Sunday, February 2, 2pm
Galería Izamal, Jesús 25
Free

Galería Izamal Grand Opening

By Henry Vermillion

In the art gallery business, longevity is rare. Begun in 1992, Galeria Izamal is one of San Miguel’s oldest and best known. The gallery has made the third move in its long history, and will welcome its friends and the public to its grand reopening on Sunday, February 2, from 2 to 4pm at its new and expanded location at Jesus 25, just off Cuadrante in downtown San Miguel. (The re-opening date is not an accident, especially for numerologists: 2pm on the second day of the second month of the year 2020).

The new space is in a historic building occupied in the past variously by a fabric-making factory, a bar/cantina, a gymnasium, and a commercial laundry. One of the many tunnels under the downtown leading to the Parochia still exists in the back of the new space.

The area in the gallery is more than twice the size of the site on Mesones next to the Angela Peralta Theater which Izamal occupied for over twenty-two years. It features a studio space for gallery painters who may be seen at work. “Quite a contrast to the first Izamal gallery at the Meson San Jose, near the Plaza Civica,” said Britt Zaist, one of the two original members of the gallery. “We were seven painters in a twelve by twelve foot room then,” she noted. The new Jesus gallery space has almost ten times the area of the original Galeria Izamal location.

The gallery was founded and remains a cooperative, which means that sales go directly to the artist, without the usual 40 or 50 percent commission to the gallery. The artist members share the rent and other costs and the work of the gallery. In 1992, there were only three art galleries in San Miguel—hard to believe today---and today only one of those still exists. The original members of Galeria Izamal were Ed Osman, Rick Welland, Manuel Lizárraga, Rocio Hoffman, Britt Zaist, and Henry Vermillion. We were soon joined by Julian Fedorak and Estela Macias. All of us were packed in the above-mentioned 12 by 12 foot room in the old Meson San Jose near the Plaza Civica. The name “Izamal” was suggested by Lizárraga, a native of Yucatan. Besides being the name of a Mayan town in that state, “Izamal” was the name of a Mayan god of artisans.

The current artists in the new space are Juan Ezcurdia, Jeff Ferst, Javier García, Wolf Lichter, Cissy Smith Marks, Lawrence Selevan, Henry Vermillion and Britt Zaist.

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