Ceramic Trees of Life: Popular Art from Mexico
One of the most recognizable and beloved of popular Mexican art forms is the Tree of Life, elaborate ceramic constructions depicting stylized trees with diverse human and animal figures perching on their many branches. Trees of Life are "complex hybrids of indigenous and European concepts and customs" and therefore reflect a grand spectrum of cosmologies and historical vignettes. Mexican art specialist Mulryan and her art historian and anthropologist contributors offer a lively history of the Tree of Life from its roots in the reverence for trees expressed by the Maya, Aztec, and Mixtec to the grafting on of Christian beliefs. Mulryan and company also explain the techniques involved in the complex, gravity-defying construction of Trees of Life and profile a contemporary master potter, Heron Martinez Mendoza, but best of all are the gorgeously detailed photographs of Trees of Life from pre-Columbian times to the present.Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved