I say it often, perhaps insufferably often for some people, but every day that I step out the front door in San Miguel de Allende, I expect a miracle to happen.
Oh, not a big miracle. Not always.
Just little miracles.
Like the smile on the face of a mother herding her three children toward the church.
Like the carpet of lavender jacaranda flowers worked into a patch of cobblestones.
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They’ve got it all backward.
The Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City ought to start with the collection of medical harnesses and contraptions that the artist used to alleviate the pain, to stand upright, to obtain a modicum of normality in her life.
Instead, the very devices that she so cleverly hid beneath her layered dresses and shawls come at the end of the journey. They are shocking, horrifying.
They make you, finally, grasp the essence of the pain which dictated and influenced so much of her life and art.
It is only at the end that the courage, the determination, the resilience, the bravery of Frida Kahlo come into the clearest focus.
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Give a child a paintbrush … and you’ll be wiping down walls for months.
Ah, but give a child a paintbrush and a mission and soon enough the child will be creating art.
On Sunday at Belles Artes, there was a whole lot of art going on. Two stories worth of bristling, carefree, happy kids unleashed into a crafty and colorful world of creativity.
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It is popular and entirely appropriate in San Miguel de Allende to say “You never know what’s behind a closed door.”
Entrances on San Miguel streets give you no hint at all as to what lies behind them.
The most humble of doors can open onto a garden of Eden, a fairyland, a small village, a rabbit warren of homes, a vast and empty park, a stately hacienda, ancient ruins, a private town square surrounded by stately homes, ageless and towering trees, private roads – well, whatever imagination and money can conjure.
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When I first heard that the Instituto Allende and I were born in the same year I had some mixed feelings.
I mean this venerated arts center on the Ancha de San Antonio in San Miguel de Allende looks ancient. Old stone and mortar. Buildings and walls that go back centuries. An architectural graybeard.
And me, well, I’m … I’m … well, never mind.
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Ok, you won’t listen to me or your brother or your doctor. Then try listening to a few icons of Mexican culture, like Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo, and Emiliano Zapata. During 2021, the artist Enrique Díaz has harnessed iconography and linoleum engraving art to deliver the ultimate survival message.
His works — this is only a sampling — is on display in Belles Artes, the recently reopened Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramírez El Nigromante at Calle del Dr Ignacio Hernandez Macias #75 in Centro.
Extra: Masked art — like these 10 murals — has been with us since the pandemic began
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I love this Bug.
It’s like something out of a Disney/Pixar movie where a once-beloved and cuddled family Bug grows old as the family grows up and is eventually abandoned in the Shed of Lost Car Souls where it withers, rusts, and decays for decades until the troubled teenage grandson discovers the car and with loving assistance from grandpa restores the Bug, restores his own self-confidence, and restores grandpa’s long-lost memories as he regales his grandson with tales of family road trips and adventures in this very same car — and in the end, grandpa and grandson trundle down the road in their magnificently restored Bug on the Mexican road trip of their lives.
Or, maybe not.
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So here we are now at 6,200 feet enjoying incredibly mild weather yearlong, a severe drought and growing water shortage, unrestrained development, and a once-exuberant city that has almost withered away under the relentless grind of Covid restrictions.
Signs of life are returning to San Miguel de Allende.
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May I start by saying that photographing San Miguel de Allende’s new Urban Art Gallery in a highway underpass is best not done during Friday morning rush-hour traffic.
I mean, really, at how many art galleries can you say you take your life into your hands stepping out in front of a picture, trying to take a decent photograph?
Nevertheless, that is when I got there and that is when these photos were taken.
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It is Day Three of San Miguel de Allende’s first-ever Urban Art Gallery and the creations of our 10 street artists show an incredible variety of tastes, styles, techniques, and mediums.
What was mere sketchy outlines on Monday, became splashes and dashes of color here and there on Tuesday and by 5 p.m. today, their full-blown visions were apparent in all their glory.
And this once graffiti-splattered underpass of the Libramente will never be the same.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 