Oftentimes, grandchildren, children, parents, and grandparents live together in a single home. Today children may learn from their parents or grandparents the art of carving copalillo wood using a machete and knife. The hard wood of the copal tree, native only to Oaxaca, lends itself to their carving process. The sculpting begins with the harsh, indelicate work of a machete and progresses to the intricate shaping accomplished with a carefully wielded knife. Working with the natural form of the wood, carvers create angelic figurines or native animals like armadillos and iguanas.
Oaxacan textiles are almost exclusively the art of Zapotec women.
In some villages, newborn girls are given parts of a loom as a symbol for their future. Their process for creating textiles, like the process for creating woodcarvings, is an old technique that has been passed down through the generations. Modern technologies, such as synthetic dyes, are not foreign to the weavers, but may be blended with their old technologies, including hand-combing and manually spinning the wool. Most of their dyes are natural dyes made from fruits, flowers, insects, and other elements from the land. Stairstepping and other repeated motifs are characteristic of their work.