Oaxaca, Mexico. Profile of artist potter Dolores Porras. From artesana to worldwide artist

(Part 1 of 2)

My first stop will be in Oaxaca, Mexico that I visited a week ago. Oaxaca is a wonderful city, with a long and rich history. It is filled with energy, color and arts. And, last but not least, Oaxaca is considered the culinary capital of Mexico.

Mexican Honeysuckle

While there, I visited several museums including the Museum de las Culturas de Oaxaca, a masterpiece in its own right.  It is housed in the former convent of the Church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán built in the 16th and 17th centuries. A sumptuous classic Mexican baroque building that was transformed into a museum in 1972.

Oaxaca last week preparing for the easter parade. I had not planned on matching the colors of the decorations. Oops!

Inside el museo

The three-floor collections occupy 14 rooms. In one of them, I discovered an exhibit devoted to Dolores Porras under the theme:

Somos de barro y al barro volveremos. El entorno natural, identitad de un pueblo milenario. (Clay we are and to clay we will return. Natural environment: identity of a thousand-year town.)

Dolores Porras was a prodigy potter. Born in Santa Maria Atzompa, Oxaca, Mexico, a region known for its millenary pottery tradition, she embarked on her artistic journey at age 13. She worked alongside her parents prior to opening her own atelier. For over fifty years, she worked with clay using traditional methods and new ones that she had developed.

Dolores Porras. Photo, Folk Arts museum of Central Texas 

In the early 1980s, along with her husband and collaborator, Alfred Regino Ramirez, Dolores Porras developed innovating techniques based on the oxidation process of metals. This method allowed her to expand her palette of colors and obtain a glazed finish that gave her pieces an iridescent quality.

(More to come next week)