Sometimes stepping outside your comfort zone is just the push you need to create something new, something beautiful. Recently Marlon Davila, a Guatemalan artist from New Jersey, spent several weeks in Cajolá, the town in Guatemala where the weaving cooperative is. He came with a desire to connect with his Maya roots, to paint a mural with the help of local middle school students, and to work on a collaborative project with the weaving cooperative. When he departed, he left behind a beautiful mural in the entryway to the town hall, a stunning mixed media work of art for the weaving studio and a lasting impression on the community.
Marlon’s first project was working together with teams of middle school students to paint a mural on the town hall which took two and a half weeks to complete. The students arrived each day, eager to paint.
The result was a 9 foot tall x 14 foot wide mural representing Maya culture in both ancient times and today. In the center of the painting, you can see the Tree of Life which separates the Maya of the past on the left and the contemporary Maya life and customs on the right.
In the afternoons, Marlon worked on a different project, a collaboration with a small group of traditional backstrap weavers. The women were intrigued, but not entirely sure what this would entail. Together they sat down, and Marlon showed them some photos of examples of mixed media works of art including some of his own ideas. Initially they were completely quiet. However, after a while, the women stood up and started talking together speaking in Mam, their native language, for about 10-15 minutes. When they finished, they proposed to Marlon to make a collage that represented a Mam woman from Cajolá in her traditional clothing. Marlon agreed with the concept and began by drawing a picture of Yolanda dressed in her traditional clothing. He included all the details from the “cinta” headpiece to Cajolá’s signature brown, white, and red “servilleta,” the large square napkin used in the collage to wrap the bouquet of Cajolá’s ever-present Calla Lillies. The plan was that the women would weave the textiles for the clothing and Marlon would paint the figure and the flowers.
The team of weavers sorted out who was going to weave what. Everything was woven on the traditional backstrap loom even though these days the huipil (blouse) and corte (skirt) are woven on the foot loom. An important detail was the cinta or headpieces. The long narrow woven piece wraps around the woman’s long hair and is twisted until it forms a kind of crown. For the collage, the women twisted it and secured it onto the canvas. It is the most three-dimensional aspect of the collage. The textiles for the “perraje” (shawl) and “faja” (belt) were also hand woven on the backstrap loom.
The weavers had to solve many challenges – how to finish the woven edges when you are cutting it to fit a drawing? (hand sew). They had to make patterns to fit the drawing and cut their weavings to fit. Next, how were they going to attach the fabric to the canvas? They traveled to Quetzaltenango find something suitable which turned out to be fabric cement.
When they finished all the details, they stepped back to admire it together. They were amazed to see that the figure in the painting was one centimeter larger than Yolanda – the model – is in real life!
The women celebrated their collaboration with Marlon and invited him back for another mixed-media collage collaboration next year. In the meantime, the cooperative has a beautiful piece of art to admire in the workshop.
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