I made contact yesterday with Dr. Ellen Baird, an art historian who answered my email with amazing promptness and with much excellent information about the Otomi books and Sr. Tellez. She wrote:
"I
also have a book by Sr. Tellez that we included in an exhibit that I co-curated
on the Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico at the Newberry Library here in
Chicago (http://publications.newberry.org/aztecs/)."
She went on to tell me about her contacts with other scholars who have researched this somewhat obscure area of folk art. The research is almost as much fun as the collages!
Here's the newest one in the series. She represents an offering to the Sirena Mala, the Bad Mermaid.
This is one of the pages I just scanned in from Sr. Tellez's book - I think it's going to be my next collage - not too subtle? It's amazing what spells and emotions can be conveyed with cutout bark paper.
