Tag Archives: Creches

The Hospitalito Inaugural Art Show Tomorrow!

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Beach Virgin

Please drop by to see the Inaugural Show for the Hospitalito, just a short distance south of the San Juan Cosala plaza. The show, curated by Isidro Xilonsonchitl, will feature the work of 15 local artists.

Since the San Juan Bautista Festival will be going on, the street that leads to it is blocked off by rides and booths, so it might be best to park on the Carretera just before or after the traffic lights and walk the one block down to the show, or to approach the area from the lake side instead of the streets immediately around the plaza. The show will run for two weeks, the duration of the festival, but the Inauguration will be June 16 at 5 o’clock. In addition to the show, there will be the usual food, rides and plenty of booths to tempt your pocketbook!!!

Above and below are a few of the 26 wall pieces I’ll have in the show, as well as a few of the beach creches.They are all assemblages made from material picked up on beach walks during the time I’ve spent on various Mexican beaches.

Sin Lite
Beach Scrub
Vida del Mar
Perched
Beach creches

Click on photos to enlarge.

Nacimientos

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In Mexico, the word nacimiento, which means “nativity,” has been expanded to cover the hundreds of little painted clay statues that flesh out a Mexican nativity scene.  There are Egyptians, camels, tents, volcanoes, various devils hiding in the background, butchers, bakers, campfires complete with roasting meat, children in trees, women vending bread, making bread, carrying water, fishermen complete with nets and too many other characters to list.  Here are a few photos of my nacimiento scenes from former years.  This year the figures will remain safe in their boxes on high shelves, safe from the paws of inquisitive cats. (To see the photos in detail, click on first photo to enlarge all.)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

These photos perhaps represent the prompt of “jolly” better than my post about how I’m celebrating Christmas this year.

The Sweet and Bitter Lie

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DSC00516

This is one of 15 creches I’ve constructed of unaltered natural items I’ve found on the beach. For some reason, I am captivated by the gentle side of Mexico best symbolized by her obsession with the Virgin of Guadalupe. I’ve seen motorcycle leathers with an image of Guadalupe on the back! I’ll publish pictures of the others soon. I know. A seeming contradiction to the words I’ve posted below, but perhaps one or the other view is just a sweet little lie!

The Prompt: Sweet Little Lies—As kids, we’re told, time and again, that lying is wrong. Do you believe that’s always true? In your book, are there any exceptions?

The Sweet and Bitter Lie

I think the sweetest little lie we tell ourselves and our children is that of a beneficent and caring God. This belief and the religion that stems from it  is our way of comforting ourselves. It is totally aside from reason. How else could we look at a baby turtle struggling to swim for the first time plucked up and swallowed by a hungry pelican, or a baby suffering with cancer or a horribly deformed child and think, “This is the product of a caring Father?” We all must conclude, if we make use of our senses at all, that nature is impartial and serves only its own cycle. There is no kindness in nature, other than her beauties and comforts; but even they all serve a purpose: to survive against all odds, and to kill or at the very least to depend upon the death of other organisms in order to do so.

I do acknowledge that Religion is probably necessary for many who do not think far enough to recognize the sweet lie. For those who use it to create more compassion for others, I applaud the end. But right now it seems as though religion is being used more as a weapon and political ploy than for the “good” side of its coin.

I don’t know how I align my agnosticism with my belief that there is some sort of incredible synchronicity going on in the world. This is a topic for another day, I guess.

For other posts on this topic, go here: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/sweet-little-lies/