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Aztec Dancing and Isla Cuale Culture, Puerto Vallarta

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Just hanging on the beach yesterday, we were treated to an Aztec Fire Dance by a troupe of five dressed in fabulous traditional regalia.

For a change of pace from the beach, we decided to visit the Isla Cuale, a small strip of island dividing the River Cuale into two channels and centro Puerto Vallarta from the south end.

The island can be accessed from the beach or by a couple of pedestrian only foot bridges. Its western end comprises a huge restaurant, pumping out “YMCA” as we passed this day, a small Pre-Columbian museum containing mostly pottery artifacts, an art-cafe,

complete with three parrots in a huge cage and lots of colourful abstract and surrealist paintings, and the usual stalls vending the same old stuff we see on the beach all the time.

Beneath an overpass, a couple of artists had their paintings set up in the shade.

Ty took advantage of the opportunity presented by this display of Jesuses to join his brothers.

We saw an iguana in a huge tree, moving slowly along the branches and sunning itself.

After my encounter with Peter the iguana at Yelapa, the first lizard I’ve ever been really close to, I’ve realised that these beasts are really awesome – very sentient.

At the eastern end of the island are several cafes and bars, some with live music, and the Cuale Cultural Center, a series of small studios for the visual arts and music, as well as a small theatre.

This morning none were open but they do offer courses at various times during the week.

For more info on the Isla Cuale, click here.

See more pics here.

Puerto Vallarta South Side: Zona Romantica, Old Town … art and culture

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The Paradise Community Center right near us was started by two expats and is a bustling hive of activity.

We spent some time there this morning while the Artisans Co-op Market was on and sampled some great Thai food as we watched the crowd come and go. Kitten adoptions, chair massage (by our condo neighbour Sunny), jewellery, food, clothes … it’s all there every week.

Sitting under an umbrella in the courtyard was a very pleasant way to pass some time on a warm and sunny day.

Puerto Vallarta’s Old Town isn’t really all that old but it has the atmosphere of old: cobbled streets, three story walkup concrete apartments, lots of multi-coloured bougainvillea winding itself around poles and up walls.

It also has a fair number of abandoned, vacant, and condemned properties, some of which are huge and cavernous.

I’m not sure whether this is a result of the recent harsh economic conditions or local conditions but it’s an interesting juxtaposition with the evident liveliness of the art scene.

Old Town also has lots of restaurants and bars and a Saturday morning market. And it has art. As in the Centro area further north, here, too, are a cluster of galleries and shops selling contemporary and Mexican folk art. This area also has an Art Walk, every second Friday, centred on Basillio Badillo Boulevard, but it ends the first week in April. So, we strolled around the area without the benefit of a map, trying to find the galleries hidden on shady streets, as well as those out in full view in the blaze of sun.

Galeria Contempo is one of the newest, and largest, spaces on the South Side. The work here is eclectic, comprising abstract painting and figurative bronze sculpture.

And the space is wonderful, two storeys with a wraparound balcony on the second floor, perfect for plants and sculpture.

Galeria Dante bills itself as the largest gallery in PV; the first two times we came by, it was closed; we finally we able to see it on Monday.

The space occupies almost an entire block and consists of several rooms and some outdoor areas, every inch of which, it seems, is packed with art. Paintings and sculpture, mostly, and very colourful. The nicest space is the outdoor sculpture garden, with a variety of figurative bronzes and a lovely fish pond sans fish.

The problem with many of the galleries here is the same problem I found with almost every shop I entered in Turkey – horror vacui! Fear of vacant space – seemingly, everything in the place must be on display. It’s hard to concentrate on any one thing because everything else impinges on one’s consciousness – there’s simply too much stuff!

However, even given that problem, this gallery is an enjoyable experience with the grand variety of art on display, some of it excellent.

We spend an interesting bit of time in the Jose Marca Studio and Gallery on Lazaro Cardenas. Jose was kind enough to show us around his studio space and explain the artistic philosophy behind his neo-expressionist primitivism, telling us that early on in his career other artists and galleries had told him that his work was “good for nothing”. I guess he’s proven them wrong, in that he’s been doing his thing in PV for over twenty-five years and looks at least 15 years younger than his 70.

