Weaver Shares Indigenous Mexican Tradition in Basalt (October 23, 2009)

Weaver Shares Indigenous Mexican Tradition in Basalt
Writer: Andrew Travers Byline: Time Out Staff Writer

His eyes are dark orbs swimming in sea of calm above the ever-curious grin creeping at the edges of his mouth. They belie the quick and nimble work of his hands, dipping in and out of a tight-taut wreath of yarn on his loom. The pace of his handiwork is impossibly fast and its precision seems inhuman — Ismael Gutierrez Martinez grabs at four strands of yarn, dips his hand in at one end of the strands in his palm, then pulls it up from the other ... in a tenth of a second, maybe less.

Watching him go is like seeing a world-class concerto pianist play the fastest bits of Mozart.
Ismael works 12 hours a day to create eight daily inches of his art, a rug-making craft of the Zapotec Indians that dates back to the 15th century and which his family has been practicing for four generations. He has created rugs as long as 30 feet.

He has been at this since he was seven years old, before he was tall enough to work on a full-sized loom and wove rugs on the back of a wooden chair.

This month the 26-year-old rug maven has been a sort of weaver-in-residence at the Wyly Community Arts Center in Basalt, exhibiting his work at the Toklat Gallery and giving daily weaving demonstrations at the Wyly, which is hosting a free farewell celebration for the renowned rugmaker Friday, Oct. 23, from 6-8 p.m.

His work begins at 5 a.m. daily, “so [he] can get some weaving in before breakfast,” a tradition that originated so that weavers would have time to mix varying shades of dye in the afternoon.

The foot-pedaled loom Ismael works on was introduced to his people, the Zapotec tribe of southern Mexico, when the Spanish infiltrated the area five centuries ago. His hometown, Teotitllan del Valle — near Oaxaca — has since become the world’s capitol for Indian rugs.

Of the artisan culture’s history, he states simply, “It’s complicated.” The loom came in from the Spanish, who conquered the Aztecs, who conquered the Zapotecs. Despite the tumultuous times his people endured during those changes the Teotitlan weaving culture has lasted to this day.

“When you walk through the town it’s all you hear,” Ismael says, describing the sound of his homeland where weaving is just about the only way of life for its indigenous people ... where families sheer sheep, turn their raw wool into yarn, dye it using plants and other natural elements (“it takes 3,000 bugs to make one pound of dye,” Ismael says of one process using insect larvae) then turn it into art one turn of the hand at a time.

Ismael draws out his rug designs by hand before he goes to work. The rug he’s currently crafting at the Wyly depicts the ancient Zapotec temples surrounding his homeland. The Zapotecs are believed to have lived around Oaxaca since around 500 B.C.
The sights of his homeland populate nearly all of his rugs, heavily focused on wildlife like bear and wolves as well as figures from Zapotec mythology like the Tree of Life, which exhibits the Zapotec’s version of reincarnation, or the butterfly which the Zapotec believe the soul turns into when the human body dies, or the rattlesnake, which represents power in the Zapotec culture (“because they are on the ground all the time, they are the ones that make the land fertile,” Ismael explains.)

Toklat gallery owner Lynn Mace commented at a recent demonstration that bear-patterned rugs aren’t selling this summer, despite their beauty. With black bears frequently breaking into houses and raiding refrigerators, she quipped, bear art has become quite passé around Aspen. “Nobody wants to see a bear, at all, inside their house these days.”

School groups and art enthusiasts have flocked to Ismael’s demonstrations over the last two weeks. But, to the consternation of Wyly director Deb Jones, the mid-valley’s population of Mexican immigrants has not come out to see the weaver. Although the Wyly sits across the street from predominantly Hispanic Pan and Fork Mobile Home Park and they have put up signs advertising the exposition in Spanish, the walk-in crowd has been homogeneously white, she reports. Jones said she is hoping some of the Mexican-bred school kids passed word on — and spread interest — to their parents about the history of Zapotec weaving.

Ismael has been a frequent visitor to the Aspen area, and toured the Southwest since local importer Scott Roth found him near Oaxaca. Mace, of Toklat, describes Scott as “a rather hippie looking chap” with good taste in indigenous art.

Despite the recurrent themes from centuries of Zapotec rugmaking, Ismael never repeats a pattern. In each design he finds a new way to interpret his culture’s symbols. “Repeating things makes you boring,” he says, working his newest creation with a shuttle and comb emblazoned with Zapotec symbols. “Seeing the same thing all the time? I don’t want to do that.”

Several of Ismael Gutierrez Martinez’s rugs will be on display at Toklat Gallery in Basalt after the closing ceremony on Friday, Oct. 23, at the Wyly Community Arts Center. For more information, visit wylyarts.org or toklatgallery.com.

andrew@aspendailynews.com
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/entertainment/137219