|
Feature Article
Master weaver Loida Mejia special guest artist
At the 2006 Santa Fe International Folk Art Market
© 2006 By Charlotte Meares; Photography © 2005 Lorran Meares
|
 |
| Loida Mejia was born 26 years ago in the Darién Rainforest of Panamá and was reared in a traditional Wounaan village lifestyle with six sisters and two brothers. Her elementary school education was required, but she has carried her value of education over to her three daughters—the youngest now two —believing that it is important her girls surpass their mother’s knowledge and experiences, and not only at weaving. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Were her daughters to match or exceed her skills, they, too, would be extraordinary artists as well. For Loida is a master weaver of the highly sought-after fine, chunga-palm baskets that the Wounaan call hösig di.
|
|
 |
|
Many Wounaan girls, and their neighboring Emberá preteens, learned how to weave early-style tourist-grade or utilitarian baskets from their mothers or aunts. But slightly more than 13 years ago, Loida says, she was somehow motivated to teach herself. That was a fortuitous inspiration, as today she is among a handful of Wounaan weavers whose dedication to excellence earned their rise to the status of master.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Whether trained or instinctive, her keen eye for the creative inclusion of negative, or white, space sets Loida’s baskets apart from those of her sisters, cousins and friends. Ever since Wounaan basketry took the giant leap from depicting simple, crude motifs to the pervasive use of intricate cultural designs enveloping virtually all available space, weavers have created mental mazes for themselves. Indeed, many basket designs are today so complex and intertwined that keeping the stich-by-stitch ramblings of birds, flowers and butterflies in check is a daunting task. Some rainforest cacophanies, while awesome and desirable for their sheer exhaustive execution and exhilarating, wild abandon, may leave a few collectors whose passion is clarity reeling for a breath of fresh air. |
|
_1.jpg) |
Loida’s executions are just that—as clean and sculpural as a bouquet of lilies. Her sophisticated control of negative space is perfectly complemented by her lily-like and hummingbird stylizations. In one of her works, she contrasts the natural symbols of her world with the spiritual—the geometric motifs that are ritualistic to Wounaan body painting…injunctions long ago from their Creator to commemorate its all-pervasive presence. While most geometric designs are ubiquitous—such as the so-called “Greek key,” Wounaan motifs are also reminiscent of pre-Columbian textiles and rock art, which may have had subtle and profound influences over time.
|
|
|
 |
Loida executes her floral stylizations using a highly controlled, fine, even silk-stitch in her favorite shades of rose, plum, aubergine, violet, blue, pollen and green.
|
|
|
.jpg) |
|
Bottom detail of hummingbird basket | |
|
 |
| This side detail demonstrates Loida Mejia's command of shape, form, and space. Her uncluttered motifs reflect an innate sense of design, and her evenly sized and spaced coils result from practice and development of techniques that she has passed along to other weavers. These skills and technical expertise garnered her the 2005 First Place Award in the category of Pictorial Rainforest Baskets. |
|
|
 |
|
Side Detail
|
|
|
 |
|
Detail of floral and hummingbird elements
|
|
|
 |
|
Mejia is the indisputable master of animated birds in flight. | |
|
|
 |
|
|
Visiting Loida in her village home, we easily identify the myriad uses of her basket income. Though her palm thatched-roof hut is open and breezy in traditional style, she is meticulous and noticeably influenced by modernity. On a far “wall” a stainless steel double sink with chrome faucets (water is stream-gravity fed by PVC pipe from a nearby mountain stream) makes her meal cleanup easier. A full-size kitchen table draped with a perky red oilcloth covering and four wooden chairs supplant sitting on the floor or ledge. A look around reveals a host of small urban-type amenities. Her substantial contribution to the family income—her husband is an accomplished cocobolo wood sculptor—also helps to provide schoolbooks for her children and travel money to visit family members in other villages or in far-away Panamá City.
|
|
|
.jpg) |
|
|
| "It will be about this big in diameter when I'm finished," says Loida of the basket after the first year's work. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
| Several months' pregnant, Loida says that she plans to take only about six weeks' break from weaving. Then her young daughters will learn how to help her care for their sibling. |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Loida proudly shows off her new daughter. |
|
|
 |
|
| "I'm almost at the half-way point," she says. |
|
Weaving fine baskets has become the single greatest economic transformer of the Wounaan culture, enabling families to remain in their villages (so long as it is safe enough from Colombian guerilla invasions) and maintain their cultural life ways as long as possible. So much has it altered the income base of many families, that weavers now request propane-fueled, floor-standing lanterns to extend the weaving hours. It has been our expressed belief that while helping to support a thriving cottage industry is our responsibility, the introduction of high candle-power invasions into the night may do much to destroy family life as the Wounaan now know it.
But few communities on earth—regardless of how remote—wholly sustain themselves today without at least some trade with the world outside. Money is one bridge between worlds. For Loida, only childbirth briefly suspended her work on the masterpiece that you can see featured in NATIVE DESIGN: A Journey Through the Darién Rainforest, the 2005 world-premiere exhibition of Wounaan hösig di basketry at the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum. The exhibition was curated by Lorran and Charlotte Meares.
Somehow—perhaps because she does not (yet) have to drive children to dance lessons or soccer practice—Loida has managed her time so that she also gives back to her community, and others. Not only does she coach and empower weavers to create more valuable art work, but she also serves as a high-ranking elected officer on the tribe’s Wounaan Regional Congreso.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
