By Jesús Ibarra

On Sunday, June 11, 2023, Mr. Rodolfo Fernández Martínez Harris, President of the “Enrique Fernández Martínez” Art Foundation, which subsidizes the Instituto Allende, School of Art and Spanish, passed away.

Don Rodolfo was affectionately known in San Miguel de Allende as "Rudy." He was born on September 25, 1952 and his parents were Mr. Enrique Fernández Martínez and Mrs. Nell Harris, co-founders of Instituto Allende, which opened its doors in 1950, and was a precursor of art and tourism in San Miguel. So Rudy was born and raised in this cultural milieu. Upon the death of his parents, Rudy continued with the school, always promoting art and education, with programs such as the Bachelor of Visual Arts, the G.I. Bill, a program subsidized by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, which grants war veterans scholarships to study at the Instituto, as well as art workshops open to the community. Rudy also created the program known as "Rodarte", whose mission is to bring art to children from rural communities in the municipality of San Miguel de Allende. “I am convinced that the only way to achieve social and economic growth is through quality education”, Rudy used to say.

A man of great generosity, he always helped the people around him, both his family, his friends and his employees, which left him with the affection of everyone who knew him. Rest in peace Mr. Rodolfo Fernández Martínez Harris.

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico - The Instituto Allende, school of visual art in San Miguel de Allende is proud to announce that acclaimed artist Lon Levin will be teaching digital art and AI courses starting this semester. 

Levin is a celebrated artist who has exhibited his work in galleries and museums around the world.

The courses taught by Levin will explore the intersection of technology and art, providing students with a unique opportunity to learn about the latest trends and techniques in digital art and AI. Students will gain hands-on experience with various digital tools and software, allowing them to create compelling works of art that incorporate the latest technology.

"We are thrilled to have Lon Levin teaching at the Instituto Allende," said the school's director, Zara Fernandez. His expertise in digital art and AI will provide our students with a valuable skill set that will serve them well in the modern art world.".

Levin has been an artist for over 30 years and has received numerous awards for his work. He is known for his innovative use of technology in his art, creating works that blur the lines between the physical and digital worlds.

"I am excited to be teaching at the Instituto Allende," said Levin. "I believe that technology can be a powerful tool for artists, and I look forward to sharing my knowledge with the students."

The courses taught by Levin will be open to students of all levels, from beginners to advanced artists. Students will be able to work at their own pace and receive one-on-one instruction from Levin himself.

For more information about the courses taught by Lon Levin at the Instituto de Arte in San Miguel de Allende, please contact the school directly.

More than 46 Artists of the San Antonio Colonia will open their studios, homes and galleries to the city of San Miguel de Allende on Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 am – 5:00 pm on Saturday February 18th and Sunday 19th, 2023. In their studios you will see a broad variety of materials and an eclectic expression of these materials. Paintings are large and small, abstract and figurative. Clay-works and sculpture are varied. Jewelry embraces beautiful beading, recycled and unconventional metal pieces. Photography ranges from traditional to digitally manipulated. You will see mixed media, hand woven textiles, glass mosaics, illustration, photography collage, print-making, and drawing.

5,000 maps HAVE STARTED to be distributed throughout the city and in the Academic office of the Instituto Allende on Ancha de San Antonio #22. And we will also have a digital Map that you can access with our QR code found on our publicity that you can use with any smartphone.

We are also happy to announce that we will have a MyStudio two van circulation map, van services can be reserved at the Instituto Allende and each bracelet per person per day is $200.00 MXN pesos. Vans will be circulating throughout Col. San Antonio and we have identified pick up and drop off spaces. There is an additional Map for those registered for VAN services, we are hoping to make this event more inclusive!

We look forward to seeing you.

Art Exhibition
Instituto Allende
Ancha de San Antonio 22, Centro
Thur, Nov 25; Fri, Nov 26
12-6pm

The Instituto Allende, 71 years of art, culture and tradition, invites you to its commemorative exhibition
By Jesús Ibarra

In 1950, Enrique Fernández Martínez, former governor of Guanajuato, his wife, Nell Harris, the Peruvian artist Felipe Cossío del Pomar and expat Stirling Dickinson founded the Instituto Alllende as a school of art and Spanish. Since then, various art workshops began to be offered to the San Miguel community, as well as a Bachelor of Visual Arts, which was immediately incorporated to the University of Guanajuato, one of the most prestigious and renowned universities in Mexico. The Instituto also opened the G.I. Bill program of the Department of War Veterans of the United States, through which the former soldiers of World War II began to come, subsidized by such program, to study art and Spanish.

