In recent days, the program Cada Día, of the state channel TV4Guanajuato, conducted an interview with the teacher Agapito Jiménez, who has oficially been a teacher of Mexican Traditional Weaving at the Instituto Allende. 

Don Agapito Jiménez Rodríguez was born in 1949, in a community called El Palmarito, near Pozos, in the municipality of San Luis de la Paz. From the age of six, Agapito began to help in the work in the fields, in harvest, weeding plots, in addition to taking care of the sheep. He did not like taking care of animals, so he went to work elsewhere. One fine day, when he was nine years old, he decided to leave his home to come and live in San Miguel de Allende with his grandparents, who lived on 20 de Enero Street, in Colonia San Antonio. One of his uncles worked at Instituto Allende as a gardener and told him that they were looking for young people who would like to learn weaving and Agapito decided to give it a try, it was the year 1964.

   He started by choosing wool, separating the short and dirty wool. At first they did not pay him and his only gain was learning. As he was a quick learner, they began to teach him how to wash wool, dry it and prepare it for carding. The carding process was taught to him by Don Ángel Chavarría, a man in his eighties, and by Don Miguel Licea, who was in his seventies. Then they started paying him. Then he began to spin with the distaff, to finally make the skein. Later he became an assistant to Don Porfirio López, who was the textile dyeer. He then learned to dye wool to make different color combinations. 

   ““The master weavers encouraged me to draw: I made a first cover called Fish. Each of the teachers taught me for fifteen minutes. It was how I started to get practice. I practiced drawing hundreds of times to memorize it and be able to repeat it on several mats. I remember Don Enrique Fernández Martínez, founder of the Instituto, who would arrive and stop at a corner of the workshop; He would stay watching everyone and, if he saw something, he would tell the person in charge of the staff and tell him what he wanted to see of each of the things he observed. His wife, Mrs. Nell Harris, was very energetic, but I later learned a lot from her about how to work. I was an assistant to Mr. Stirling Dickinson, who was the first director of the Instituto Allende, and he gave me the opportunity to grow. He always used, in a nutshell, to say what he expected of each person. He said to me: “Never be late, never drink at work, never say no and never miss work. And in all the years that I have worked at the Instituto, I never did any of that.

  Students from all over the world come year after year to the Instituto Allende to take weaving classes with Don Agapito, who has become an icon of traditional Mexican weaving in San Miguel de Allende.  

From the 24 to the 30th of March, 2021, the Instituto Allende hosted in its facilities an exhibition of artisan masks, organized by the San Miguel de Allende Youth Institute. The mouth covers were embroidered and painted by 28 young artists from San Miguel, from a call launched by the Institute of Youth to participate in a contest, whose winner obtained a prize of four thousand pesos in cash. The main topics that were addressed were the traditions, history, culture and architecture of San Miguel, which were captured by young people in their masks through different techniques ranging from embroidery to acrylic painting, some representing the iconic Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, the colorful and quirky mojigangas, the stars of the Alborada, the tradition of the bulls, or the portrait of the hero of Independence, born in our city, Don Ignacio de Allende and Unzaga, among many other icons of the culture and traditions of San Miguel. The mask has become a symbol of the era of pandemic that we are living, to which we must adapt to be able to cope with it in the best possible way and the call of the Youth Institute is aimed at the dissemination of its use for the protection of health.

The Instituto Allende opened its doors to support, with this event, the youth of San Miguel de Allende and spread the local culture and invites the entire public to visit this exhibition and meet the young local talent.  

 

Would you like to know how far you are able to go with your creativity? Would you like to learn to express your feelings and emotions through art? Your option is the Degree in Visual Arts offered by the Instituto Allende, with 71 years of experience teaching this degree, incorporated to the University of Guanajuato. The curriculum includes subjects such as Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Printmaking, Photography, Digital Art, Art History, Art and Psychology, Color Theory and Composition and all the subjects necessary for your artistic, professional and human development. 

You can study in an environment of peace and tranquility, surrounded by beautiful gardens, framed by the multiculturalism that San Miguel de Allende offers you, a city rich in history, culture, art, architecture and traditions. Our teachers are professionals who have degrees, masters and even doctorates in different areas of art, and they will take you by the hand through the different paths of the visual arts. 

"In art there is a very large field, and there is something that stirs the soul and allows you to do whatever you want," says Ram Espinoza Ramírez, a young man from Chile, who graduated from the Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Instituto Allende. Ram considers that he has made the most of the professors at the Instituto Allende, who helped him a lot in the pictorial aspect of drawing. Ram is ready to work as a freelance artist and even in any company that is related to the art industry. 

Our Bachelor of Visual Arts is more than a developmental opportunity for the creative person. Be part of our team and discover your artistic possibilities. Our next entrance exam is on April 23, 2021. We start classes on August 9.