Brownwood Religious Boycotters & Crusaders

Recently, in a front page photo (covering the Stars of Texas Juried Art Exhibit) in the Brownwood Bulletin, appeared Denise Sommer who instigated, participated & encouraged others in a Boycott directed at our business because she did not approve of our Artwork (Nun by Aguilar Sister). We've even been told by another Crusader that we would have more "Christians" eating with us if we would remove the Gargoyles. Understandably, both pieces of artwork have remained !
As have the wind-chimes, menorah's, kwanzaa art, crosses, wire sculptures, flying pigs, photographs, books, and other assorted items from across the globe. For in-depth information on the Aguilar sisters and their work, we make the following information available to those interested in this subject:
---------------------------
The Aguilar Sisters-
There are four Aguilar sisters: Josefina, Guillermina, Irene and Concepcion  The sisters all live next to each other in large extended families just outside the town of Ocotlan in Oaxaca, Mexico Each sister works in clay, but each has a distinctive style that reflects their own view of the world - whether they are capturing scenes of the local market, ladies of the evening, religious events or historical figures. The Aguilar family art is collected around the world and is represented in the International Folk Art Museum of Santa Fe, the Rockefeller wing of the San Antonio Art Museum, and the Mexican Museums of San Francisco and Chicago.
source: http://www.casamexicanafolkart.com/Pottery/The_Aguilar_Sisters/the_aguilar_sisters.html
-----------------------------
The Treasures of Oaxaca
Indigenous artisans continue an ancient tradition of hand crafting
By Marion Bayer, Siesta Tours, Inc.

Meet the Aguilar sisters

The town of Ocotlán is the home of the world-renowned Aguilar sisters, Josefina, Irene and Guillerma. Their specialty, hand-built clay figures painted in garish colors, can be found in art museums and galleries all over the world. The figures are primarily of people and include Frida Kahlo, ladies of the evening, mermaids, the devil, skeletons dressed in painted finery, market dioramas, manger scenes, wedding parties and other social situations.

The sisters live next door to one another, so it’s easy to visit each workshop. When you step through the doorway onto Josefina’s patio, you’ll find her on her knees in the corner, putting the finishing touches on another masterpiece. Her newest grandchild will be nearby, swinging in a basket hung from a tree limb. Her husband brings the clay from a nearby hillside and works it with his feet, adding water as needed to make it malleable and ready to use. Josefina’s finished works are displayed on tables and shelves and she’ll stop what she’s doing to sign the piece you purchase.

source: http://www.theculturedtraveler.com/Archives/AUG2004/Oaxaca.htm
--------------------------------------
Winter 1998
The Women of Oaxaca:
Gender, Poverty, and Art
by Lois Wasserspring

For the last four years I have spent several weeks each year in the homes of six women artisans in Oaxaca, Mexico, talking with them about their lives. I became interested in the life experiences of these women because of the seeming contradiction between their stature as folk artists and the difficult economic circumstances of their lives. In contrast to male artisans of comparable stature, who have often been able to translate their status into concrete, substantial material gain, these female artisans seemed locked into lives of hardship enmeshed in rural poverty.

All of the women I have studied have become famous. All have remained poor. Four are sisters who live in Ocotlán de Morelos, a village to the south of the capital. (Henry Glassie refers to "the brilliant Aguilar famly" in The Spirit of Folk Art.) Two live in the pottery producing village of Santa María Atzompa, which lies to the west of the city of Oaxaca. The fame and achievements of each of these six women is remarkable: they are among the most internationally renowned of contemporary Mexican folk artists. Their work is in museums and private folk art collections throughout the world; individually they have represented Mexico at international art competitions and have received scores of national awards. My research uses the story of these women's lives as a vehicle to explore the meaning, and impact, of gender in the Mexican countryside.

