‘lĒn ‘tĪm[z]: Antigüedad

Busy few days in Antigua.

Soon after arriving I met Carolyn Porter of the Art History department at UT Austin. Carolyn led me and some other San Bartolo affiliates on a tour of Casa Herrera, an interdisciplinary research center for Mesoamerican art and culture. The Casa is relatively new, and will serve as a base for academic residencies, graduate projects, and lectures from visiting scholars across the disciplinary board. It happens to be an elegant space as well, a former hacienda and sugar refinery that is one of the few remaining establishments in Antigua to retain its colonial apportionment of a quarter of a city block.

What appeals to me about the Casa is its mixture of a rich and layered architectural heritage with a dedication to still emerging ideals of interdisciplinarity, collaboration, and social and environmental responsibility. Walking through a back courtyard you encounter a pre-Columbian metate (grinding stone; above, above) that was found and left in situ; a rare and rather suggestive fountain sculpture of a merman conquistador (above, middle); a baby ceiba (above, below), which was regarded as the "world tree" by the ancient Maya and retains great cultural significance among contemporary Maya people; and a water collection tank that catches the rain and converts it to greywater suitable for washing clothes and dishes.

Plus: killer roof views.

Saturday saw a mini-market mission to check out wares for sale by Ruth (above with the ceiba), a Kaqchikel Maya weaver from the village San Antonio Aguas Calientes. The Kaqchikel have a vibrant but endangered tradition of colorful hand-crafted textiles, which take anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months to make on cumbersome backstrap looms. I'm not much of an aesthete when it comes to such things, but I have to admit the resulting designs are amazing:

This guy rolled through, seems like a good Proyecto. I guess Central American countries are pretty fuel efficient, we could take a lesson from them up north.