Category: San Antonio Parks

Postcard from Rome, Italy: Stumbling around colorblind

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Time out. I wandered around Rome for almost three weeks before it hit me in the face, just as we were about to exit the Diocletian Baths. The sculpture above, the photo included in the prior post, did it.

I had been viewing remnants of ancient Rome in black and white, completing forgetting photographs in magazine and newspaper articles about exhibitions making the rounds in the United States a decade ago. The ancient Etruscans, the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans – they had no inhibitions about applying color to their art. We have been brought up in an art world dominated by the influence of Renaissance artists reviving classical sculpture using the whitest of marble.

Writing in the Smithsonian Magazine in 2008, Matthew Gurewitsch describes how our color-blindness would shock the ancients:

But we can guess that Phidias would be brokenhearted to see his sacred relics dragged so far from home, in such a fractured state. More to the point, the bare stone would look ravaged to him, even cadaverous.

Listen to Helen of Troy, in the Euripides play that bears her name:

My life and fortunes are a monstrosity,
Partly because of Hera, partly because of my beauty.
If only I could shed my beauty and assume an uglier aspect
The way you would wipe color off a statue.

That last point is so unexpected, one might almost miss it: to strip a statue of its color is actually to disfigure it.

I was still processing this concept as we wandered through the National Etruscan Museum of Villa Guilia (more to come later), where we encountered a couple reclining on their sarcophagus, circa 500+ years B.C. The accompanying text mentioned that the “twin” to this housed in the Louvre actually shows remnants of colors.

National Etruscan Museum in Rome
Louvre in Paris

But the Louvre couple (on the right) still does not burst into a full technicolor-type bloom. Based on decades of work by Vinzenz Brinkmann of the Glyptothek Museum in Munich, Germany, replicas of ancient statues colorized are probably as shocking to our senses as people accustomed to black-and-white films almost 80 years ago felt in theatres viewing the vividly bright yellow brick road in the midst of The Wizard of Oz.

This Carsten Muller video for Capitol City Media Design helps somewhat with visualizing the changes:

I got on an absurd jag in Rome of photographing statues of lions (more later). They are everywhere. I am so conditioned to thinking of them from a monochromatic perspective, I never once pictured the ancient ones in what to me is amusement-park merry-go-round colors, as is this reproduction of a Greek lion Brinkmann uses in exhibitions.

lion on a tub in the Diocletian Baths
reproduction of lion from Loutraki, Stiftung Archäologie, Munich

Color changes our perceptions about ancient civilizations. But ouch, with the following description in mind, would you really want to see the featured relief of Mithras or the statue of Mithras pictured below fully restored in color?

Diocletian Baths
Statue of Mithras, Diocletian Baths

But my imagination fails to make the Crayola transition on its own. My color-blinders remain in place unless confronted by the images side by side.

Which brings me back around to San Antonio. And her missions. The Native Americans herded into the flocks of the Spanish friars nearly three centuries ago were not monochrome in their tastes.

Years back, I rudely shoved through a motion at a San Antonio Conservation Society board meeting for the society to go on record supporting “colorizing” the outside of one mission the way the Native Americans originally did. The not-well-thought-out motion probably still languishes at the bottom of a list of active motions.

I would withdraw it now in favor of a different approach. Illuminate the facades of Mission Concepcion and Mission San Jose often and on a regular basis, if only for an hour at a time right after sunset to show for those of us who stand colorblind in front of these incredible landmarks failing to envision the imprint of our Native American population on them, and, by extension, the city San Antonio has become.

The City of San Antonio has worked several times now with the San Antonio Missions National Park to spotlight the missions “Restored by Light.” The photograph on the left of Mission Concepcion colorized was taken by Bonnie Arbitter and appeared in The Rivard Report, September 8, 2017. Scott Ball took the second one of Mission San Jose that appeared in The Rivard Report, September 6, 2017.

Mission Concepcion by Bonnie Arbitter for The Rivard Report
Mission San Jose by Scott Ball for The Rivard Report

Please let the light shine on these more often.

