When my mom and I embarked on our Holland America holiday cruise to the Mexican Riviera, little did I expect to discover a rich and vibrant art scene in the towns we visited. Warm breezes greeted us as we arrived in Cabo at the tip of Baja after two days of calm cruising at sea. Instead of getting caught up in the hustle and bustle of touristy Cabo, we joined a group tour of San Jose del Cabo, about twenty minutes north. This bite-size artist colony is a collective of creatives oozing with bright-colored buildings, pedestrian malls lined with jungle animal sculptures, and boutiques of hand-crafted beadwork figures—so much local talent packed into this little, walkable town.
The beaded artwork intrigued me, and I discovered that it had been passed down for generations by the Huichol, an Indigenous people from Nayarit, Jalisco, and Zacatecas. Each piece represents a spiritual or cultural aspect of their life. First, the artist makes the form from paper mache, wood, or clay. Sometimes, they paint it to determine where to place the beads. A thin layer of beeswax is molded onto the work and is the adhesive for the beads. Using a needle, the artist picks up the beads and gently presses them into the beeswax, creating a mosaic-like pattern. One artist told me her beads came from Czechoslovakia. The process is intricate and time-consuming. I have a new appreciation for the hours and sometimes weeks spent on these meaningful expressions of art.
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