mother sculpture

Coyolxauhqui, the Aztec moon goddess, appears in this elegant museum replica by artisans from the Angel Cerón Artisan Association. Discovered beneath the plaza in Mexico City, the low relief sculpture dates from the 1400s and tells the story of the deity known as "Golden Bells." Her mother Coatlicue, the earth goddess, was defiled when a ball of feathers fell into the temple. Thus Coyolxauhqui encouraged her 400 brothers and sisters to kill their mother, but the sun god Huitzilopochtli sprang from his mother's body as a fully armed adult and saved her. He cut off his sister's head and threw it into the sky, where it became the moon.

A skeletal figure, she stands with her hands raised in the posture of women who die in childbirth. Artisans from the Angel Cerón Artisan Association sculpt the image of Coatlicue, "She of the serpent skirt." The Mexica earth goddess and mother of the gods, her image bears the symbol "Eight Malinalli, or "grass." Her son Huitzilopochtli, the sun god and god of war, defended her from the powers of the night.

A Maya woman sits with legs crossed as she works on a backstrap loom. Rocking back and forth she controls the tension as she creates an expanse of cloth. "This movement represented the human heartbeat, thus weaving was a sacred act for the ancient Maya, and weavers were considered the 'mothers of creation,'" Nicolas Chavez Sojuel explains. He works in fragrant cedar wood to depict his subject as realistically as did the pre-Hispanic ceramists of Jaina Island more than a thousand years ago in their "Female Figure with Loom." Deftly carving intricate details with superb realism, the Guatemalan artisan dresses the woman in a necklace of pinewood beads.

A skeletal figure, she stands with her hands raised in the posture of women who die in childbirth. Artisans from the Angel Cerón Artisan Association sculpts the image of Coatlicue, "She of the serpent skirt." The Mexica earth goddess and mother of the gods, her image bears the symbol "Eight Malinalli, or "grass." Her son Huitzilopochtli, the sun god and god of war, defended her from the powers of the night.

The artisans bathe the image in earth to give it the effect of a recent archaeological discovery.