Papel picado
Colorful* papel picado banners decorate the historic market square in San Antonio. This Mexican folk art is traditionally chiseled from sheets of tissue paper, but plastic versions are becoming more common.
Market Square
San Antonio, Texas
photographed 5.20.2016
*Well, they’d be colorful if this were a color image.
Posted on June 2, 2016, in Photography and tagged 365 photo project, black and white photography, Leica, Market Square, melinda green harvey, monochrome, one day one image, papel picado, photo a day, photography, postaday, san antonio, san antonio texas, texas. Bookmark the permalink. 20 Comments.
One Day | One Image 
Interesting. Glad they switched I think.
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The plastic ones make a nice swishing sound in the breeze, but I’m sort of a traditionalist about some things, and like the tissue paper ones better.
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I especially like the cutout around the bell that goes with the cutout paper.
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Thanks, Linda. It took me two visits to get the shot – the first day was too breezy and the cutouts were blowing around too much.
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Maybe you should have put some color film in your Leica 😉
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I didn’t even THINK of doing that!! Maybe I need to go back – I know where the store that sells film is, after all.
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Hate the plastic ones. I have some hand cut ones from a handcraft market in Arizona. A lady from Mexico was selling them for Día de Muertos.They are stunning works of art.
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I like the paper ones better, too. A long time ago, I went to a workshop on hand-cutting them, taught by a Texas artist named Carmen Lomas Garza; it was very complicated, but interesting.
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And the precision! That would’ve been fun. I need to look up the name of the artist as now you say Texas, I am wondering if it was someone from Mexico.
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The woman who taught the workshop I went to is Carmen Lomas Garza – check out her cutout work here: http://carmenlomasgarza.com/artwork/cutouts/ Her paintings are excellent, too.
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Thanks Melinda. She has a wonderful gift! I thought it may have been the lady I bought mine from by seeing her prices, I can discount that theory immediately!
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The USPS replied to my tweet from this blog post – just today they issued papel picado stamps! http://1.usa.gov/1TNoW7a
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Wow! That is so cool. They are totally on the ball!
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It was the second coolest thing that ever happened to me on Twitter!
The first coolest was a couple of months ago, when I spent a week titling my photos with lines from Bruce Cockburn songs (he’s my very favorite) and one day his manager liked one of the tweets.
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Wow! That really is cool. VERY cool!
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Also, I keep forgetting to mention that in your profile picture, you look exactly like my friend Beverly.
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My lost half sister, perhaps? 😊
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Great to see the names of the artists on the site.
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I appreciated that, too. Also: I ordered some of those stamps. If you’ll email me your address I’ll send you some of them…even though they wouldn’t be particularly useful in Australia for mail, but they’d at least be nice to look at! (melindagharvey@gmail.com)
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Wow, thanks Melinda! That would be very kind of you!
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