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Many of Mexico's paper mache artists work with a simple, age-old recipe of torn strips of discarded paper, soaked in a soup of flour and water. The recipe is simply two parts water to one part flour, whisked until it is the consistency of pancake batter. Artists soak the bits of paper in this goopy paste until the paper is droopy and wet. Depending on the object to be made, a mask for example, the artist uses a ceramic mold and presses multiple small, saturated strips of paper into the greased mold. The strips are applied over-lapping each other and smoothed down to form a packed layer. The usual process is three layers of pressed paper, allowing 24 hours of drying time between each.
When it's completely dry, the artist removes the paper mache mask from the mold. Now it is ready for painting. First step is to paint the exterior with a white primer. Then, using colorful acrylic paints, the paper mache artist applies the creative details and facial expression to the mask. The last step is to apply a transparent, protective coat of varnish or to spray it with a glossy coat of polyurethane.
How strong is paper mache? The finished sculpture is tough, rigid and lightweight, as if it were made of a durable plastic.
A Day of the Dead celebration is not complete without the addition of colorfully-painted paper mache skulls, dangly skeletons with moveable arms and legs and little cardboard coffins with a skull that peeks out when a string is pulled. And on any day of the year, no Mexican birthday party is complete without a paper mache piñata. Shaped like an animal, clown or a big star, the hollow figures are decorated with colorful crepe paper and filled with candy, fruit and other prizes for the blindfolded children who compete at breaking open the piñata.
Among the acclaimed paper mache artists of modern Mexico are:
" Betzabe Orozco Segoviano, working from the Belfina Art Studio in Leon. Her sister, Edith, and their mother Delfina are also makers of imaginative paper mache sculptures. Betzabe's lifelike figures, such as the skeleton grandmother seated on a chair on our website, are made with a paper mache body, dressed in woven fabric clothing.
" Pedro Hernandez Cruz in San Miguel de Allende has a long-established workshop producing a wide array of day of the dead and alebrije figures, rattles, hearts with wings, children's toys, and those beautifully hand-painted skull masks that you see here on our webpage.
" Francisco de Jesús Juárez Mújica and his wife Lourdes Alhondiga from Guanajuato city make the most beautiful, detailed and colorful paper mache Catrina dolls I've yet to see. We have several of them on our website, along with Francisco's skulls, coffin boxes and an amazing Alebrije creature.