Selected Costa Rican Folk Art - Galeria Namu

Costa Rican Popular Legends Figures ‘chorreador’ (coffee maker)

Code: CRFA052 Size: 12” (30 cms) tall Freddy Acuna of San Carlos, Alajuela Province, in the north of Costa Rica is the creator of these wonderfully whimsical ‘chorreadores’. If anyone has travelled to Costa Rica, they will have invariably drank coffee made in this traditional way. Acuna, studies and reinterprets in his very stylized line of carved and painted wood figures, the cast of Costa Rica’s popular legends that all Ticos know and love (and fear!): La Segua (half horse and half sultry woman), Cadejos (the dark dog that accompanies drunks), el Padre sin Cabeza (the fear factor), La Llorona (Central America’s banshee), etc. Acuna’s creations have any of these personages holding the base for the cheesecloth bag that filters the ground coffee with the liquid receiving cup placed on the platform underneath. A wonderful piece to remember one’s rich cups of coffee direct from the local plantations of Costa Rica.

‘Artes Populares’ of Costa Rica – Mounted and Framed Endemic Butterflies

Code: CRFA052 Size: 14” x 17” (36 x 43.5 cms) In the Galeria Namu collection there is also featured – under Folk Arts – ‘artes populares’. This sub-category refers to classic quality mementos of Costa Rica that have become ‘souvenirs tipicos’ that visitors have, for years, loved picking up before leaving the country. Such emblematic ‘artes populares’ are the painted and framed feathers, painted wooden ox cart models and painted ox cart wheels, coffee chorreadores, as well as these delightful and well made mounted and framed endemic butterfly wall displays. Costa Rica has many ‘mariposarios’ and even exports butterfly pupae abroad. Once a butterfly’s life cycle ends, specialists carefully mount these and frame them for visitors. These handsome framed sets, by popular demand, must have at least one blue morpho butterfly in the composition – the emblematic large blue queen of the rainforest (whose underwing displays the big “eye” for camouflage against predators).

"Corazones Valientes" Campesina Women Painters - Arenal Volcano/La Fortuna, Costa Rica

Code: CRFA051 Size: 23" x 28 1/2" (58 x 73 cms) The medium of this painting is acrylics on heavyweight paper. In the mid-eighties, a Peace Corps volunteer, while working with country women near Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica, aside from agricultural projects involving these local women, it soon became obvious that many had incipient drawing and painting talent that they wanted to explore and develop. Thus, a women's painting collective formed - they called themselves "Corazones Valientes" (the "Brave Hearts" in English). This group of motivated agriculturalist women even showed their works in a celebrated exhibition in Minneapolis and soon after, had a bilingual children's book published in the U.S., "Tortillas and Lullabies", illustrated by the women in this painters' group. Mostly their works are acrylic on paper and sometimes canvas, the subject matter being scenes from their daily life and perspective through their lens in their endearing self-taught painting style. The original members of this painters' collective are now getting on, and many are grandmothers who have taught and inspired their own daughters to express themselves through painting.

"Corazones Valientes" Campesina Women Painters - Arenal Volcano/La Fortuna, Costa Rica

Code: CRFA050 Size: 15 x 28 1/2" (39 x 73 In the mid-eighties, a Peace Corps volunteer, while working with country women near Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica, aside from agricultural projects involving these local women, it soon became obvious that many had incipient drawing and painting talent that they wanted to explore and develop. Thus, a women's painting collective formed - they called themselves "Corazones Valientes" (the "Brave Hearts" in English). This group of motivated agriculturalist women even showed their works in a celebrated exhibition in Minneapolis and soon after, had a bilingual children's book published in the U.S., "Tortillas and Lullabies", illustrated by the women in this painters' group. Mostly their works are acrylic on paper and sometimes canvas, the subject matter being scenes from their daily life and perspective through their lens in their endearing self-taught painting style. The original members of this painters' collective are now getting on, and many are grandmothers who have taught and inspired their own daughters to express themselves through painting - sometimes humourous and even risque themes.

Solentiname ‘school' Landscape Painting - Nicaragua

Code: CRFA049 Size: 15 x 18" (38 x 46 cms) This highly detailed oil on canvas painted by renowned painter Teresa Silva, is typical of the Solentiname 'school' of landscape painting: colour schemes that could be described as fitting of 'magical realism', minute attention to detail - every little leaf is individually painted and subject matter depicting natural history, plant life and human activity in and around the Solentiname Archipelago (a grouping of 38 tiny to small wooded islands in the southeastern corner of Lake Nicaragua). The Solentiname Archipelago on the southern edge of Lake Nicaragua close to the border with Costa Rica. The Namu collection has always featured Solentiname folk arts - consisting of carved/painted wood figures of local fauna and these highly detailed oil paintings on canvas - as the residents of the southeastern edge of Lake Nicaragua and the Northern Plains and Rio Frio National Park of Costa Rica are all related. It would seem that the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica in this region is simply an abstraction existing only on the map!

Solentiname Large Carved Wood Sculpture - Scarlet Macaw - Solentiname Archipielago, Nicaragua

Code: CRFA048 Size: 40" (102 cms) tall This large carved and painted balsa wood sculpture of a majestic scarlet macaw (and the river landscape painted on its base) was created by a local folk artisan of the Solentiname Archipelago on the southern edge of Lake Nicaragua close to the border with Costa Rica. The Namu collection has always featured Solentiname folk arts - consisting of carved/painted wood figures of local fauna and highly detailed oil paintings on canvas - as the residents of the southeastern edge of Lake Nicaragua and the Northern Plains and Rio Frio National Park of Costa Rica are all related. It would seem that the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica in this region is simply an abstraction existing only on the map! This larger sculptural piece would look fantastic gracing a veranda, or doorway

Afro-Caribbean expression - painted aluminum platters - Manzanillo, Limon Prov

Code: CRFA047 Size: 15" (38.5 cms) diametre Using the typical, classic crockery from local kitchens in Costa Rica's Limon Province, the aluminum enamelware plates, bowls and cups make for a dynamic canvas for Eugenia Barrionuevo's Afro-Caribbean studies that feature both portraits of locals as well as the iconic landscapes of the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Eugenia herself is a longtime resident of Manzanillo, a small fishing village just south, down the coast from Puerto Viejo, Limon. The artist is well known in here native Costa Rica having painted famous urban murals in the centre of Costa Rica's capital city San Jose. In San Jose, Eugenia has been the focus of various national arts exhibitions as well as having received several high-profile awards for her paintings of such cultural import for the nation and for her protracted career as a regional painter.

Tropical 'Cedro' Treasure Chest, Honduras Central Highlands

Code: CRFA046 Size: 6 1/2" x 9" (16.5 x 23 cms) Although not a folk arts tradition of Costa Rica, it is indeed a tradition of the 'hermano' Central American country of Honduras. When Galeria Namu was scouring the length and breadth of the Central American isthmus looking for tribal indigenous cultural objects and art forms for the Namu collection, we could not resist including in the official collection this Ladino artform from the central highlands of Honduras. Sadly, this carved wood chest tradition has all but stopped due to the massive exodus to the USA of many of these artisans, thus making such pieces quite collectable as this tradition has noticeably waned as of late. These are remarkable 'cedro' wood chests the 'magic' of which manifests in the way the closed lid aligns so perfectly with the body of the chest that when closed, it looks as if it were a sculpted solid wood block.

Guido Fernandez, coffee root sculpture - woodpecker pair, San Rafael de Heredia

Code: CRFA045 Size: 20" tall x 6 ¾”wide (51 x 17 cms) Fernandez, a resident of San Rafael. Heredia Province in the Central Valley, takes advantage of his location for most of the raw material for his sculptures: coffee bush root and stalk. Coffee wood abounds in the Central Valley, one of Costa Rica's major regions for coffee cultivation. Coffee is a joy to carve for its density, however, one cannot find trunks thicker than 7" diameter, so the sculptor is challenged by the natural contours and size of such wood. This sculpture captures so well the natural pose and antics of a nesting woodpecker pair.

'Toucans in the Sunset', Tanja Gongora, Central Valley, batik on paper technique

Code: CRFA044 Size: 21 x 23" (53.5 x 59) long Using a 'batik' technique - usually applied to cloth - Gongora has invented a remarkable painting technique (acrylic based) achieving lustrous swathes of colour, and a particular tropical light captured in her paintings. Her depicted themes range from the natural history and landscapes of her native Costa Rica, to some of the country's (most often) female residents. The chosen theme painted in this piece, 'Toucans in the Sunset', is a typical scene - if anybody has been down on the Costa Rican coasts at the end of the day, such an iconic scene you very likely would have witnessed!