XIX Festival Internacional de Música Morelia, Part One

Mexico

For nineteen years, Morelia, Michoacán, has hosted an international music festival.  This year, the guest of honor is the European Union.  The opening day of the Festival Internacional de Música traditionally offers a typically Michoacán touch to the inaugural afternoon: a ‘walk of flowers’ created by artisans from Patamban, a village approximately two and a half hours from Morelia.

Great Britain

Eighty-three artisans, headed by Don Neftalí Auyungua Juárez, began the creation of the tapetes (rugs) of flowers at approximately four o’clock on the morning of the 11th of November.   The artisans finished the carpet, which stretched more than two city blocks along Morelia’s Calzada Fray San Antonio de San Miguel, in time for its late-morning inauguration.

The panels of the flower carpet represent flags of the host country, Mexico and each of the eighteen countries of the European Union.  The flower carpet also includes many symbols of each country’s cultures.

Germany

Every detail of each design is created using plant material, including petals, leaves, seeds, pods, acorns, and entire flowers. 

Italy

The Patamban artisans first cover the entire cantera (hand-cut stone) pathway along the two blocks of the Calzada with plastic, which protects the stones.  The artisans then cover the plastic with a thick layer of aserrín (sawdust).

The artisans then use literally hundreds of types of flower petals and other plant materials to create the exquisitely detailed carpet.

In this carpet, hundreds of acorns stand at attention to form the points of a star.

Seed pods form the leaves and part of the side of this panel.

Butterflies, stars, and flowers make up this panel.  The entire carpet has a border of pine needles standing in small plastic bags filled with aserrín.