The UA Art Museum Displays The Wealth Of Hispanic Culture In Tucson. By Margaret Regan MATILDE SANTA CRUZ is an expert at putting together those giant flour tortillas Tucsonans go crazy for. One time during an interview she recalled that her grandmother showed her mother how to make them. Then her mother taught her. Santa Cruz now has passed on the craft to her own children. "It's like a chain that will never be broken!" Santa Cruz exclaimed. That lovely quote quite rightly gives a name to La Cadena Que No Se Corta ("The Unbroken Chain"), a huge exhibition of the traditional arts of Tucson's Mexican-American community, now at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. The exhibition is co-curated by the museum's Peter Briggs and James ("Big Jim") Griffith, director of the UA Southwest Folklore Center, as well as Smithsonian folklorist Cynthia Vidaurri, and local resident Rosalita Ayala. The show is a celebration of all manner of crafts turned out by Hispanic Tucsonans. And if, regrettably, the show includes no booth to taste Santa Cruz's wares, there are some fancy Día de los Muertos breads and an utterly baroque quinceañera cake, protected, alas, behind glass. Bypassing the museum's typical fine-arts mission, this is an unusual show for the art in daily life. Its displays summon all the usual suspects, such bona fide traditional local crafts as papeles picados, piñatas and cascarones, but it also finds plenty of room for the unexpected. Many of the commercial products on view are not exactly traditional, but they demonstrate how the craft tradition responds to changing times. Artisans make what their customers will buy. For instance, the wall full of hand-tooled, high-heeled leather cowboy boots from Osuna Boots on South 12th Avenue are wildly colored in purple and emerald. They're hot among contemporary urban cowboys, but one can hardly imagine them on the tough working vaqueros of a generation ago. Some arts are almost brand new. Two upholstered car seats by Carlos Gonzalez are hardly part of a centuries-old chain of hot-rodding parts. But they do support the exhibition thesis that "a surprising number of Tucson's professional craftsmen are of Mexican heritage," as Griffith writes in the catalog. Griffith, the lovable folklorist who created Tucson Meet Yourself, says he's been thinking about putting together just such a show as this for years. He regularly brings respectful attention to the arts and crafts of los Tucsoneses on segments on KUAT's Arizona Illustrated, and he's given them an engaging scholarly treatment in three books, including Southern Arizona Folk Arts. Griffith brings his scholarly sensibility to bear both on the show and in his catalog essay, giving the enterprise a credibility that takes it beyond just another collection of crafts. Occupying almost the entire first floor of the museum, the show is divided into three parts, El hogar ("The Home"), El taller ("The Workshop") and La comunidad ("The Community"). The first room is laid out as a typical Mexican-American front yard and house. In the yard, there's a nicho, or shrine, of concrete and stone by Antonio Bay; assorted planters; rock-bordered paths; Christmas lights and so on. The traditional Mexican-American home, Griffith asserts, begins at the sidewalk. By contrast to the typical Anglo front yard, which acts as neutral transition space between the public street and the private home, the fenced-in Mexican-American yard re-creates the "enclosed space" of the Mexican townscape. The exhibition is full of such fascinating insights. Take that quinceañera cake, by Guadalupe Rubio, in the community section. It proves once and for all Griffith's theory, described in his book Southern Arizona Folk Arts, that the Mexican-American aesthetic reprises the 18th-century baroque style that gave our own Mission San Xavier its elaborate arches and curlicues, its fanciful colors and optical illusions. Positively drenched in white angels, swans and flowers, the cake is on a tall platform reached by mirrored stairs. Four doll attendants in pink are below a Cinderella-style coach, which enshrines a high-heeled shoe representing the celebrant's transition to womanhood. At the top is a doll of the 15-year-old herself, resplendent in white and pink net. There's much, much more in the show, including murals combining Christian and Aztec imagery, a splendid nacimiento and Virgin of Guadalupe shrine, ironwork, a low-rider bike and embroidered altar cloths. Many of the unsung makers of all these fine things are given a deserved moment of glory in accompanying wall photos by José Galvez, Cynthia Vidaum and Griffith. As the catalog says, these artisans draw on an unbroken chain to "make their surroundings a little more visually beautiful and advertise their presence to the rest of the world." La Cadena Que No Se Corta: The Traditional Arts of Tucson's Mexican-American Community continues through January 13 at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Admission is free. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. James Griffith will give a free talk about arts of the community at 12:15 p.m. Wednesday, December 4. Other workshops include: "Paper Arts I," 2 p.m. Sunday, December 8; "Women's Arts of the Home," 2 p.m. Sunday, December 15; "Paper Arts II," 2 p.m. Sunday, January 5; "Low Rider Cars and Bikes," 2 p.m. Sunday, January 12. For more information call 621-7567.

		© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth