*
San Miguel may have been born as a stopover place for wagons filled with silver on their way from Guanajuato to Veracruz and Spain; no one could have anticipated what an art mecca it would grow into. In the 1700s San Miguel was larger than any city in North America, including New York and nearly as large as Barcelona, but after closure of the silver mines a declining population by the 1900s left the town a shadow of its former self without even a passable road to get here. It all changed with the arrival of one young man from Chicago. A fascinating series of events brought Stirling Dickinson to San Miguel in 1937. Like many who have come after him, he came looking for a quiet place to finish writing a book. He immediately fell in love with Mexico and with San Miguel and stayed.
Jon Schooler
*
Ramiro Miranda
*
Highly educated, from a family whose comings and goings were chronicled in the society pages, Stirling and friend Heath Bowman were looking to finish their third book “Death is Incidental” about the Mexican Revolution when they came to San Miguel. Within ten days Stirling bought the home he would live in until his death in 1998. He was instrumental in reviving part of an abandoned monastery into an art school and was appointed director of the Bellas Artes in 1938.
Yesenia Garcia Leon & Noe Castro Sosa
*
alQuimia4 Galeria
*
A WWII veteran himself, he, along with José Mojica and Cossio del Pomar, actively promoted the school as a haven for veterans to study there under the GI Bill. Later, they moved on to create the Instituto Allende. These two world renowned art schools and the many charitable organizations Dickinson founded set the tone for the re-birth of San Miguel as an artists’ haven. Today there are countless artists, photographers, musicians and writers from all over the world who call San Miguel home, and with this an influx of art lovers. Whether it is indigenous traditional craft in open-air markets, exceptional fine art in elegant galleries, music, dance, theater, film - every manner of the arts flourish in San Miguel.
*****
San Miguel de Allende: the soul of mexico is available from your favorite bookstores including Aurora Books and La Biblioteca Tesoros in San Miguel, or from many of your favorite internet sites including Schiffer, Amazon, Barnes & Nobel and Thrift Books. If you would like an autographed copy of our new book, please send us an email request and you can buy it directly from us at steven@houseandhouse.com.
**************
Cathi and Steven House, the founders and principals of House + House Architects, have received over 50 design awards for their work in California, Mexico, Africa and the Caribbean, and have been featured in prestigious publications throughout the world including two monographs, House + House Architects: Choreographing Space and Houses in the Sun: light movement embrace. Their studies of vernacular architecture have been published in Mediterranean Villages: an architectural journey, and in Villages of West Africa: an intimate journey across time, which document the people, villages and unique architecture. Cathi and Steven lecture extensively and created CASA, The Center for Architecture, Sustainability + Art, a study abroad program based in Mexico.
House + House Architects' work reflects Cathi and Steven's passion for soulfully designed buildings intimately responsive to their site and to their inhabitants.
www.houseandhouse.com
**************
*****
Please contribute to Lokkal,
SMA's online collective:
***
Discover Lokkal:
Watch the two-minute video below.
Then, just below that, scroll down SMA's Community Wall.
Mission
Visit SMA's Social Network
Contact / Contactar
