Ana Lozada’s Cake Decorating Workshop
SubjectPortrait of
Ana Lozada
Date2000 February 25
Mediumslides
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.301.1-.16
DescriptionPhotographs from local artist Ana Lozada's cake decorating workshop on February 25, 2000, which was a follow up workshop from one previously held by master cake decorator Amelia Fonseca de Nunez earlier in the Mano a Mano project.
(.1) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.2) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
(.3) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.4-.6) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
(.7-.8) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.9) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
(.10-.12) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.13-.14) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
(.15) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.16) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
NotesSubject Note: Local artist Ana Lozada followed up the workshop given by master cake decorator Amelia Fonseca de Nunez held earlier in the Mano a Mano project. Ana’s workshop took place February 25, 2000. There were ten participants in Amelia’s workshop and nine in Ana’s continuation workshop. Cake decorating is an extremely popular culinary art form both on the island and in Connecticut's Puerto Rican communities. Parties, weddings, and celebrations such as the quinceñera, held when girls become 15 years old, are not complete without an elaborately decorated cake. Of course these can be purchased in bakeries, but cake maker Ana Lozada of Guakia has told us that many people will call her or other individual decorators to bake the cake at home and then assemble its many layers (she makes seven) at the party. On the island cake decorators go to great lengths, adding little houses or fountains, flowers made of sugar paste, pastillaje, or if it is a quinceñera cake, ceramic figures of the girls. Lourdes Hernandez Rivera, whose aunt made her wedding cake in March, related that "the party's not over until the cake is cut." (.1) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.2) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
(.3) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.4-.6) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
(.7-.8) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.9) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
(.10-.12) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.13-.14) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
(.15) Workshop participants making pastillaje, decorations with icing.
(.16) Ana Lozada is demonstrating the pastillaje icing technique while others watch.
Some Puerto Rican project advisors raised questions about the inclusion of cake decorating in the project. These concerns echo differences of opinion and approach between academic historians and folklorists. The consideration of cake decoration as a "folk art" was questioned because it is ephemeral, domestic, and influenced by contemporary tastes, also this activity has not been well documented or featured in texts on folk arts. The project selected the practice of cake decorating because of its use in community celebrations, its domestic and family base which often inspires intergenerational teaching, its common practice by women who would not describe themselves as "artists", and its potential as an income source for these women - because it is so popular. Elaborate cake decoration is common throughout Latin America and is subject to changing contemporary taste. Each of the two teaching artists and the Hartford apprentices demonstrated a strong community base and family use of this domestic/culinary tradition.
Biographical Note: Ana Lozada was an experienced baker in Hartford, creating cakes for special occasions for the Puerto Rican community. Her business was called “Creaciones Especiales.” She worked with CCHAP on several Puerto Rican community projects, making cakes with a Puerto Rican flag decoration for exhibit and concert events, and teaching a workshop in cake decorating with "pasta laminada," a handmade edible sugar paste with a shiny finish that is worked into many different shapes by hand, like clay.
Subject Note: A locally-based team of Puerto Rican artists, in collaboration with CCHAP at the Institute for Community Research, Guakia, and the Crafts Development Office of Puerto Rico's Economic Development Department (PRIDCO), worked together to bring a multi-faceted program of Puerto Rican traditional arts to Hartford during the summer of 1999. "Mano a Mano: Puerto Rican Traditional Arts from Island to City," began with the July 1, 1999, opening at the ICR gallery of an exhibition of fourteen craft forms practiced in Puerto Rico. Later in the summer, five master traditional artists traveled from Puerto Rico to offer week-long workshops in their craft forms to the public. After the workshops ended, participants who wanted to continue working with their crafts were mentored by the local artists on the project team.
This project was funded by the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund Community Folklife Program, the Roberts Foundation, the Greater Hartford Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, PRIDCO, and the Institute for Community Research
The exhibition drew from the work of master artists and their apprentices who participated in PRIDCO's Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Project. Through the Crafts Development Office of the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company (PRIDCO), Puerto Rico hosts an island-wide training program in traditional arts. Law 166, first passed in 1986, mandates that five government agencies in Puerto Rico provide services to artisans for their education and for the marketing and promotion of their work. This enlightened policy recognizes that traditional arts contain great cultural value because they express the collective wisdom and the soul of a community of people. Traditional arts also represent a vital link to the past, as they are transmitted from one generation to the next through long-term, informal, one-on-one teaching between a master artist and a student. Learning an artistic form through the process of apprenticeship is a powerful way to pass on cultural knowledge as well as the craft itself; this process also helps to develop relationships across generations.
