His Excellency the Ambassador of México in Guatemala has confirmed a wonderful event to take place during January 2013, in which my full body of work will be exhibited, including: New Maya Language hand-painted pictographic poster series, jewellery, and dress collection.

The exhibition will be inaugurated with a keynote conference and presentation of my book–New Maya Language on Tuesday January 8, 2013 at the Centro Cultural de México ‘Luis Cardoza y Aragón’, Embassy of México in Guatemala.

This is the perfect celebration of the end of a 5,125 year cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar in 2012, and the beginning of a new one in 2013.

I’m taking a window on the Mayan soul back to Toronto thanks to you and your exemplary talent. What a corner of Paradise you capture with your work! Inspired, unique and accessible (not ‘democratic’. See I listen!)

Thank you –– Ron James

You can learn about his show and up-coming tour here.

La Pintada is an impoverished indigenous community in Copán Ruins, Honduras—an UNESCO World Heritage Maya archaeological site. For two years I was in close contact with the inhabitants of this small village while my family lived in the nearby mountains.

Now in Berkeley, California, I have the chance to spend some time during December and January in this fabulous part of the world. I visited Don Mundo at his humble adobe home and workshop to document his mastery and be able to share his work with the world. Don Mundo is a Maya-chortí stone artisan who sculpts my New Maya Language accessory designs.

You can read more about Don Mundo in my article: Don Mundo–A Maya-chortí Indigenous Stone Carver.

All photographs Tyler Orsburn©. You can follow my husband Tyler on Twitter or Blogspot, or visit his website.

Land reform is taking center stage in northern Honduras. As of August 22, 2011, the Honduran newspaper, El Heraldo, reported 37 murders along the Bajo Aguán River Valley. The problem—a landowner with over 3,000 hectares removed nearly 4,000 families to cultivate and export palm oil.

Land distribution in Honduras isn’t just about pitting the rich against the poor. Seven hours west, along the Guatemalan border, members of the indigenous Maya Ch’orti’ have split into two opposing factions—they can’t agree on how to manage their 30-hectare community parcel. The land in question supports nearly 55 families and sits near the UNESCO World Heritage archeological site of Copán Ruinas.

One Ch’orti’ group, CONIMCH, wants to keep the land intact, while the annex group, CONADIMCH, wants to privatize it. CONIMCH claims that if the land is privatized, it could be sold to non-Maya Ch’orti’ prospectors, thus redirecting food and profits from the community. Tension between the two groups has led people to flee their homes for fear of being murdered. There have been reports of machete and rock-throwing fights.

As a post graduate school initiative I plan to use the Dorothea Lange Fellowship to travel to Copán Ruinas, Honduras. I will embed myself from August to September and document the Maya Ch’orti’ way of life. My objective is to understand how indigenous land reform can mutate from one philosophy to another and how that affects food and social survival.

I’m interested in Honduran affairs because I’m half Honduran. My grandfather was born in Copán Ruinas and was the country’s first director of the Honduran Institute of History and Anthropology. In the 1970s he brought archeologists and anthropologists from the United States to help preserve the ancient ruins and to study the Ch’orti’ ethnic group.

You can read more about Tyler’s (my husband) award and Dorothea Lange here.

You can follow Tyler Orsburn on Twitter or Blogspot, or visit his website.

Don Mauro harvesting his maize

“One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind. To live the visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.”

Dorothea Lange was an inspiring woman whose influential social photography and legacy has lasted until our days. Now faculty members, graduate students, or seniors who have been accepted for graduate work at UC Berkeley, like my husband Tyler Orsburn who is the 2012 winner of her prestigious fellowship, can enjoy it:

The fellowship, in memory of one of the most outstanding documentary photographers of the 20th-century, encourages the use of photography (black and white or color) in the scholarly work of any discipline at UC Berkeley.

… Applicants must demonstrate outstanding work in documentary photography and a creative plan for future work.

http://www.berkeley.edu/lange/

Will post the photographs and essay he submitted for judging, about the modern Maya Chortí indigenous peoples living in Copán Ruinas, Honduras, on this blog soon. In the meantime–congratulations my beloved Tyler!

You can read more about Lange’s life here.

You can follow Tyler Orsburn on Twitter or Blogspot, or visit his website.

Written by Paola Torres, Frida Larios’ studio intern.

Being an international student, I felt flattered with my recent experience. As an Adobe Design Achievement Award finalist, I received a ticket to Taipei to attend the ADAA Awards, the Taipei World Design Expo 2011, and the 2011 IDA Congress. Taipei is an amasing city, with gorgeous monuments, a super well-organised transportation system, fabulous people, and of course, exotic food.

Once in Taipei, I had the opportunity to visit the Originality 100 – International Indigenous Cultural And Creative Design Exhibition at the National Taiwan University of the Arts’ Art Museum. This collection exhibited more than 100 pieces of international cross-cultural and domestic aboriginal designs. The designs originated from aboriginal cultures and totems, combining current design concepts and applications.

