Cosas: Folk Art Travels in Mexico

Love and friendship, art and craft, language and culture are the subjects of this look back at one woman's experiences in Mexico over a period of twenty years.

What first propels Linda Grant Niemann south are the migrants she encounters in her job as a railroad brakeman in the Southwest. She decides to learn Spanish, and in Mexico she soon meets some surprising kindred spirits. An admirer of craft and expertise, Niemann seeks out individual artists who make exquisite things--Otomi papermakers, the families who produce the famous ceramics of Mata Ortiz, the man in Michoacán who knows how to fashion full-size jaguar thrones in bent cane.

Some of her searches lead her to tiny villages and to artists who seldom get to meet their own fans. Niemann wonders if she is experiencing an ordinary shopaholic's obsession or if this is something more. The something more reveals itself as the connection of one artist to another.