Martha Casteñeda Gutiérrez (Martha) is a soft-spoken, modest woman. Still, at 43, she stands apart – like the hardwood mesquite trees growing close to her home near Dolores Hidalgo in central Mexico's harsh rolling desert campo (countryside). Martha's path has not been average. She's a maestra talladora de madera (a master wood carver). She hand-carves detailed designs into custom wood furniture, doors, and tables.
As a child, Martha was captivated by drawing. Her brother, Madaleno Casteñada Gutiérrez (Madaleno), is a well-known woodcarver in their small town of Adjuntas del Río, about 40 minutes from San Miguel de Allende, and about 27 years ago, Madaleno taught Martha the basics of carving. Over the years, she learned to shape the wood into her own designs. As she grew, she gradually created more personal relationships with woods like the mesquite and the pine. More exacting craftsman than a pure conceptual artist, more professional journeyman than a broad generalist, Martha is now considered an expert in a field that men normally dominate.
Like many Mexican artisans, Martha creates incredible carvings while working out of her small, cramped, open-air home workshop. The roof is covered in large flat pieces of sheet metal siding and black plastic tarps hung from tree limbs and strung from the west wall of their single-story brick house. Then, rope, zip ties, metal pipes, and steel wire are strung, hung, and twisted around everything to keep it all in place. She takes the lead, working with her husband Jesús Antonio Rodriguez Luna (Jesús), their 16-year-old son, two young daughters, chickens scratching around the dirt floor, a desert cat or two, and a desert dog. It's a tight fit, but she loves the simplicity of working in her studio - it fits her – it allows her to disappear into her work.
Martha carves several kinds of wood, but mesquite remains her favorite because it's hardwood, which, under the blades of her chisels, cuts a smoother, sharper, more defined edge, and she can cut against the grain, which is harder to do with softer wood. Most of her assignments come from local furniture manufacturers. Mesquite furniture is a specialty in Adjuntas del Rio. People come to this village from all over to get gorgeous tables, chairs, doors, and sculptures. Men run all the manufacturing shops. They make the basic furniture and then give it to Martha to carve. First, she uses a pencil and sketches the images she has been assigned onto the surfaces. Then she uses chisels and mallets to cut the designs into the wood. Centolio Jiménez López (Don Centolio) is a local master furniture maker. Don Centolio says Martha is in demand because her carvings are "brilliant and clean." She does the work on time and within budget. That's a seductive approach in any business.
Whenever I was in her workshop shooting images and talking to Martha, I noticed her beautiful daughters, Estafani Valeria, 13, and Romina Abigail, 6. They tear around like anybody that age, but they also hang out and watch their mother. "What do you want to be when you grow up, Estafani?" She said, "I want to be a woodcarver like my mom." On my last day, Martha was carving incredible leaf details into a massive mesquite door that would be shipped to a homeowner in the US. Her daughters kept pestering her for attention until Martha took a break. She lifted Estafani and Romina to the side of the worktable, gave each a chisel, and gently showed them how to hold it and which angle worked best. Her daughters each took the mazo (mallet) and tentatively hit the chisel handle until the hardwood gave way. The mesquite had little choice in the matter – the wood had to move aside and make room for both the chisel blades and the young girls. It looked like a lesson in how to potentially begin building a future in a desert community where there aren't many options. Martha wasn't pressing this issue. She let her daughters come to her. You could tell Mom was pleased by the quiet little smile etched on her face. It was the same smile as that on every other mother everywhere. It was the same smile as the expressions on Estafani and Romina.
Martha says, "The most beautiful thing that my God has given me is the gift of making functional art objects, like doors, tables, and chairs. Second to my family, carving keeps me alive - it's how I know my place in the world and how I know I need to move on and gather a larger audience for my work." I found Martha to be very quiet - not a self-promoter. The finished work clearly says all that needs saying. What drew my attention was her ability to shut out the world and focus on the razor-thin edge of the blade on a chisel - that takes discipline and strength spread out evenly over every day for decades.
Carving is not an older person's game. The constant pounding on the chisels has taken a pound of flesh from her hands, forearms, shoulders, and back. However, as she leans into her next project and follows the grain of the hardwood, you can clearly see the invisible sinews connecting and binding Martha's heart to her mallet, to her chisel, to her wood, and ultimately to her life. I don't believe her personal growth has been a series of smooth, unbroken circles, like the classic cross-section of an average tree from a more temperate climate. For Martha, it appears more like the elegantly warped and twisted growth rings on a cross-section of mesquite. Martha has evolved and adapted to a harsh desert environment like the historic tree. She is hardwood.
My interpreter, Margo Lwna, and I said goodbye, and we quietly walked to my car, parked in the shade next to the workshop. It was hot outside. I took a long drink from my water bottle and put the camera bag in the back seat. For a moment, it was hushed. Suddenly, I heard the precise, clear, and synchronized rhythm of a wood mallet hitting the wood handle of a chisel as it cut away another small piece of wood from a huge, exquisite mesquite door. It was like I was hearing Charlie Watts keeping the exact time to an old Stones tune. It was the perfect background soundtrack for the scene. The sound echoed around and past the nearby brick homes in the small desert neighborhood. Everyone within earshot and beyond knows that Martha Casteñeda was born here, and she lives to carve. She's carving right now; God willing, she'll be carving tomorrow.
Martha Carving A Mesquite Door
Martha Showing Estafani How To Carve.
Woodcarving - Functional Art Objects - exhibit
Saturday, Sunday, August 5-6 11am-6pm
Galería del Impresionismo Zacateros 83a Centro
(next to Cafe Monet)
Margo Lwna: assistance@margolwna.com 415-102-1298
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