Mother Tongue exhibition is an INDIGO – the International Indigenous Design Network – project. It is a cross-cultural platform to open discussion around the role of contemporary indigenous design and to encourage collaborative projects that deepen our understanding of people’s culture in our visual world of this 21 century.

The exhibition’s introduction read like this:

Mother Tongue – a rapidly changing concept in a world where growing immigration affects not only the economic and social structure of the host

society, but also its culture and, as such, its language.

27 posters were selected from over 500 by designers from around the world. I felt proud when I contemplated the calligraphy poster design of my boss/mentor/teacher/inspiration, Frida Larios. The description of her Mayan poster, named yal-Child of Mother, read the following way:

The Maya natives of Mesoamerica, in their nearly 2000-year ancient hieroglyphic writing, pictured the “thumbs-up” hand as a symbol of harvesting, completing, and binding. In the case of the word ya-AL (yal), the harvest is a child – the fruits of the womb. In the same way our mother tongue is the product of our upbringing and culture. The flames represent the fire coming out of our mouth when we speak – when we speak with the passion of our native language.

I loved the idea of how designers nowadays are involved in this global culture. The role of designers here is crucial, and it is what will someday make a difference in our rapidly changing world. This exhibition was not just a design exhibition. I felt it was design for the people, for the world, its different cultures, and each others roots. Frida Larios, and the rest of the designers, deal with issues about life itself. It is not easy to understand cultures, especially when such racial differences are affecting our society. This exhibition was about a connection to the earth, about learning to accept diversity, and about respecting what others conceive as their Mother Tongue.

All photographs courtesy of Paola Torres, except were noted.

Fire Portal Tempera on Water-colour Paper

Your beautiful “Shannon+Knut=Fire” has found a great, new home in Chicago’s Gold Coast. The photo doesn’t do your work justice, but I assure you it looks fabulous. Like its creator, it is an inspiration. THANK YOU!

Shannon Kring Buset, Author

You can read my Fire Portal Pictogram Decoding article to find out what the symbol means in the New Maya Language.

La Familia en Londres

Rhoda, her husband and little Zakar own two of my artworks: Family at Home (see image above), which is a New Maya Hieroglyph routed on sustainable forests’ teak wood; and Town on Fire, a tempera painting on 350gsm water colour paper.

The reason Rhoda wanted the Family at Home piece was because she and her family were moving to a new home in London, just as Zakar was about to be born. They wanted something that represented the family and blessed the new home.

I am delighted with her words about my New Maya Language art:

Here are some photos of the pieces – I really really love them. They are my pride and joy and everyone always looks at them when they come – they are not sure what to say but you can see they admire them! Then eventually they ask and I say who they are by and how lovely and unusual they are!

Dr. L. Rhoda Molife, Medical Oncologist and Principal Investigator in the Drug Development Unit at the Royal Marsden Hospital, United Kingdom

Ceramic Vessel With Beans Pendants

Designed by Frida Larios.

Carved by Don Mundo.

Five jade beans on white marble vessel.

Five jade beans on beige swirled limestone vessel.

Photography by Argi Díez Eguskiza.

La Pintada is an indigenous community in the Maya archaeological site of Copán Ruins in Honduras, Central America. I was in close contact with the inhabitants of this small village while me, my husband and son were living at my husband’s mother eco-lodge and natural reserve – Hacienda San Lucas.

Don Damacio is one of the life-long workers from La Pintada who maintains the gardens at Hacienda San Lucas (1 kilometer away from La Pintada). He is the father of Don Mundo – the most talented stone-carver I have ever met. Don Mundo is now able to express his artistry through the carefully sculpted New Maya Language accessories he produces for me. You can really feel the 2000-year Maya heritage running through his veins in his stone works. You come to wonder if artistic talent is something that you inherit or you acquire.

Maya art brings to mind many other art wonders from around the world.  Eighth century Classic Maya stella dedicated to King Ubah Kawil of Copán, for example, are often compared to the sculptural traditions of southeast Asia – like twelfth century’s Angkor Wat, Siam Reab in Cambodia. The Copán series of stellas, which depict important royal events with dates and other details inscribed on them, reflect a strong sense of history – they could also be compared to European works such as the fifteenth century Tapisserie de Bayeux embroidery works.

To look on these pictures carved in the seventh to eighth centuries in the “classic” phase of Maya civilisation is to be confronted with a way of life so remote it almost seems like science fiction – and yet these are not just humans, they are artistically accomplished humans. Details like slender fingers, baskets holding ritual tools, stylised flames and pictograms are executed with calm confidence. And because of that, you can visualise the scene in a darkened temple where a wife tortures herself as her husband holds a torch, then hallucinates in her pain and bleeding… It’s a shocking encounter with a lost world. Rembrandt portrays people we empathise with. The [Mayan] lintels portray people who intimidate and perplex us – and yet this art makes us see the deep humanity of their existence.

Jonathan Jones in ’1000 Artworks To See Before You Die: The Maya’, The Guardian, UK