Today I stepped out to a book fair at the Palacio de Minería and also an outside green art exhibit at the atrium of the Church of San Francisco both in El Centro Historico.

The book fair was great. I purchased several photographic books, treasures to add to my photography library collection. I got lost walking around the book fair because I was also taken by the architecture of the building. The Palacio de Minería is a Neo Classical architectural building completed in 1813, and until 1954 housed the College of Mining Engineers. I must have spent three hours walking around in the book fair before I left for my next adventure.

My next stop was only a couple of blocks away at the atrium of the Church of San Francisco. There, artist, Betsabeé Romero used old cars and car tires to make a green statement. I mean using old cars and tires, how cool is that? And after you see the pictures, you will see most cool.

I most liked the cars that were Mexican tiled and the painted and carved tires. One tire was a planter and it brought back memories of when my grandmother made tire planters too. My grandmother used to make planters for her garden out of tires, though hers looked more like giant daisies that curved out and were painted vibrant solid colors. You can still see those garden tire planters in South and Central Texas. I had no idea one could carve into the tire and paint the carving too – most creative of Romero.

I am going to let the pictures speak for themselves and let you enjoy. If you are in México City’s Centro district, go by the outdoor exhibit, take a torta y horcha, sit outside and enjoy the view.

Exhibit Information:

“A vuelta de rueda” (“Driving Slowly”)
Atrio de San Francisco
Madero 7 (next to the Latin American Tower in Centro Historico)
Open 8:00 a.m. – 8:30 p.m. daily and there is no charge.
Metro stop: Bellas Artes
Exhibit runs through April 26, 2009

UPDATE: Deborah Bonello, a multi-media journalist based in Mexico. Video journalist and blogger for the Los Angeles Times, did an interview with the artist Betsabeé Romero. Cool video and interview. Check it out.

Since The News does not archive their news stories. Here is the article pasted below:

Artist uses old car parts to make green statement

BY ANGELA MOSCARELLA The News

Betsabeé Romero – an artist who has chosen automobiles, tires and car parts as her primary medium – didn’t think twice when offered the chance to exhibit her sculptures and installations in the atrium of the Church of San Francisco in downtown Mexico City.

She was given short notice, but it was an exciting challenge, particularly because of the setting – an open space surrounded by both ancient buildings and modern skyscrapers.

“It had to be circumscribed to the urban, architectural and historic context,” Romero said at a press conference Sunday.

“I didn’t want my work to look like a postage stamp” compared to everything around it, like the Torre Latinoamericana, she said.

Romero was also glad to exhibit in a place familiar to her, where she has already done street shows. For the artist used to seeing her work in exclusive art galleries, it was also fulfilling to reach a large audience – people who work downtown or simply walk through its streets for leisure.

ECOLOGICAL CONCERNS

Romero, whose themes tend toward the environment, migration, history, culture and philosophy, created several works for the nine-piece “A vuelta de rueda” (“Driving Slowly”) exhibit.

One is a reinterpretation of “Lágrimas negras” (“Black Tears”), recently at the Museo Amparo in Puebla.

Originally the sculpture showed Volkswagen Beetle frames in an arc with a pre-Hispanic human figure lying across the bottom. Now, the same dark metallic structure boasts bicycles on top and is titled “Curva peligrosa,” (“Dangerous Curve”).

For Romero, the bikes riding aloft and upward symbolize the “utopian” hope they may eventually prevail over automobiles, a less environmentally-friendly form of transportation.

The 45-year-old also produced the “Escalando sobre maíz” (“Scaling over Corn”) installation with cars nose-diving into a 1.5-meter-tall mountain of corn kernels.

The artist seeks to draw attention to the search for new fuels based on corn. She sees corn as a key element in pre-Columbian mythology, and believes it is a “profanation” to use corn for technological purposes.

The other new piece is “Con los platos rotos” (“Picking Up the Pieces”), an automobile covered in pieces of blue-and-white broken dishes and cups from the Sanborn’s restaurant chain. Besides the cultural nod to the celebrated Sanborn’s de los Azulejos across the street, there’s a political significance. “We’re always dealing with crisis situations, which we did not create. We always have to pick up the pieces of what somebody else broke.”

Romero does not have to hang flowers from out-of-use vans or insert bonsai trees into a huge tractor tire – which she does – to make an environmental statement.

The simple choice of material, vehicles and tires, evokes ecology, she said. Car junk hangs around for much, much longer than the time it served a useful purpose.

But it’s not only once speeding cars that obsess her. The artist also ants to highlight the breakneck velocity of modern culture, the heady rise of new technologies and products. That’s why her show is “Driving Slowly.”

“My exhibit is a pause in the slow traffic of the center, the possibility to obtain a different reading of the objects we normally ride in,” she told The News.

“It is in opposition to velocity,” Romero said. “Art forces slowness. It is a form of communication that allows us to reflect on velocity, that has brought consequences that are not necessarily always good.”