His good for nothing art has been good for him.

Galeria Puerco Azul features folk art; it used to be a family house and the place is huge, with many rooms full of sculpture, jewellery, painting, and other objets d’art.

They also have a few paintings of archangels done by Peruvian artists – I was really tempted by one of a sword-wielding Michael … still thinking about it.

We also visited several shops which sold masks of all sorts, wooden, beaded (a parrot-headed one was especially cool), papier mache, and more coil pottery.

Puerto Vallarta: if you did nothing but go to the beach and walk the malecon, you’d have one kind of experience – just like anywhere in the world, really, sun, sand, sea – but two blocks off the strip and away from the water, there’s a whole much more interesting world out there. This city is moving up our “Place to Stay in the Sun When We’re Old” list fast, for several reasons: it’s beautiful, it’s on the ocean, the climate in winter is fantastic, it’s got a lively cultural scene and lots of artists;

it has a big English-speaking community and most of the locals speak English well enough (this is a plus and minus; I wanted to improve my Spanish but, whenever I speak it, the local respondent speaks back in English, making me think that my accent is execrable! However, I continue to persist); it is drivable from Vancouver (we could bring the dog and cat with us).

See more pics here.

For more information, click on the links below:

Paradise Community Center

Galeria Contempo

Galleria Dante

South Side Shuffle

Jose Marco

Art scene in PV

Puerto Vallarta nights: Dancing and Art Walking

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Traditional Mexican dance demonstrations are held twice a week in Puerto Vallarta, Sunday nights at Los Arcos small amphitheatre on the Malecon and Friday nights at the park in the South End. Sunday was a beautiful day and glorious cloudless evening; the crowd on the Malecon was thick as we wove our way towards the amphitheatre.

The place was packed and the only spot where we could see the dancers was behind the stage – less than optimal …

We watched a flamenco-like version of Ravel’s Bolero and a couple of regional dances by a troupe of brightly-clad and beautiful people before crossing the street to the main square where a competing crowd of folks danced in front of the bandstand to recorded Glenn Gould big band music.

Sitting in between these two gave us a somewhat schizophrenic musical experience. The church of Our Lady of Puerto Vallarta, with its beautiful silver crown, glowed against the sky as the night darkened.

The tiny dog you can see in the shadows below was quietly waiting for its master while the Easter Sunday mass progressed.

Both Ty and I were sick for a couple of days; after fighting off a cold, we headed back out to the beach, frolicing in the high waves and enjoying the people-watching.

Wednesday night saw us out on the streets of centro again for the weekly Art Walk, a PV staple for the last fifteen years. Since we didn’t have a map of the walk, we asked in a few local restaurants if they knew where the Art Walk was; although it’s been going for such a long time, none of them did … sigh.

We did eventually find one of the galleries and from there, with map in hand, we were able to make our way around to almost all of the participating galleries. PV’s contemporary art scene is apparently second only to Mexico City’s but this night there weren’t too many people out, possibly because it’s nearing the end of the season here.

We saw some beautiful Mata Ortiz pottery at the Galeria de Ollas. Each of these exquisite pieces is hand built from coils (no wheels are used) and painted freehand – the detail is incredible. Just down the street at the Galeria Serendipity, the collection is eclectic, with surrealist painting, bronze sculpture, and folk art co-existing.

The weary looking gallery owner welcomed us effusively, happy that someone had seen fit to cross his doorway on a quiet night. Around the corner at the Galeria Colibri, specialising in Mexican folk art, we did break down and buy two painted coconut masks from their vast selection (although I’m not sure where in our bags they’re going to fit).

From there we followed the small crowd to Arte 550, the gallery and studio space of Patricia Gawle and Kathleen Carillo, two women who are a going concern.

They paint and sculpt, run a B&B and “art experience” workshops and retreats, and offer lessons in their studio. I loved their space – it’s big enough to have separate work and display areas with a largish open courtyard at the back.

