Adela Maria Piña Espinoza is my Grandmother on my mom's side. She grew up in the Coyoacán neighborhood of DF (Mexico City) and she still lives there. On a good day she starts by loading up her shopping cart and walking to the local open-air market (tianguis) to get materials needed to create almuerzo.
Lunch is ready around two in the afternoon. After everyone has eaten and things are cleaned up, she retires to her room for a short siesta. After the siesta she visits the local corner café with a book, or her sketch pads, or both. She then returns home and makes art, mostly three-dimensional objects manifesting in the form of culinary art and sculpture.
It's her way, her camino, camino de arte y belleza. Abuela Adela not only wakes up an artist; it seems like she goes to bed and dreams like an artist. Often, I think about all the mornings we've sat in her breakfast nook and she'd tell me her dreams. I recount the dreams. It seems like she travels to foreign cities all the time in her dreams, dreams of beautiful imaginary places filled with antiquities. She also seems to dream about our family a lot.
I have this vivid memory of her describing a dream about our family standing at the edge of this cliff, facing the ocean at dusk / crepúsculo, and our entire family and extended family experiencing the overwhelming beauty together. She said this dream represented the sublime. She talks a lot about the sublime. She says that art is one way of experiencing it. I still don't think I understand it too well, but I'll always remember Abuela saying, "The sublime is both terrifying and beautiful at the same time."
Sometimes she'll interpret the dreams as something that will come to pass. But it's hard to understand how she comes up with these prophecies. Like when she dreamed I'd be leaving Mexico for a while to live up North, not only did it seem hard to come up with this conclusion, but she had other possible outcomes of this dream. I'll explain.
She described this beautiful wooden carousel in the dream. The carousel had different colored horses that were moving up-and-down and going round-and-round. There were intricate patterns of inlaid wood found on the outer edge of the carousel which didn't move. These patterns created a compass with eight ornate designs indicating each direction and the points in-between the four directions. I remember these details because Abuela actually did a painting of this carousal which she titled, "Dream Carousel".
Abuela said she was watching the horses going up and down and around the carousel and then the carousel music suddenly stopped. Most of the horses were paralyzed, but there was this pale green horse whose ears perked up. This horse could hear that the music was moving away from the carousel. So the pale green horse broke out of the carousel to follow the music and crossed the wood compass at this arrow which indicated North / West. This horse was tied to a dark red horse who was pulled toward the music by the pale green horse. The pale green horse started galloping faster toward the music, pulling the other horse and as they drew in closer to the music they started to fly. The pale green horse kept flying toward the music.
"I think it means you'll leave Mexico and live in the North for a while; or it means you'll inspire kids to brush their teeth, maybe you'll become a dentist." Yea, she'd always give two to three predictions from these prophetic dreams and I've never understood why.
When I stay with her in Coyoacán we go to the outdoor café La Jarocho by the main square. She always treats me to a café mocha and we talk for hours. People pass en masse and she tells me stories, historias of her past. Sometimes she'll repeat histories which is kind of a good thing because I'll never forget the important stories.
Like the fact that we were all born in the oldest hospital in the Americas, The Hospital of Jesus, in the same corridor where Montezuma met Cortés for the first time. She always reminds me of that space, that event. She says we carry both the King of the Aztecs and the greatest conqueror in Mexico inside of ourselves. Which seems complicated, maybe conflicted, and probably why we all have this need to make art. I know this conflicted / complicated blood runs through my veins.
Abuela was lucky; she was one of the few kids Frida Kahlo took under her wing in the Cachuchas – a group of art school kids in DF in the 1940's. She has some old black and white photos of Frida teaching the Cachuchas how to make papier-mâché figures. Abuela still has a papier-mâché figure she made with Frida, it looks like a devil-clown or a goofy-minotaur.
The last time I stayed with her before coming up North we made sculptures out of papier-mâché. I made some larger figures and she worked on a small version of the goofy Minotaur she had made with Frida. We worked on this project for a few days because you have wait for the papier-mâché to dry before painting it and adding the final touches.
She gave me that goofy Minotaur and told me to take it with me on my journey. Some people say it looks scary or even devilish, but I know it's that terror and beauty blending. I still have it as a reminder of all the time we spent together embracing the sublime. It reminds me that I must have the courage to continue to make honest art. When I'm making art, I'm with Abuela Adela, approaching the sublime, and this helps me deal with life up here in Utah.
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MC Quixote
General FictionThis story is about a fifteen year old moving from Mexico to the United States with her deaf father. She experiences many challenges and turns to writing songs and creating music to overcome the difficulties of moving to a new culture while growing...
