THE MONSTER WITH RED WINGS

The alebrijes monster stares at me from its place on a chest of drawers beside my computer. It was given to me by friends during a visit to Oaxaca City, Mexico -- friends who said it was to serve as impetus for me to write every day or else…Or else the monster carving would consume my creativity. At the time I was gifted with this art piece, these two friends and I were walking through the zocalo in Oaxaca City where hundreds of wood carvings were on display.

The colorful wood carvings exemplify the folk art of Mexico now sought by contemporary art collectors. These alebrijes were created by artists in the Zapotec culture who descended from the pre-Columbian period of Mexico’s history. Their popularity burgeoned during the 1980s when collectors discovered the work of a wood carver, Manuel Jimenez, who lived in the village of Arrazola.

We loved the colorful, imaginative carvings we saw daily during our three-week visit to Oaxaca City. They were pieces of art created by over 200 families from the Oaxaca Valley. The artistic wood sculptures, carved from branches of copadillo trees, grow on hills near Oaxaca. Woodcarvers cut the branches with machetes, then create the details (wings, tails, mouths with fiery tongues) with pocketknives. We learned that entire families work on these pieces of folk art — children sand them while wives paint in the intricate details. The aspect of this art that particularly interested me was that of artists receiving their inspiration for the alebrijes creations through dreams and superstitions. The pieces also include bright colors found in fiesta costumes as well as in brilliant desert wildflowers of Mexico.

The color red dominates the wings of my alebrijes monster, and I submit to flight with poems created this past week in a work in progress entitled In the Margins. However, designs in a PDF of my newest book of poetry, Ridges, being published by Susan Entsminger of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado, just arrived for a sneak preview. As I view Susan’s beautiful design work on Don Thornton’s paintings and my poetry, I feel sudden ascent without any assist from the alebrijes monster overlooking my desk. If you google Pinyon Publishing, examples of Susan’s art abound and will fascinate those who admire excellence in artistic work.

Photograph by Victoria I. Sullivan