Meanwhile, this unimaginative soul will return to viewing Roman antiquities in monochromatic tones. Am hoping your imagination adds a richness to the palette where applicable.

 

‘Tree of Life’ bears bountiful crop of tales from the past

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If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.

Rudyard Kipling

Assigned by the San Antonio River Foundation with the creation of a major work of public art to celebrate the community surrounding Mission San Francisco de la Espada and its strong connections to San Antonio’s ranching heritage, Margarita Cabrera envisioned a tree of life. A tree of life overflowing with fruit. “Arbol de la Vida: Voces de Tierra.”

The origin of colorful trees of life is rooted in Colonial Mexico. Missionaries worked with craftsmen in the Puebla region of Mexico to create clay sculptures to relay biblical stories, often branching upward and outward from Adam and Eve at the base.

Building on that tradition of rendering stories in clay, Cabrera has collaborated with more than 600 members of the community since May to capture their narrative memories. Workshops were held to help even novices record these chapters of San Antonio’s shared history in slab and coil based clay sculptures. The finishing touches on the final fruits of this labor of love involving so many are being completed in a studio at Mercury Project.

While many of the 700 pieces already have been fired, these photos are of works in progress. After firing, Cabrera says, each piece will be filled with epoxy so that, even if a piece is damaged, the sculpture will remain intact. The average weight of each of the suspended “fruits” will be in the neighborhood of 200 pounds. Serving as a portal linking the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River to Mission Espada, this tree will be immense.

Merri Gutierrez working on the plumed hat of Rosa Maria Hinojosa de Balli
Guillermo Nicolas
Merri Gutierrez, Margarita Cabrera and Thelma Ortiz Muraida working on her grandparents’ truck
Margarita Cabrera
Warren Borror’s bicycle chainring/bottlecap
Guillermo Nicolas
Merrie Gutierrez and Margarita Cabrera
Frates Seeligson’s burr oak acorn
early rendering of Arbol de la Vida
Clicquot Club Beverages once distributed out of current home of the Mercury Project
May Day 1893 bicycle parade in Irish Flats with Warren Borror’s great grandfather on far right

An ostrich-plumed hat perched atop the head of “la patrona” made Rosa Maria Hinojosa de Balli (1752-1803) easy to spot on early Texas cattle drives, according to Merri Gutierrez, one of her descendants. Gutierrez chose to depict the signature hat to represent the story of the daughter of two Spanish aristocrats who was born in Tamaulipas, Mexico. Known as the first cattle queen of Texas, Hinojosa de Balli amassed more than one-million acres of land stretching across five Texas counties. She built chapels at all of her ranches for the ranchhands and served as godmother to more than 300 of their children.

Thelma Ortiz Muraida is crafting a truck to signify the lifestyle of her father, a migrant worker born in Floresville. An artist who has illustrated numerous children’s books, Muraida is enjoying working with the clay. Her father loved to create folk art from found objects, and her great-aunt worked with her husband alongside Dionicio Rodriguez, known for his landmark faux bois cement sculptures. The truck pays tribute to those who work with their hands and their appreciation of and respect for the land. She is filling her truck with family members and the things they would pack up to create a sense of home as they roamed to harvest crops in other parts of the country –  birds, chickens, the pet dog and the guitar her grandmother played.

The meaningful ornaments for Cabrera’s tree are taking shape within the walls of Mercury Project, a network of artists’ studios founded in 2012 by artists and designers Antonia Richardson and Warren Borror in a renovated factory on Roosevelt Avenue. When Borror’s mother first saw the structure, she said, “I know this building.” From 1945 to 1955, the building was the San Antonio home of Clicquot Club Beverages, distinguished by its Eskimo Boy logo. The owner was popular for giving neighborhood kids free ginger ales and root beers, and church socials often were held upstairs. Borror chose that part of Mercury Project’s past to highlight for his contribution to the tree, a Clicquot bottle cap.