Seventy-one years later, Instituto Allende is still alive, providing the opportunity to take courses designed for self-enrichment, intellectual stimulation, creation, and fun. We continue to offer art workshops opened to the community, such as Traditional Mexican Weaving, Creative Jewelry, Stone Sculpture, Oil Painting, Watercolor, among others, all taught by expert teachers with years of experience in their area. The G.I. Bill for veterans is still active and every semester we are visited by several American students who come to study Spanish and art with us. Spanish courses open to the community are also offered.

The Bachelor of Visual Arts - still incorporated into the University of Guanajuato - is a stronghold for Instituto Allende. It covers nine semesters during which the student, in addition to assimilating different techniques in the various disciplines of art, will learn to develop their creativity and will finish their studies as a professional and multidisciplinary artist. All the teachers of the Bachelor's Degree are renowned artists with extensive experience in art and teaching.

To celebrate its seventy-one years of life, the Instituto Allende invites the general public to the commemorative exhibition with artwork by our students and teachers, which will be held at the school facilities on November 25th and 26th from 12 to 6pm. We invite you to tour our facilities and admire the work of our teachers and students.

MyStudio/MiEstudio Pop Up Art Exhibit at Instituto Allende

On Thursday and Friday, October 28 and 29, 2021, more than 30 artists from Colonia San Antonio will be spotlighted in a collective “Pop Up” exhibition at Instituto Allende, Ancha de San Antonio #22. The collective exposition will be open from 12:00 pm-6:00 pm.

This “Pop Up” signals the return of the MyStudio Art Walk and previews a sampling from artists who will open their studios to the public for the upcoming annual event. The popular open studio happening is held every third weekend of February and features the studios of artists throughout Colonia San Antonio. Due to the pandemic, MyStudio Art Walk 2021 was cancelled. Happily, MyStudio/MiEstudio will return this February 19 and 20, 2022. Stay tuned for more details.

The Pop Up Preview includes 30+ artists working in Acrylic, Watercolor, Oil, Collage, Jewelry, Ceramics, Photography, Mixed Media, and Textiles. Artists featured: Lindsay Duval, Alifie Rojas, Edith Robertson, Katrina Noel, Isabelle Manhes, Emmanuel Sierra, Bruce Stewart, Claudia Stewart, Linda Joy, Joe Campiere, Mary Jane Miller, Lori Schwilling, Lucia Garza Marcos, Alejandra Treviño, Casa Mata, Leslie Kate, Jonathan Williams, Peter Gee, Pakina Langenscheidt, Sharon Jeffers, Terra Mizwa, Peter Leventhal, Roberto Buchanan, B. Sophie Weinberger, Agapito Jimenez, James Gritz, Alejandro Palomar, Peter Summer, Peter A Davis, Meryl Truett and Zara Fernández M.B.

The entrance for the MyStudio Pop Up will be the main academic entrance of the Instituto Allende on Ancha de San Antonio #22.

The San Antonio Open Studio Art Walk began circa 2013. Starting with a smaller event headed by Shannon Reece, which evolved into the San Antonio Open Studios headed by Jane Dill and Kathleen Cammarata, it then evolved into MyStudio/MiEstudio headed by Peter A Davis. Currently, the organization is in the trusty hands of Zara Fernandez M.B Director of Operations of the Institute Allende (assisted by Meryl Truett and Peter A Davis.)

The colonia San Antonio is one of the oldest colonias in San Miguel de Allende beginning to develop in the early 20th century. San Antonio is a lively area of traditional Mexican families and many artists who call the area home.

MyStudio´s main mission is to recognize and promote national and foreign artists who make up a varied and inclusive community. MyStudio is also proud of the free Outreach Program that celebrates the Mexican heritage and emerging artists of the Colonia.

The Instituto Allende, founded in 1950 and incorporated to the University of Guanajuato continues to be a Plastic and Visual Arts University that also offers a variety of non-accredited Art Workshops, Spanish Programs, Conferences and Seminars for the general Public and is affiliated with the Veterans Affairs of the United States of America (G.I Bill / Post 911).

We look forward you joining us on Thursday 29th and Friday 28th of October from 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm to see the work of our San Antonio Artists. All COVID-19 safety precautions and protocols will be in place.

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.