Arts and Media Basics:
Folklife Resources

Mexican culture is rich in may types of traditional or folk art forms. People who make traditional crafts are called folk artists. A folk artist is someone who learned an art form from someone else in their group. Folk artists may be from family, occupational, religious, regional, or ethnic groups.

Traditional Mexican crafts include crochet, embroidery, piñatas, pottery, wood carvings, charro hats, straw weavings, woven fabrics, paper flowers, leather sandals, and much more. Folk artists make traditional crafts by hand in their homes. Children often grow up watching adult family members making crafts. Sometimes, a child begins learning how to make traditional crafts by helping an adult.

Needlework

In Mexican culture, needlecrafts are highly valued. Many women in the Hermiston area make beautiful crocheted work using thread and special hooked tool. Women crochet clothes for dolls, babies, and family members. Crocheted doilies are placed around the home as decorations on furniture. These help make the house a beautiful home.

Crocheted work and embroidery are most often done by women. Girls begin learning from their mothers and grandmothers when they are young. By the time they reach adulthood, they are often teaching younger girls.

There are traditional embroidery designs that symbolize particular regions of Mexico. For example, the peacock is sewn by women and girls whose family roots are in the state of Durango. Women from other Mexican regions will often embroider their own special designs on clothing showing where their families are from in Mexico. People wear their embroidery with pride because it shows others they are skilled and are proud of their heritage.

Photos of needlework (link)

Pottery

Mexico, like the rest of North America, has many different groups of indigenous people. Mexico's Indian population is very large and diverse. Their native languages are different than Spanish. They also have different craft traditions. There are many Mixtec Indians from Oaxaca living in the Hermiston area. The Mixtec culture is rich with many traditions.

Some of the Mixteca women carry on ancient pottery traditions. In Mexico, they dig the clay from their home soil. The women shape it into eating bowls, cups, and other dishes. After the clay dries out for several days, the pots are fired on an open pit. The women make larger cookware like the comal, a flat griddle used to heat tortillas, and large bowls for making mole.

Photos of pottery (link)

Piñatas and Cascarones

Some traditional crafts are associated with certain celebrations and age groups. For example, piñatas and cascarones are party items made for children's enjoyment. Usually adults make the objects. However, children sometimes help in the process.

Piñatas were originally made with clay pots that were decorated and filled with candies. Today, they are constructed from balloons or cardboard boxes, crepe paper, and glue. Today's piñatas are made in the shapes of animals, stars, ice cream cones and popular cartoon characters. Their hollow centers are filled with candy and treats. Children have fun trying to break them with a stick while they are blindfolded. Piñatas are part of birthday, Christmas, and other holiday celebrations.

Cascarones are less known to non-Mexicans. These are often made by family members. The mother will carefully break off the pointed end of an eggshell and remove the yolk. Next, children paint the shell and fill it with confetti. Lastly, they glue a thin piece of paper over the opening. On special celebration days children have fun cracking the cascarones on the heads of their friends.

Photos of piñatas, cascarones (link)

Activities

Activity 1: It is important to convey the concepts of traditional craft and folk art for they are different from notions generally held about art. Art is often seen as detached from everyday life and artists are often seen as individuals working in isolated studio environments apart from their communities. In a folk cultural context, craft traditions are integrated into the lives of people in a group. The method of learning a craft tends to be informal where one learns the tradition from someone else in the cultural group.

In the case of traditional Mexican crafts, as with the craft traditions of other cultural groups, there are often folk artists who are acknowledged experts who have achieved a high degree of skill at their art form. While there is room for creativity, the artist stayed within a standards for doing the craft in a way that is considered the traditional of "right way of doing it" within the culture. In the case of making piñatas, for instance, an artist might create one in the shape of a popular TV cartoon character using the traditional techniques of cut paper as piñatas have been made for years.

Do you or your students know anyone who makes a traditional craft? Have students interview the person and find out 1) who taught him/her? and 2) at what age did he/she learn the craft? Have students present their findings to the class. Invite the artist to the class to demonstrate their craft and/or teach it to your students.

Activity 2: Explore with your students: Is there something that they know how to make by hand? What have they learned to make "from scratch" from friends or family? This could be anything from a paper airplane or fortune teller to a piece of handwork like crocheting or embroidery, a recipe or a homemade toy. If they do not have your own handmade object, choose one made by a friend or family member. Are there machine-made objects that could replace this handmade one? Why did the person who made it choose to make this object by hand instead of buying a machine-made one? Have students bring a handmade object to class and describe or demonstrate how it is made and used, and who taught them (or the artist) to make it.

Activity 3: Alternately, ask students how many of them know how to make paper airplanes. Ask how many know how to make two, three, four or more variations of paper airplanes. Invite up the "experts" to demonstrate their skills. Have them teach the other students to make a paper airplane. While they are up there, interview the student using the questions above. Invite other students to come up and be the experts. Interview each of them. Emphasize the commonalties in their stories. For example, many will have learned from a parent, sibling or classmate. Many will have experimented to improve the aerodynamics of their plane by adding rips or folds to the finished plane. Ask if they think their parents or teachers learned how to make paper airplanes when they were young. How do they think they learned?

From student traditions, you can move on to other traditions in students lives, such as food, clothing, storytelling, music or other traditional arts.

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