Beginnings and blades

I came to San Miguel de Allende with all kinds of plans. Explore the city, learn Spanish, meet people, find other weavers, get to know Mexico.

What actually happened: all the work I’d been too busy to get to during the summer landed on me like a ton of bricks. So I spent a lot of my first month working 12-14 hour days.

However, I did figure out the important bits: how to get around, how to buy food, where to find enticing restaurants, and most importantly, where to find a powerlifting gym. (Because working a 12-hour day means you still have 4 hours to get to the gym and do your workout. #noexcuses )

And I found some beautiful artisan work. I bought these Damascan steel knives at a small weekly market:

They’re both quite interesting. With the double-edged knife, the blank was folded symmetrically so that the left and right sides of the blade would be mirror images of each other, which is both beautiful and unusual.

The half-moon knife, which is called a mezquino, is for chopping up meat that’s cooking in a wok-like pan. From my point of view, however, the interesting part is that the Damascan steel patterning isn’t a water pattern, as most of them are. Instead, it’s concentric circles, as you can see more clearly in this closeup. (Click to see the larger image; the patterns are truly beautiful up close.)

To get this unique patterning, Marcelo made the knife from a motorcycle chain. The concentric circles are the links of the chain. Amazing.

I cannot tell you how much I love these knives. I love artisan work, I love innovative designs and patterns, and I love people with a passion for craft. I have a particular soft spot for Damascan steel – which, if you’re not familiar with it, is steel that’s been hammered flat, then heated and folded, over and over until it’s composed of many very thin layers. Think of it as a metal croissant. (Now there’s an image!)

Damascan steel used to be legendary for making the keenest and best-quality swords. I don’t know about that, but I find the patterning beautiful and envy the skills and labor that goes into it. In another life, I’d love to be a maker of Damascan steel.

The really amazing part, though, is Marcelo has agreed to make me a set of Damascan steel kitchen knives! A chef’s knife, a 5″ utility knife, and a paring knife. We’re currently discussing material for the handles. He’s got some beautiful woods, black horn, and…mammoth molars.

Slices from mammoth molars are flat-out gorgeous. Here’s a pic (from Wikimedia Commons) of a cross-section of mammoth molar:

For a girl who loves complex patterning, this is like moth to flame. I’m meeting with him on Saturday to discuss the knives, costs, and materials. I’m not sure I can afford mammoth molar handles, but hoo boy!

Regardless, I’m delighted to be getting such beautiful kitchen tools. I cook a lot and this will make for wonderful memories of my trip to Mexico, every time I’m in the kitchen.

But enough rhapsodizing about knives.

In the course of the past month, I’ve realized two things. The first is that I could live pretty well in San Miguel de Allende. The second is that I would rather live in California. I don’t have a ton of interest in Mexico and Mexican culture; if I were to move to Mexico, I would probably feel most comfortable living in “Americatown” – i.e., places where lots of American expats/immigrants live. This doesn’t seem like a good reason to move to Mexico. So I will likely go back to California and stay there for a while, at least.

Meanwhile, I have been making progress on Pilgrimage. I’ve decided that it won’t be five separate pieces, for practical reasons. The pieces are part of a group, and don’t have their full impact without the rest of the group. And it would be hard to get all five pieces into a show. So it’s much better to do five smaller pieces and weld them together into a single large piece.

Here’s what I’m currently envisioning for Pilgrimage:

1. Shattered – a screaming face shattering, with magenta coming out of the cracks in the face.
2. Threshold – a gate (perhaps a door) between the normal world and the spirit world. There might be a guardian at the gate – not sure yet. Magenta light flows through the path leading through the door, guiding the way.
3. Wandering – this one isn’t really set yet. I’m envisioning a squiggly spiral maze with a circular chamber at the center, and a face that starts melting progressively (think “fun-house mirror”) as it passes through the maze. Still a lot of thinking and brainstorming to do on this.
4. Metamorphosis – the face melted, almost into a puddle, perhaps in a crucible, glowing magenta.
5. The Way Home – the face, now at peace, gently glowing with magenta light. The energy has been integrated and the spirit has found its way home.

I’ve been working with DALL-E (the ChatGPT image generator) to come up with conceptual images for the first and last pieces. There is still much work to be done in refining, planning, and designing the images – and this may all change tomorrow, I’m still brainstorming – but for today, here is the template for Shattered:

And here is the image for the final piece:

There is still much work to do, and I’m confident that this will all change as I work further at forging the concepts into finished work, but it’s a start.

I have much more to say, and many interesting discoveries to share, but I also want to get to bed. More later, hopefully, now that the work logjam’s been cleared.