The biggest and most diverse collection of art is housed at the Corsica Gallery, a vast complex of bronze figurative sculpture and surrealist painting, some of it soft-core-like images of young girls with their panties exposed a la a mid 20th century European painter whose name (beginning with a “B”) escapes me at the moment. While the painting did not appeal, some of the bronze sculptures were excellent and what a fantastic display space.

Across the street, at the Omar Alonso, abstract paintings co-exist with an interesting installation of bricks and water, with which we were encouraged to interact. I obliged, making a small inukshuk as my contribution to the PV art scene.

Our final stop on the Walk was the Galeria Whitlow, the showroom and studio of self-taught painter Michael Whitlow, orginally from California and now resident in PV.

He specialises in photo-realist still lives, framed and lit enticingly, and also carries the work of other realist painters; David was kind enough to chat to us about the PV scene and how he came to be there.

After a few hours of art, the stomach was rumbling and we rolled into Pipi’s for what turned out to be the most enormous burritos I have ever seen. I couldn’t do more than nibble on the corner of mine like a mouse; we packed them home for lunch later.

Walking back along the Malecon was like being in some other world; while the streets two blocks away were quiet and laid back, with art, artists, and good food, the boardwalk was absolutely packed with vacationers in a scene that could have been anywhere … Waikiki Beach came to mind.

See more pics here.

Puerto Vallarta: Beaches and Art

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We made it to Puerto Vallarta on Tuesday without any trouble (other than the hours of waiting around at the airports) and were sitting on the balcony of our condo in the Old Town, cervesas in hand, by 7 pm. This place, a nicely decorated one bedroom in the Brisas del Mar complex one block off Los Muertos beach in the south end of PV, is beautiful and perfect for us, much more comfortable than the colonial house in Guanajuato.

The weather has been spectacular since we got here, high 20s and sunny, and we’ve walked the Malecon, hit the beach, and visited the Hacienda Mosaico, an artist’s retreat and B&B near the Hotel Zone in the north of town.

Puerto Vallarta is one of the favoured destinations for west coast Canadian and American tourists, often for a short week-long fun in the sun vacation; however, I’ve never been here before. I didn’t really have any particular image in mind but I didn’t realise that the city would be so large or so built up. Apparently, the population is around 350,000 and the beaches along Banderas Bay are chockablock full of hotels, restaurants, condos, stores (big box and all), and high rises. The Old Town where we’re staying is sometimes referred to as the Zona Romantica (I’ve got no idea why) or the South End and is a lively area with an eclectic mixture of people and entertainment options.

The sculpture and other public art along the one mile long malecon (or oceanfront boardwalk) is great – lots of gigantic bronze statues with which everyone enjoys interacting. And of course Ty had to climb to the top of one of them and throw his arms and legs out as I was yelling at him to get down …

A temporary exhibit of painted wooden boats is also installed here.

Local people have various ingenious ways to express themselves creatively and garner tips – sand sculpture, imitation statues with which one can take pictures, and, most impressively, acrobatics by a group of local Indians who descend (wihtout harnesses) flying from a pole while their colleague plays the flute.

There are also many sea birds here, including lots of pelicans, one of which gave me the hairy eyeball.

The two weeks before and after Easter are traditionally PV’s busiest time and the city is packed with vacationers from around Mexico, the States, and Canada. Yesterday we spent the day at the Lido Beach Club near our place; after a quiet morning, by noon the entire beach was full of people frolicing in the large, and sometimes enormous, waves pounding the shoreline – fabulous!

This morning we took the bus north, past the Sheraton, to visit Sam, the artist owner of Hacienda Mosaico, an artists’ retreat and B&B that also hosts various artmaking workshops during the tourist (winter) season.

She had just finished hosting her last group for the year and was kind enough to show us around the place. The Hacienda is lovely, full of art of all kinds (mosaic, glass, painting, sculpture, jewellery), and has seven double rooms for guests, both indoor and outdoor workshop areas, lovely gardens, and a beautiful pool. It would certainly be a fabulous place to be creative!

For more info on Hacienda Mosaico, click here.

For more info on PV’s Malecon sculpture, click here.

For more pictures, click here and here.