On display from July 1 - October 1999, the exhibit was designed and installed by the same team which produced ICR's successful Herencia Taína exhibit in 1997. PRIDCO loaned art works from its Traditional Arts Apprenticeship project, featuring sixteen important craft traditions practiced in Puerto Rico today. Traditions featured included: Marímbolas/Percussion Instruments; Panderos/Plena Tambourines; Volantines/Kites; Vejigantes/Coconut Masks; Hatillo Mascaras/Wire Net Masks; Artesanía en Lata/Tin Crafts; Talla de Gallos/Carved Roosters; Alfarería Tradicional/Indigenous Pottery; Encuadernación/Bookbinding; Papel Maché/Papier Maché; Talla de Santos/Saint Carvings; Estampas Típicas/Folk Houses; Tejido de Bejuco/Liana Weaving; Tejido de Enea/Cattail Weaving; Mueble de Mundillo/Lace Cushion and Holder; Bolillos/Bobbins; Mundillo/Lace.
Puerto-Rican based artists giving workshops were: Angel del Valle - pandero making and playing; Amelia Fonseca -the art of cake decoration; Vicente Valentín - cuatro building; América Nieves - mundillo lace making; and Alice Chéverez teaching indigenous pottery making.
Two follow-up mentorships were conducted by local traditional artists – Ana Lozada in cake decorating, and Mel Gonzalez in clay art work. They met regularly with workshop participants, encouraging them to continue producing, offering further training in techniques of the art form if necessary, and advising on marketing procedures and outlets.
An unexpected benefit from the workshops was the degree of interaction between the participants, many of whom did not know each other before. CCHAP noticed that while they were engaged in the art forms, participants talked openly about their lives and issues important to them. Such workshops could be a useful setting for social or other research projects because people feel relaxed and informal (and in fact this outcome stimulated the development of CCHAP’s Sewing Circle Project in 2007). During the last session colleagues from Centro Civico, an arts and social service organization in Amsterdam, New York visited the project and became very interested in the potential for arts workshops to enhance communication and information gathering. Also, two of the workshops were held at La Casa Elderly Housing on Park Street, where the seniors showed a great interest in the art activities.
Proportionate to its size, Connecticut has one of the largest Puerto Rican populations on the mainland, especially in the major urban areas of Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, and Waterbury. People arrived from the island in great numbers after World War II to work in both factories and fields, especially eastern Connecticut's tobacco farms. Puerto Ricans in Connecticut are characterized by their migration patterns - they generally don't consider themselves "immigrants" or "settlers" in the state; they came here for work and continue to live here but frequently travel back to the island which they often view as a paradise, a homeland to which they belong and will return. Their nostalgia for the island is undoubtedly heightened by the difficult conditions many Puerto Ricans experience here, especially in cities: considerable prejudice, urban violence, poor schools, as well as high prices and taxes. An often-mentioned statistic compares Connecticut's per capita income, which is the highest in the nation, with its responsibility for four of the country's poorest cities - those listed above. Although large, the Puerto Rican community here is seriously underserved by local cultural, educational, and social organizations.
The community's love for the island and its culture has enhanced Connecticut's cities, especially Hartford, the location of this project's activities. Latinos, primarily Puerto Ricans, make up 35% of Hartford's population. The heart of the community is Park Street, the main thoroughfare in the Puerto Rican neighborhood known as Frog Hollow. Botanicas, bakeries, music clubs, bodegas, and restaurants named for Puerto Rican towns make this a vibrant center of constant activity. Artistic, social, and cultural practices within the community show a regular and active maintenance of beloved traditions which link urban Puerto Ricans to the island, and many return regularly for visits. The primary goal of this project was to reinforce the patterns of cultural practice and remembrance.
Additional materials exist in the CCHAP archive for this artist and these events.
Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
Ilka Robles
July-September 2003
