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Joe Hayes
"Here in the Southwest Joe Hayes is a folk hero: everybody's favorite teller of tales from our own favorite part of the world." —Byrd Baylor Browse through the Joe Hayes' books and mulitmedia.
Joe Hayes is one of America’s premier storytellers, a nationally recognized teller of tales from the Hispanic, Native American and Anglo cultures. His bilingual Spanish-English tellings have earned him a distinctive place among America’s storytellers.
Joe grew up in a small town in southern Arizona. His schoolmates and friends, many of whom were Mexican-American, taught him how to speak Spanish. As Joe got older, he began reading the work of folklorists and anthropologists and gathering the old stories from the region that he calls home, the Southwestern United States. When his own children were young, Joe enjoyed telling them stories. He decided that this would be the way he would earn a living. He also decided to use both Spanish and English when telling his stories to children so that they could learn and love both languages, just like he did when he was a child.
Joe’s tales are a combination of the traditional lore of the American Southwest and his own imagination. The traditional part is based on things people have told him and on what he has learned from reading the work of folklorists and anthropologists. Joe’s own contribution is based on his instincts as a storyteller and what his experience tells him listeners need in order to feel satisfied with a story.
For many years, Joe has been the resident storyteller at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe. He has told stories at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN, and is featured in the book Best Loved Stories Told at the National Storytelling Festival. In 2005, Joe received the Talking Leaves Literary Award from the National Storytelling Network, an award given to members of the storytelling community who have made considerable, serious and influential contributions to the literature of storytelling. Joe has taught storytelling to teachers at the University of New Mexico and been a guest lecturer at many colleges and universities, delivering the commencement address for the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at U.C.L.A. He was designated a New Mexico Eminent Scholar by the New Mexico Commission on Higher Education, and in 1995 he received the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence.
Joe began sharing his stories in print in 1982. His books have received the Arizona Young Readers Award, two Land of Enchantment Children’s Book Awards, four IPPY Awards, a Southwest Book Award and an Aesop Accolade Award. His books have been on the Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List twice. His book The Day It Snowed Tortillas was chosen by the editors of The Bloomsbury Review as one of their 15 favorite children’s books published in the past 15 years.
If you would like to have Joe Hayes participate as a keynote speaker at a conference or tell stories at your school, you can contact via e-mail at: joehayes@newmexico.com
Learn how to schedule Joe Hayes.
Listen to Joe featured on NPR! Bilingual Story Books
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Artemio Rodríguez
Artemio Rodríguez was born in Tacámbaro, Michoacán, Mexico in 1972. He began by studying agronomy at the Universidad Autonomo Chapingo and was later introduced to art when he apprenticed and learned letterpress printing from Juan Pasco, a master print maker working out of the Taller San Martin pescadoer near Rodríguez’s hometown.
As a print maker who works primarily in black and white, Rodríguez’s signature style emphasizes simplicity and clarity. European medieval woodcuts and the great Mexican print artists such as Jose Guadalupe Posada have been influential in Rodríguez’s print making career. Though comfortable working in a wide variety of artistic media, Rodríguez regards his ten years as a print maker as the beginning of a long quest. His larger goal is to keep exploring and promoting printmaking until he feels he has contributed something important to the medium. He fully expects this to take a lifetime. In 2002 he founded La Mano Press in Los Angeles California. La Mano Press is an artist-run center dedicated to the promotion and appreciation of printmaking.
Rodríguez’s work has been featured in galleries in the United States and Mexico. He has also illustrated and published several books.
Artist Statement
I have based my style on two characteristics of medieval woodcut: the simplicity of line and the straight forwardness of its visual style. When I create my images I think as if I were creating illustrations for a book that may never exist. Fortunately many of my works have found a place in actual books.
In these times, when technology dominates the way we live and see the world, when even the printed word has become almost obsolete; I feel a necessity to return to the way of seeing and living through the black and white of the carved and hand printed image.
A visual artist is not only a creator of images, decorations or concepts for museums, he is also a physical worker and a creator of conscience, a instigator of sensibilities, imagination and further creativity. The ancient trade of engraver-printer has allowed me to feel that I am approaching this ideal as a contemporary visual artist.
—Artemio Rodríguez
Visit Artemio's artist page at La Mano Press.
The LA Times wrote a great article about Artemio Rodríguez and his art. Click on the link below for a PDF with the article, it's a great read!
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