From Ajijic Art Show to San Miguel de Allende . . .

These journal pages cover some mileage . . . we visually trek from the lakeside Mexico town of Ajijic, over a six hour drive to the mountain city of San Miguel de Allende. So, come along . . .

I'd seen great advertising for this show from nearly the time we arrived in the Lake Chapala, Mexico area. There were magazine ads, street banners and then, mention at that local artist's club meeting too ~ for the "Art + Ajijic" Show. So when the dates finally arrived, I was anxious. Now I knew it was at the soccer field and everyone kept directing us just to this particular street crossing, but darned if we could find it. We were on foot and it was getting a tad frustrating, until I saw a flow of people and some vendors set up outside. The tented area was huge, probably 100 feet square, with 10 x 10 foot spaces for the artists running both directions and a food/drink hub in the center (yes, a vodka sampling booth!) Entry required $50 pecos, giving me entrance, a drawing for a piece of art (by the participating artists, this was a required donation, I later learned) and a quality color program. It listed the artist, their bio and a sample of their work. As I traveled thru the maze of creativity, I picked up several business cards from my favorite artists. Displaying all these cards so I can turn some of them over, yet keep them all together was perplexing . . . the solution came as I noticed the dangling blue thread (from the previous page where I tied the receipt into the page). How about I just knot them together and let them add some motion to this page? Tah-Dah!! I was most impressed with the polished presentation here under this giant tent, calculating how I could be a part of this in the future. But, having access to the artist's viewpoint when I next visited the art club, I heard the fellow who organized the entire show, was showing scoundrel characteristics . . . like not paying the artists. Hummmm . . . more to consider.

For quite awhile, we'd planned to travel to San Miguel. Our reservations were all in order and we had only to sludge thru southern Guadalajara and swing east and then up into the higher mountains. Our lodging for the two night stay was Ruth Hyba's "La Mansion del Bosque" just down Calle Aldama, walking distance from the main square. The charming stacked adobe like cluster of rooms offered many intriguing little shelves. This was my very favorite nook, a narrow shelf featuring an earthenware kneeling woman diligently working of some chore. I loved how the light bounced off her bottom and onto the wall ~ delicious colors! The next day we poked around the mosaic of rolling streets and I finally settled on this scene in the main plaza to sit and sketch. This was the only plein air sketch I was able to complete during our trip. But I'm happy with the richness of color glow. The final illustration from San Miguel is from one of the streets we usually took to reach our lodging. But on one of the final late afternoons we were there, our pathway caught the late sun setting off to the west (the right in the image) which set the opposite side of this street on fire with sunlight, just setting aglow this opposite side of the street and it's buildings.

For a more detailed photo tour of San Miguel please check out my previous entry: http://elainefrenett.blogspot.com/2010/12/our-san-miguel-de-allende-adventure.html