Light blogging, lately

Please visit the Pale Horse Galleries online store. Thanks!

I know I've been doing almost no blogging lately and I'll tell you why. I am launching a business offering Mexican Indigenous peoples' artwork and other crafted-by-hand products. If you would like, you might visit Pale Horse Galleries to learn more about one type of very famous art created by the Zapotec and Mixtec indigenous peoples of the Oaxacan valleys and sierras. It's called Alebrije (ah lah BREE hay) and is some really beautiful stuff.

I created the Pale Horse Galleries blogspot site so that I might offer a detailed explanation of the various items, photos of representative samples, photos and biographies of the artists and craftsmen (craftspersons?), and some history of the development of the various types of art and hand-crafted items that I offer for sale. Some of this art, and almost all of the skills to produce this art, go back millenia. I am and will be traveling far and wide throughout the valleys and high sierras of Oaxaca and Chiapas to find the artists themselves in their salons and workshops, called talleres (tah YAIR ace, singular = tah YAIR). I'll also be offering, eventually, artwork and hand-crafted items created by the Aztec (mexica), the Maya, the Olmec, the Tlaxcalteca, the Apache, the Yaqui and others.

I've got an online store set up at palehorsemex.vstore.ca/ and it's called Pale Horse Galleries, also. The long term goal is to generate enough money through online sales to open a brick-and-mortar Pale Horse Gallery in downtown Oaxaca. That, however, will be an expensive undertaking.

I intend to offer

• alebrijes (up and running now)
• ceramics, including talavera dinnerware from Puebla and Tlaxcala, barro negro (black clay - no lead) and barro natural from Oaxaca
• fine pottery from Oaxaca
• hand-crafted and hand-engraved knives, swords and table service from Oaxaca
• scented and decorated candles from Puebla
• decorative art in tin from Oaxaca and Guadalahara
• creations in leather from Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua, Sonora, Jalisco and Guanajuato
• hand-woven textiles in cotton, wool and silk from Oaxaca
• lots of other stuff.

Needless to say, this effort has absorbed a lot of my time and this blog has been seriously neglected. I'll try to do better but there are only so many hours in the day.

Please visit the Pale Horse Galleries online store. Thanks!
TAGS: art, Mexico, Pale Horse Galleries, alebrije, Zapotec