The Art of Craft is a series about craftsmen whose work rises to the level of art.
On a summer day in 2018, Blanka Amezkua arrived in San Salvador Huixcolotla. The southeastern Mexican town is known as the birthplace of papel picado — intricately cut, colorful tissue-paper banners popular at Mexican festivals — and Amezkua arrived hoping to learn the hundreds of years old method for doing this. He flagged down a cab and asked the driver if he happened to know someone who made delicate paper flags. The man took him to his brother, Don Rene Mendoza, who, by chance, was an expert in trade. After talking with Amezkua for over five hours, Mendoza agreed to pass on the labor tradition to him.
Papel picado (“punched paper” in Spanish) has its roots in pre-Columbian times, when the Nahuatl Natives of Mexico made dear paper from the bark of mulberry and fig trees, said Marcelo Alejandro Ramirez Garcia-Rojas, the curator of the International Museum of Art and Science in McAllen, Texas. Beginning in the 1500s, he says, “Spanish missionaries became very familiar with pre-Columbian traditions in an effort to combat them and convert local populations,” and practices such as making amate is discouraged or even banned. The Spanish also began importing papel china — thin, tissue-like paper from China, often used to wrap other goods.
This encounter led to the creation of papel picado which is now used to decorate various celebrations in Mexican culture, especially the Day of the Dead, when it is placed around the altars of deceased loved ones . The movement of the paper is said to signal the presence of the dead, and the delicate material symbolizes the ephemerality of life.
Day of the Dead “is my favorite holiday,” said Amezkua, 53. Born in Mexico, he moved to California with his parents when he was 5 and then returned to Mexico at age 10, spending most of his adolescence with his grandparents and many aunts in Cuernavaca, a city about four hours’ drive west of San Salvador Huixcolotla. (His parents remained in California, where they worked on cotton farms.) Every Saturday, Amezkua avoided chores by accompanying his grandfather to the local market. As she buys food for the week, Amezkua browses the labyrinth of vendors selling fruits, textiles or used jars.
Amezkua went on to study painting at California State University, Fresno, but he credits the market with teaching him “all the lessons of installation art.” Holiday decorations and seasonal produce mean “the way the market dresses” well over the course of a year, and many of the items sold are pre-owned. Amezkua’s fascination with repurposed materials is reflected in his multidisciplinary work, which ranges from embroidered tortilla towel in performance art.
Amezkua began incorporating papel picado into her work in 2017 after she and her husband moved to the South Bronx from her native Greece, where they had lived for years. Amezkua spent his early years back in the United States working in “Happiness is…,” a 72-square-foot collage of confetti, streamers and all the Mexican banners from his childhood. He was especially drawn to the cheerful colors of the flags. “I often feel that the expression of color by indigenous communities from any part of the world is a form of resistance,” he said.
The papel picado obsession project started.
A YouTube rabbit hole led him to San Salvador Huixcolotla, where traditional banners, cut by hand, continue to be a mainstay of the local economy — though, like many folk arts, the paper picado is becoming increasingly mass-produced.
Mendoza, the taxi driver’s brother, has been making papel picado for more than 30 years, and he taught Amezkua the hammer-and-chisel techniques that go back generations. He also introduced her to a blacksmith who made her a set of 116 iron chisels to take back to New York.
For a delicate product, papel picado production is remarkably strong. It starts quietly, by drawing a design on a piece of unlined paper and stapling or clipping it to a stack of about 50 pieces of tissue paper. Then, using the top sheet as a guide, Amezkua cuts out the design with his chisels, driving each blade into the stack with a hammer. He usually works out of his apartment — luckily, he says, most of his neighbors are out during the day — or in St. Mary’s Park, a short walk away. When he carves at home, he places moving blankets under a small table to help absorb the force and noise of each blow.
Once the design is complete, Amezkua carefully separates the lacy flags. He uses a dab of diluted Elmer’s glue to secure them to a string stretched across his living room like a clothesline, the banners swaying in the wind as light streams through each hole.
While the final product is beautiful, the process — which can take hours or even days, depending on the size of the project — is time- and labor-intensive. “It’s almost like torture,” Amezkua said. But, he added, it is also meditative: “It does something to your soul. I’m fully aware of all the people who throughout time have created this particular kind of work is different.”
Amezkua takes continuing that lineage seriously. He teaches papel picado workshops through Bronx Community College, and continues to collaborate with Mendoza. Last year, they collaborated on “Hierbitas de saberes/Little Herbs of Knowledge,“a series of large-scale papel picado pieces inspired by “Cruz-Badiano Codex,” a book of indigenous Mexican herbal remedies compiled in 1552; Amezkua made the designs and Mendoza translated them to paper. Now the pair is working on a series of poppies and marigolds to display at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco later this year.
Papel picado may not last, but Amezkua is fascinated by the timeless power of the vessel’s legacy — a living chain that continues through the generations.
“I love the men and women who work to create something that will disappear and disappear,” he said.