But the scallops of the edge of the bottle cap reminded the fifth-generation San Antonian of another part of both the city’s and his family’s past. The flip side of the cap will represent the cranks for a bicycle chain. His family has a photo of his great-grandfather in San Antonio’s first bicycle parade in 1893, and one of his great grandfather’s sons operated Ullrich’s bicycle shop where La Frite is today. While relating some of the city’s early bicycle history, Borror also is celebrating San Antonio’s increasing transition into a bike-friendly city.

So, staring up at 700 individual clay sculptures, how will anyone glean the stories behind them? There will be an app for that, says Cabrera. After firing, each piece will be photographed on all sides and will be accompanied by narrative from the community storytellers.

While shading people below, this tree will be an incredible place to play “I Spy.” The bountiful tree of life will stimulate viewers’ memories, encouraging multi-generational sharing, reviving San Antonio’s rich oral tradition often drowned out by contemporary media.

Harvesting the tales hanging above will take multiple visits to the story-telling tree. I sure hope this magical tree comes with a couple of rocking chairs below for grandparents to hold their grandchildren in their laps while telling them about life when they were young.

February 23, 2019, Update: Tales told through clay are bursting into bloom as the “Arbol” nears completion.

Morning walk turns into thematic parade through San Antonio’s heritage

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The sky spat a fine mist on us when we set out for a morning walk. We probably would not have headed out at all were I not obsessed by the prospect of seeing longhorns herded through downtown in the San Antonio Livestock Show & Rodeo’s Western Heritage Parade and Cattle Drive, enlarged this year as part of San Antonio’s celebration of its 300th birthday.

The tricentennial meaning of the “300” on the banner was lost on some of the spectators standing next to us. Child: “Wow. There are going to be 300 cows.” Dad: “No, it means this is the 300th year of the cattle drive.”

While this was not the 300th annual parade of longhorns, cattle have been part of San Antonio’s history since Native Americans tending livestock for San Antonio’s string of missions became America’s first cowboys. Many of the Spanish terms the charros used to describe their work and equipment became embedded in the English language, as in the word “rodeo” itself.

Longhorns are not foreign to downtown, with a strong connection to Alamo Street and its plaza:

In 1876 salesman Pete McManus with his partner John Warne (Bet-a-Million) Gates conducted a famous demonstration on Alamo Plaza in San Antonio in which a fence of Glidden’s “Winner” wire restrained a herd of longhorn cattle. Gates reportedly touted the product as “light as air, stronger than whiskey, and cheap as dirt.” Sales grew quickly thereafter, and barbed wire permanently changed land uses and land values in Texas.

“Barbed Wire,” Texas Handbook Online

Sheep, goats, hogs, cows and horses often clogged the streets as farmers and ranchers brought them in from the countryside to sell to city dwellers. City folks began to tire of the inconvenience of this practice as the 21st century dawned.

Driving wild stock through our streets should be prohibited at once. Yesterday afternoon a drove of about thirty horses went up Houston street, and came near killing a child, while general travel was greatly obstructed.

San Antonio Daily Express, March 12, 1891

women attired in the style of San Antonio’s Canary Island settlers
cookies in Camel Corps, a shop in La Villita
parade essentials – pooper scoopers
new mural on the side of The Maverick – Texas Brasserie, opening soon on South St. Mary’s Street

Hoping this herd of longhorns will not be the last to parade past the Alamo.

Much like barbed wire transformed the days of the open range, a wall some propose to enclose San Antonio’s Alamo Plaza would bring an era to an end. For many San Antonians, the Alamo and its plaza represent more than a battle site frozen and time. Their evolution before and after 1836 is an integral part of our heritage. The plaza historically and currently lies at the heart of many of San Antonio’s annual celebrations.

Texans in other parts of the state often fail to realize how tightly this plaza is woven into our urban fabric. The revised Master Plan for the Alamo now appears to recognize that concern:

An early concept of structural glass walls was shared at a public meeting, however, the final Master Plan includes no walls. The plan does propose archaeology that would reveal the original Alamo wall footings so that visitors may see what remains of the original Alamo walls.

Although this assurance is followed by:

These and other design concepts will be fully explored in future phases of the plan.

Stay vigilant.

This year’s San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo runs February 8 through 25.