Dana Driver - Mendocino Art Center

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Book Review Maguey Journey by Kathryn Rousso reviewed by Barbara Shapiro Basket maker and former Mendocino resident Kathryn Rousso has devoted much of the past ten years to research about the maguey plant found from the southern United States to northern South America. This life sustaining plant provides food and beverage, clothing, shelter and, most prominently, thread for a wide variety of utilitarian objects. Fulbright Award winner Rousso’s research culminates in Maguey Journey: Discovering Textiles in Guatemala. Predating cotton, maguey production’s long history is tied to a continued subsistence lifestyle. Textile enthusiasts will love this book as will ethno-botanists, anthropologists, and travelers to Latin America. Rousso shares her passion for the quieter Guatemalan maguey textiles often overlooked by comparison to colorful backstrap woven cotton trajes. Her approach is culturally sensitive with attention to detail born from years of experience as a textile artist. In Part One, “The Land of Maguey,” we meet the men and women who for centuries have worked this strong and versatile fiber with varying techniques in Guatemala’s distinct geographic regions. We revel in a travelogue of Rousso’s sometimes harrowing research trips across Guatemala since the 1980’s. We meet the generous maguey workers she encountered whose practices vary by community. Part Two, “The Plant to Textile Transformation,” clarifies the biology, growth, fiber extraction, dyeing, spinning and textile production of maguey in a seemingly endless variety of structures. Techniques examined include looping, knitting, ply split darning, linking, interlacing, braiding, and weaving. There are diagrams and references for further study as well as beautiful photos. Rousso explains common equipment including several loom types and the many products fashioned from maguey including ropes, cargo nets, bags, tumplines, horse and mule gear, hammocks, and even fireworks. Part Three, “The Gift of Life,” explores the economics of this most persistent Guatemalan cottage industry. In spite of dramatic changes in demographics since post civil war stability encouraged greater international trade and the incursion of plastic into traditional life, Rousso is enthusiastic about a future for maguey as a sustainable green product. Maguey Journey is a fascinating read about the staying power of this durable fiber and the people who have mastered it. Maguey Journey: Discovering Textiles in Guatemala, University of Arizona Press, 2010, is available at Amazon. com and through the publisher. Kathy Rousso is the former coordinator of the Fiber Arts Department at the Mendocino Art Center. She currently resides in Ketchikan, Alaska. Barbara Shapiro is a textile artist and educator from the Bay Area. Her weavings and baskets are profoundly influenced by traditional and historic textile traditions. She is a board member of the Textile Society of America and recently taught an indigo dyeing workshop at the Mendocino Art Center. www.barbara-shapiro.com 11
12 Shozo Sato: Living Treasure by Michael Potts In a magical tea garden at the end of a tree tunnel in Inglenook, there lives a Japanese wizard. He is a private, gentle, courtly man, who nevertheless radiates a powerful force. He uses that force to transform people into artists. Shozo Sato describes Kamakura, where he grew up, as “a city of 100,000 people and 300 Zen temples: Kabuki actors, Nobel prize winners... a highly motivated culture.” Shozo’s father was a doctor, his mother an ardent theater-goer. Shozo was born in 1933, the year Japan left the League of Nations and began beating war drums. “When I was four, my father returned from a house call to find me dancing in a kimono of my mother’s. I started my study of traditional Japanese dance when I was six. Like other boys, I was always being asked what I wanted to become. Boys my age were expected to answer ‘pilot’ or ‘commander’ or ‘soldier’ but I always said, ‘artist’. I was a problem kid, sneaking out of academic classes into other people’s art classes. “It was a blessing: from childhood, I always knew what I wanted to do.” Japanese who lived through the Occupation remember it as a harsh time, but Shozo stayed in his own room, practicing dance, painting, making drama. He attended a fine arts high school and college, taking a degree in oil painting. “My classmates always talked of going to Paris and New York to become famous artists, but they didn’t know Japanese art. I think, if you want to stand on the world stage, you must know your own native art, and the philosophy behind it, because eventually that will come out. “When I was 19, I began to wonder how to earn a living. My childhood mentor, a painting master, prohibited selling paintings, because this ‘success’ locks an artist into the style of the sold painting, and creativity is lost. This becomes a form of prostituting the soul. As an artist, you must not think of yourself as a merchant. So I offered my services to an orphanage for free. Every Saturday I taught art to orphans. In those days, the orphanages were filled with children of mixed races: Black, Brown, White, who were left in little baskets at the orphanage door. Every child has a different way of drawing, and to me their different ethnic backgrounds were obvious. Soon I was teaching art in the U.S. Naval Independent School. My talent for seeing ethnicity in paintings helped me understand that we all have different gifts. By encouraging these differences, we can help children find their creativity.” A resurgence in Japanese reverence for culture in the post-war years offered abundant opportunities for Shozo to learn new artistic disciplines. He studied Kabuki with one of the Living National Treasures, Nakamura, Kanzaburo XVII, who honored Shozo with the title Nakamura, Kanzo IV. During this time he also studied Ikebana (the art of arranging flowers) and the Tea Ceremony. He opened a small private art Photos by Larry R. Wagner
Page 1 and 2: 6 Photo by Larry R. Wagner Dana Dri
Page 3 and 4: 8 S H A S H A H I G B Y Internation
Page 5: 10 The Song (“Naki Goe”) 12’
Page 9 and 10: 14 art has enriched the Art Center.

Dana Driver - Mendocino Art Center

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