Rocio Madrazo promotes the art of jewellery as well as traditional art in her gallery Galart. With enthusiasm she talks about the work of two women she represents.
Emilia Castillo is one example of a multimedia artist. Her line of silver jewellery is Mayan- influenced as well as her tableware (hand-hammered salad tossers with copper rope handles), hollowware (high polished pitchers in the shape of a toucan) and sculptures, also brought to a gleaming polish. Born into art, daughter of Lisa and Antonio Castillo (both renowned), she was destined. Castillo has done work for the Vatican, the World Polo Masters trophy and commissions for visiting heads of state.
Based in Taxco, a town her father helped rescue in the fifties with the silver jewellery trade, she continues her work on the ranch where she was raised. Castillo offers a supportive environment for the many assistants she now employs. All work is hand-done. There is education provided for the children of workers and she welcomes anyone with an artistic bent to pursue silversmithing, lapidary work, ceramics or woodworking all of which are used in her extensive lines.
Castillo claims that as a child her toys were all elements in nature and these have been strong influences in her work. She combines silver plate with alabaster, black onyx and malachite and developed a method of fusing inlaid sterling onto porcelain. The results are exquisite tableware of muted blues and greens delicately decorated with raised silver fish or frogs or iguanas lurking over the rim of a large serving bowl in chase of delicate dragonflies.
Gigi Mizrahi Shapiro is another jewellery artist Madrazo is keen to point out. Self-taught and influenced by nature like Castillo, she has perfected the lost wax method of casting jewellery into images from nature frozen into icy sterling silver repetitions. A tree bark casting fashioned into a layered choker that drapes down the throat is a particularly striking example. Bezelled ovals of linear cornhusk patterns as well as shells, chiles, corn and even prawns provide perfect designs for linked bracelets and earrings. But Mizrahi ventures off into more mythical, magical and ritualistic themes she has drawn from primitive roots. With European, mid-eastern roots but Mexican born like Castillo, Mizrahi gleaned from her distant past a line of jewellery repeating Mayan motifs and hieroglyphics revering symbols from pelota games, ancient alphabets and sacred animals.