What is particularly intriguing about these women is that their fame and success as artisans have seemingly had little impact on their lives as rural, poor women. All work long hours struggling against poverty. All continue, despite their international exposure, to be committed to, and deeply rooted in, the traditional cultural values of their own village communities. Like other Mexican rural women, these artisans continue to spend their resources and energy participating in the annual cycle of religious village festivals. Only one of these women attended primary school for more than one year, and although all are mothers, most are not committed to the value of more education for their offspring. Education continues to be perceived as valueless activity, particularly for daughters.

Their lives must be understood in the context of their birthplace in Oaxaca, one of the most marginal states in the Mexican Republic preeminently poor, rural and Indian. It is part of the "invisible" Mexico of the Third World, far from the glittering modernity of Mexico City and industrial Monterrey. The world in which these six artisan women live is a poverty belt in which 44% of the potentially economically active population receives no income at all and fully one-fourth of all paid laborers receive less than the official minimum wage of $3 per day. Oaxaca's women are especially disadvantaged. Among all Oaxacans, the illiteracy rate is 27%, but among Oaxaca's women, a dismaying 37% are illiterate.

Yet Oaxaca is also famous for its artisan creativity. The Mexican government has encouraged the production of popular folk art in an effort to develop symbols of national identity, and the expansion of both tourism and an international crafts market have further helped to encourage traditional handicraft activity. It is indeed ironic, as scholars have noted, that the art of rural, often women, who are the most marginal producers in rural areas, have come to be seen as symbols of "Mexicanness," coveted by tourists, gallery owners, and art collectors the world over.

The four Aguilar sisters' reputation stems from their father's fame as an artisan and it is said that they each learned their craft from him. In fact, he never created earthenware figures at all, but he did sign his own name to his wife's pieces since she did not know how to write. Concepción, the youngest Aguilar sister, only eight when her mother died, had to become "mother" to her two younger brothers and "housewife" to her increasingly alcoholic and abusive father. These responsibilities prevented her from attending even one day of school in her lifetime. Angélica Vásquez, of Atzompa, never knew each time she won four major national competitions, because her father-in-law, with whom she lived following patrilocal custom, took her entries and signed his own name to them. Dolores Porras, also of Atzompa, was beaten by her husband after each of her first five pregnancies for the "sin" of producing only daughters.

Clearly all of these women have lived lives of hardship, suffering and poverty. The simple fact of being born female has dramatically affected each of their lives. Yet their life stories are not maudlin or depressing. Quite the contrary, like the inherent vitality of the art which they produce, these women's life struggles reflect indomitable spirits, the ability to strategize cunningly, and the essential triumph of human spirit over dire material circumstances. My research examines the myriad relationships connecting these women to their personal and economic worlds. It focuses on household labor production and the gendered division of labor embedded in it. It emphasizes these women's relationships to their children and the creation of generational chains of gendered constraints. It examines the relationship of these women to Mexican government artisan bureaucracy and to the shop owners and gallery dealers who buy their works, as well as the different ways with which the international art community deals with female and male artisans. And it links prevalent Oaxacan myths and legends, and their underlying conceptions of gender, to the folk art output of these artisans, showing how popular art in Mexico produces moral lessons about appropriate female behavior.

My research in Oaxaca has led me to believe that our understanding of "tradition" has remained so flawed because of the underlying male lens of political science in this area. The brittle zero-sum relationship between "tradition" and "modernity" that political science posits misses the complex richness and continuing dynamic innovation of customs and values in Mexican rural life and women's central role in this on-going process. The study of gender also has other implications for rural development. In the world of Oaxacan women today, education is not a valuable option in rural women's fight for survival. Understanding why can help us create educational options of use to women in their real-world struggles. Studying women artisans also helps us understand the impact of the critical process of globalization in Mexico, since folk art has created vital economic options in an economy characterized by low levels of industrialization and limited agricultural production. Tourism is now the fastest growing industry in Oaxaca, leading to the remarkable development of the contemporary arts and crafts market there. The story of female artisan lives in Oaxaca thus also becomes an opportunity to analyze the ways in which the global economy, and tourism in particular, affect the process of development in rural Mexico.

source: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~drclas/publications/revista/women/wasserspring.htm