Currents in Education
The art of Mexico comes to life at CRES
By Jennifer L. Saunders
Epifanio Fuentes and Laurencia Santiago of Oaxaca, Mexico, pictured here in this courtesy photo and during their visit last week at Coastal Ridge Elementary School, came to York to share their art with local students last week.
Photo by Jennifer L. Saunders
YORK - Ask husband-and-wife folk artists Epifanio Fuentes and Laurencia Santiago of Oaxaca, Mexico, why they spend hours and even days on a single piece of art, and the answer is music to an art teacher's ears.
"Work on quality, not quantity," Fuentes told the fourth-grade students from Coastal Ridge Elementary School who took turns on Friday, May 11, coming to Mary Zane's art classroom to watch Fuentes and Santiago create whimsical creatures from branches of wood.
Using nothing more than a machete and small chisels, Fuentes carved one of his characters, which range from cats - his favorites, he said - to coyotes, from angels to tiny anteaters. Santiago, meanwhile, was at work sanding a recently completed wood sculpture, which she would later paint with the bright color combinations that seem to bring their carvings to life.
Pat Picciano, education outreach coordinator for Margaritas Mexican Restaurants, accompanied the pair on their local visit, as he does for similar events sponsored by the restaurant across New England, translating the children's questions from English to Spanish and the artists' responses back to English.
"It takes pure imagination to carve animals," Fuentes told the students, adding a typical day of work at home in Mexico is nine hours long, with some of the carvings taking up to two days to complete and four days to paint.
The goal of the outreach program, Picciano explained at the end of the presentation, as the fourth-graders filed by the table-long display of carved creatures great and small, is to share the culture of Mexico and the work of artists and craftspeople with communities that might not otherwise have exposure to these artisans.
"In the old days there were no toys," Fuentes said of the roots of the carving tradition. "You would not buy toys in the store; you made these as gifts."
As part of their visit, Fuentes and Santiago presented Coastal Ridge with a gift of its own: a finished sculpture to remain at the school.
