Surrealistic Trillow-gy. The Chapel of Jimmy Ray, San Miguel de Allende

Mexico possess an interesting energy. The land is a synthesis of competing, contrasting, and cooperative elements. They are diverse; each one revealing its own magic. The nation's inhabitants are as varied as the geography. Numerous indigenous nations whose centuries' old abodes exist in all of the various sectors of Mexico. The conquistadors' Spanish blood mixed with generations of marrying indigenous citizenry in addition to blending and creating offspring  from many people from many nations, all of whom who have left their imprint on Mexican bodies and cultures.

Another Guadalupe, in all Her Glory

Psychadelic Pstairway

Maybe it's just me, but the surreal seems pervasive around here. Today's story's venue is antithetical to the previously visited and reported on Edward James' Las Pozas, situated in the mountains of Xilitla. Instead of waterfalls, landslides, mist, quasi-jungle growth, 

This gleaming conglomeration of fragments of ceramic,

                                                                        Cacti

 Mirrored soup cans, 

Skulls,

Hundreds of thousands (possibly) emptied wine and spirits bottles,

Skeletons

 

 

photographs, rattlesnakes, dust devils, 

Burros, 

mesquite trees, and dried out river beds waiting for the next rainy season provide the stage for another trip down the rabbit hole (madriguera del conjo). 

Anado McLaughlin was born in Oklahoma back in the 40's. The more astute reader may posit that perhaps 'Anado' was not on James Rayburn McLaughlin III's original birth certificate. And you'd be right. Long story short - this eccentric, bear sized Santa Claus double ended up meeting an eccentric, bear sized Santa Claus triple in California. 

Anado & Richard

Richard Schultz

They fell in love, married, and moved, in no particular order, to the deserted desert outskirts of San Miguel de Allende. There an apparition appeared. Anado and Richard would create an environment as much in keeping with its surroundings as Edward James' place does within its environs.

Anado, who died just a few years ago, was a force, a product, call it what you will. Growing up in the confines of Oklahoma City, in a household beleaguered by abuse, drunkenness, infidelity, financial upheavals, in short all the necessary requirements to insure a happy childhood, left the creatively endowed McLaughlin feeling untethered. Growing up in a mid-west city that considered you a radical if your hair touched your collar or if you were not varsity starting linebacker for your high school team (the Oklahoma Sooners Rather Than Laters?), chances are there was a bucket of tar and a bag of feathers waiting for you somewhere. 

After a stint in the Navy during the Viet Nam War, Anado put a flower in his hair and headed to San Francisco. Haight-Ashbury was one of the global counterculture incubators; the perfect environment for him to spread his wings and find an agreeable and welcoming environment to allow his unique form of self-expression to take root. Meeting his partner, soul mate, and virtual double, Richard Schultz, provided the comfort, closeness, and intimacy that would not have been been available had he not left his earlier life behind. 

What is incredibly interesting to me is that the primary structure in Anado's world, The Chapel of Jimmy Ray, is named after his father. 

  

There was no love lost, no respect, and certainly no approval or warmth emanating from father to son. So is the creation and naming a structure that would not have survived five minutes in Oklahoma a cathartic attempt to purge Anado's paternal demons? Was the creation of magnificent buildings and gardens which would have found a home on the type of estate that Edward James grew up on an attempt to link and reconcile his past to his present? I just write blogs. I ain't no shrink.

 

There is a unique commonality that I have noted when learning about Edward James, Leonora Carrington, and McLaughlin. The first two artists grew up in the shadow of extreme wealth and elevated social status in early twentieth century Great Britain. McLaughlin was a product of a middle class environment in the American mid West. All three were subjected to parental rejection and had limited, if any, nurturing. None of the three were recognized for having talents and values which did not conform to the family and societal norms. Encouraging diversity is very much a 21st century creation. Some may say that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction where diversity is considered a virtue while uniformity is decried as a non-progressive relic of past sociological standards.

Very Fancy, Highly Stylized Toilet

Fortunately, in today's balanced society there is room for all. However the room for the non-conformists is rarely found at widely recognized crossroads. 

As a result the interested traveller must be prepared to take a journey beating a path to the unbeaten path. The people that you will meet, the ideas that you will discuss and exchange, the visual sights to be seen will enrich, enhance, amuse, and have parts of your mind rarely exposed stimulated. And perhaps the next time that you meet up with a kid from Oklahoma who has dared to paint his red wagon with paisley designs, or you end up conversing with a young girl who rejected fancy finishing school in favour of creating anthropomorphic art in the jungle, your perception and acceptance of them will have been altered as a result of a visit to Las Pozas, The Chapel of Jimmy Ray, or other way out of the way places which provide a necessary counterpoint to the traditional centres of art and culture found in the mainstream.