face it, young women today have no use for fragile lace tablecloths, napkins and embroidered linens, so the fine Madeira set now lives with the “turkey work” embroidered pillow shams, the hand-smocked baby dresses (mine! from 75 years ago!). and the Dresden Plate quilt that my grandmother made for my mother’s wedding in 1932—all stored in tissue and special boxes, hidden under my bed.

Which Travel Photos Should I Submit?

(Please click on the photos to see them whole)

I was looking through the new (August) issue of  Smithsonian Magazine when I saw the winners of their 8^th annual photo contest.   The Grand Prize winner, by Prakash Hatvalne, showed two dancers in Bhopal, India preparing for their performance.  If you want to see the fifty finalists that the judges chose out of  52,000 entries, click here.

I immediately decided to enter some of my own travel photos in the 9^th annual contest, which  is open until December 1, 2011.This is more than a little presumptuous, since most of this year’s 50 finalists seem to be professional- quality photographers, and their work is amazing.  You can enter up to seven photographs in each of five categories:  Americana, The Natural World, People, Altered Images and Travel.

Almost all my own favorite photographs are in the  “people” category – most often children and sometimes old people. That’s true of my paintings as well. Here is my all-time favorite photograph.  It’s a little girl begging on the street in Jodhpur, India.  She’s made up to look like a Hindu goddess, because the religion emphasizes giving money and food to holy persons (and sacred cows), which wins you good karma.

My photographer friends generally spend a lot of time setting up a photograph but this one happened so fast I didn’t even know what I had until afterwards.  It was sheer luck. We were riding in the back of an auto rickshaw in a street crowded with people, cows, vehicles, and beggars.  The rickshaw driver paused, this child popped up beside me looking beautiful and forlorn, and the rickshaw started up again before I could reach for some coins to put in her bowl. But I reflexively got the shot of a lifetime.  I posted it with other photos while discussing “Child Beggars in India” on Jan. 23, 2009, and I think this photo is the reason that essay is a perennial in the stats listing the top ten posts on “A Rolling Crone.”

Here is my next favorite photo—also of a little girl who is trying to scrounge some money for her family while cheerfully carrying her little brother on her back.  When I was walking around San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico in 2009, I encountered her and lots of her friends, all selling cheap jewelry. The first day I ran into her, she was unencumbered by her sibling, but she was always smiling. And yes, I bought some of her bracelets.

Back to India—this “desert dancer”, as I call her, found us in the Thar Desert outside of Jaiselmar, Rajasthan, India, close to Pakistan.  We had just dismounted from camels and were surrounded by nothing but sand dunes as far as the eye could see.  This girl and her younger sidekick appeared out of nowhere, determined to dance for us.  They would not take no for an answer. I still don’t know why the shadows on the dunes came out this beautiful pinky purple color. Which one of these two photos do you like better?   Maybe the one on the right?

The younger girl did not have the chutzpah and persistence of the older one, but she was watching and learning.

All of the photos above would be entered in the “People” category.  Here are a couple more that I’m considering:

A crone from San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico.

A blind trumpeter in Puebla, Mexico.

The unexpected and sophisticated juxtaposition of saturated colors that you find everywhere in Mexico is a constant delight.  Like the green and yellow walls behind the crone above, and the amazing colors in this photograph of a woman selling nuts and sweets in Puebla. This one would probably belong in the “travel” category.

Repetitive patterns always attract my camera’s lens, which is why I like this photo of boats and people sitting on one of the “ghats” on the edge of the Ganges in the holy city of Varanasi, India.

And the pattern of the tiles on the wall behind the identically dressed graduates in the square in Puebla, Mexico also beguiled me. (Puebla is a dream for anyone who likes to photograph angels and tiles.)

Finally, I suppose in the “travel” category, I’m considering this photo of lovers under a protective angel, gazing at one of the snow-covered volcanoes in Cholula, outside Puebla.

Even if none of these photos makes it into the Smithsonian’s 50 finalists, the contest has given me a chance to re-visit some of my favorite people and places from past trips.  And on Monday I’m off to Greece to hunt for some more. 

