22 Mar Recuerdos de Chiapas (Memories of Chiapas)
In the next week or so, I will be posting artwork and photos from our recent journey to San Cristobal de las Casas, high in the mountains of southern Chiapas, Mexico. We had the distinct honor to travel there with a group of fellow artists and our intrepid, brilliant leaders Kate McGloughlin and Dan Lipow. They’ve created a great gig for themselves called “Destination Arts” with the goal of traveling the world making art and taking pictures – right up my alley!!!
We had the privilege of staying at a magical hacienda called Na Bolom, part museum part B & B. It was originally built in 1891 as a monastery and later transformed in 1951 by archaeologist and explorer Frans Blom and conservationist and photographer Gertrude Duby. Their goal was to help preserve the indigenous tribes that lived in nearby jungles and towns from the onset of civilization. Na Bolom is still the home to one tribe who are the modern ancestors of the Mayan culture: the Lacandones. We were able to briefly interact with them, but learned the most from the museum which is housed there.
The jaguar has special significance to the people of San Cristobal and especially to our hosts at Na Bolom. They have many different statues of jaguars around the place including this big one in the courtyard. I was inspired to create this linoleum block print from one of the sculptures in the dining room and had a blast remembering how fun it is to carve a piece of linoleum, roll the ink on and see the magic unfold! Thank you Kate!
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