CASA TLACUACHE
bringing our land to life,
and life to our land through
art, ecology & leyendas
un proyecto de
Ricardo Alberto Ramirez Garcia-Rojas y
Marcelo Alejandro Ramirez Garcia-Rojas
PARTICIPATING ARTISITS:
Selina Gamez
Marcelo Ramirez Garcia-Rojas
Ricardo Ramirez Garcia-Rojas
UTRGV School of Fine Arts, Project Faculty Advisor: Raheleh Filsoofi
Dimensions: 6”x6”x6”; 4”x5”1”; 4”x5”1”; 4”x4”x4”; 3.5”x3.5”x3.5”
Materials: Clay isolated from Rio Grande River mud.
Techniques: Wet and dry clay sifting, sharing, wheel, relief tile, slabs, donating all art for community justice
RIO GRANDE RIVER CLAY POTTERY
Fighting the Border Wall at our National Butterfly Center
This submission serves as the base technique from which our proposed project outlined in submission 5.
Ricardo had the privilege of working in the ceramics studio with Professor Raheleh Filsoofi. We turned the back of the UTRGV Ceramics Studio into a small soil laboratory. We tested different techniques for isolating clay from locally harvested soil until we landed on a plasticity ready for manipulation. The native clay was distributed among the ceramics class and 5 pieces were made to be auctioned
Our pieces raised more than $500 for the National Butterfly Center to combat the United States Border Wall ripping through our native habitat.
The goals of this project were to get locally harvested clay into the hands of artists using ceramics as a medium, to teach the technique of isolating clay from soil to artists so that we do not have to rely on markets for our clay but on the earth that gives us life for our artistic medium, and ultimately this project’s goal to help the National Butterfly Center retain its autonomy against the latest installment of the United States Border Wall that is ripping through the remaining 4% of our native habitat.
This project highlights the medium and techniques that we want to employ when creating Casa Tlacuache. We want to use clay isolated from our native land because the legend of “El Tlacuache y El Fuego” comes right from this very land. Love, sacrifice, perseverance, and tenacity — these were lessons handed down to us from this land. We want to use this same land to keep telling these stories, keeping the legend
Clay is a wonderfully abundant naturally resource that can be widely applied in ecological earthwork construction. Soil is comprised of three main components -- sand, silt, and clay. Clay is the most weathered form of earth rocks. Particles that are between 0.06 mm and 2 mm in diameter are classified as sand, as silt if it is between 0.002 mm and 0.06 mm, and as clay if the particle diameter is <0.002 mm.