Nacimiento Artists:
Agustín Cruz Tinoco
Josefina Aguilar
Luis Valencia
Manuel Jiménez
Francisco Sosa Gutiérrez
Octaviano Santiago
Angélica Vázquez Cruz works clay at her home in Atzompa, the pottery town made famous by Teodora Blanco Núñez. One might say that Angélica works in the same style as Teodora, but her creations are strictly her own. Her grotto-like Nativity is peopled with individuals, animals, flowers and cacti, small figures exquisitely done. The Biblical characters may be dressed in traditional garb, but the robes are decorated with flowers and other tiny designs. In her second Nativity we see two Archangels, San Rafael, who holds a fish, and San Gabriel, with a trumpet in one hand and a sword in the other, watching over the traditional participants in the Nativity scene. Note that here, too, the Three Kings ride an elephant, a horse, and a camel and seem to be carrying containers that may hold gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (purchased from the artist, March, 1998)
Each of the nacimientos we have seen here is a distinctive, personal creation, clearly influenced by the artist’s surroundings and by the religious knowledge he/she has acquired. Jeanette Winters, on the dust jacket of a delightful children’s book about Josefina Aguilar, writes: “An artist works in her sunny patio in Mexico. She looks out at the world and makes what she sees from soft clay…” In an interview with Lois Wasserspring, author of Oaxacan Ceramics, Angélica Vázquez says, “We are surrounded by a lot of magic, in the birds and all of the animals. Everything exists for something. I love to capture the folklore in clay”.


Nacimiento Bibliography

Barbash, Shepard. Oaxacan Woodcarving. The Magic in the Trees. Photography
by Vicki Ragan. (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993).

Grandes Maestros del Arte Popular Mexicano. (México: Fomento Cultural Banamex A.C., octubre 1998)

Nacimientos Mexicanos. (México: Fundación Cultural Serfin, octubre 1994)

Nacimientos Mexicanos – Grandes Maestros del Arte Popular. (México: Fomento Cultural Banamex, A.C., no date, c. 2000)

Wasserspring, Lois. Oaxacan Ceramics – Traditional Folk Art by Oaxacan Women.
Photographs by Vicki Ragan. (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000). p. 71.

Winter, Jeanette. Josefina. (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1996).
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