Little by little, without subsidies or capitalist partners, pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, we have been able to buy and
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construct the minimal equipment with which we work. We have managed to construct our Workshop with our own hands. The only resource we have had, and the most valuable, has been ourselves and the ideas of the collective, our rural-indigenous folk-wisdom.
Taller Lenateros: The Woodlanders’ Workshop
We have created a multi-ethnic space for artists and becoming-artists. We foment artistic creation among the most marginalized communities. The Woodlanders invent, teach and exercise the arts of hand-made paper, binding, solar silkscreen, woodcuts and natural dyes. We benefit the ecology by recycling agricultural and industrial wastes in order to create crafts and objects of art. Taller Lenateros survives thanks to the sale of artist books, postcards, posters, and printed shirts.
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We cultivate a group environment in which all the members of the Workshop participate in decisions, contributing ideas, solutions and work-proposals in order to benefit the individual and the group. Although we are not all from one same culture and we speak different languages, we are putting together a common project. We were once servants, washer-women, wandering vendors and unemployed, and now we own our own business.
We record and translate the songs we sing, and from our own voices the most ambitious project of Taller Lenateros was born: the publication (1650 copies) of the bilingual book (Tzotzil/Spanish, 200 pages with 60 original silkscreens by Tzotzil and Tzeltal women artists) Conjuros y ebreiedades, cantos de mujeres mayas. In March of this year we finished the first edition of Incantations By Mayan Women, a 295 page Tzotzil/ English version of this book. The fruit of the work of 150 people across 30 years, these are the first books written,
San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas Mexico
Tel./Fax: ++ (52) (967) 678 51 74
Email: tallerlenateros@yahoo.com.mx