Unsung Mexican Artists

Most people use their skill and energy every day to do a job that they don’t like, but need to survive:  everything from flipping hamburgers or laying bricks to drilling teeth or programming computers.

But some people use a special talent or skill with such pride in what they’re creating that they qualify, in my opinion, as artists, whether the creation is food, clothing, embroidery, furniture, music, ceramics or whatever.  And these artists are usually happy to demonstrate their art and to allow me to take their photos, even in Mexico where many people don’t want their photo taken. (I think this reluctance is because of concern about the Evil Eye, rather than fear, as in some countries, that the camera will steal their souls.)

Here’s one example of an unsung Mexican artist I met a couple of years ago in San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico.  Her name is Maria and her embroideries knocked me out—I thought she was the most skillful of the women displaying their textiles in the city’s marketplace.  I wanted to buy all of Maria’s creations, but could only afford one.  (Her costume or traje indicates that she comes from the village of Cholula.  One of the great things about San Cristobal is that all the women still wear the trajes from their native villages.)

On my visit to Morelia, Mexico, a month ago, I met several more of these  “unsung artists” as I like to think of them.  They each take pride in producing the best product they can and are happy to display their technique to a gringa  from the U.S. who can’t even speak Spanish.

(I already wrote, on Feb. 13, about two indigenous Mexican women, Benedicta and Cayetana, who have improved the quality of life for themselves and their families and won prizes and renown through their skill at the labor-intensive, pre-hispanic cuisine of Michoacan.)

On our way from Morelia to see the Monarch butterflies at the El Rosario mountain sanctuary, we stopped at a humble restaurant on a curve in the highway to try their carnitas and were fascinated by the skill of the Tortilla Lady, who was turning out tortillas on a primitive  wood-burning stove with amazing skill and speed.  She was happy to demonstrate, and even offered us a chance to try our hand, but I already knew from experience that tortilla-making is a lot harder than it looks.

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Back in Morelia, the leader of our culinary tour, Susana Trilling, (www.seasonsofmyheart.com), led us to the small store where she said we’d find the best gazpacho in the city.  You probably think, as I did, that gaspacho (that’s how they spell it) is a cold tomato soup, but in Morelia it’s a mixture of exotic tropical fruits topped off with just the right seasoning of chili flakes.  I could see by the care and concern (and pride) that the owner, Sr. Sandoval,  showed while demonstrating his specialty that he was a true artist, determined to produce a gazpacho that lived up to Susana’s  praise.

The unsung artist who stole my heart was the star of a mariachi group whom we met when a new friend—who makes the famous Cotija Cheese –took us to a beautiful national park, Lago de Camecuaro, filled with families boating, swimming and partying around the  crystalline lake shaded by ancient  trees.

One family invited us to join them at their table, and soon we were surrounded  by a group of mariachi musicians. The older man who seemed to be their leader sang with such intensity and passion that I couldn’t stop taking his photo, and everyone else kept requesting more songs. Now I’m obsessed with painting his portrait.

I love painting the people I encounter in my travels, --portraying them in their  native surroundings, especially involved in their daily work.

The gray-haired Mariachi singer reminded me of an even older musician, well into his eighties, whom my daughter and I met in Crete a few years ago.

He came up to us as we were drinking coffee in his mountainous village of Axos. We learned that his name is Yiannis Demarachoyiannis and he is the self-appointed mayor and greeter for his village. He said he wanted to practice his English with us. “You look so young,” he said to me, full of Cretan flattery and charm, “that I thought you were brothers.”

He insisted we come to his barbershop where he served us pears and his homemade raki (moonshine) and played and sang to us on the lyra—a rare instrument native to Crete. He sang mantadas—the Cretan songs  which the singer makes up in rhyming couplets to suit the occasion. “Take me to New York as your bar-bear,” he sang to Eleni, “and I will style your golden hair.”

I hope he’s still playing the lyra on his mountaintop in Crete.  He probably is, since both his parents lived past 100.  Like the Mariachi singer in Michoacan,  Mr. Yiannis deserves to be remembered in a painting, because he is an artist.