Juan (‘Juanito’) Olivares Sánchez was born in Ajijic on 12 July 1944 and died there at the age of 77 on 28 May 2022. Like numerous other local artists in Ajijic, Olivares’ interest in art began as a student of the Children’s Art Program (CAP) started by Neill James. Olivares was among the first generation […]
Two decades ago, when I first began to document the artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala, I knew of only three of four twentieth century novels set at the lake. To my astonishment, many more (some long forgotten) have since emerged. Ignoring, for simplicity’s sake, any attempt to define the precise limits of what […]
Dimitar Iliev Krustev (1920-2013) was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, on 12 January 1920 and died in Ajijic on 11 February 2013. After studying at The Natioual Academy of Art for Portrait Painting in Sofia, Krustev served in the army under German rule for three years during the second world war. He moved to the US […]
Marion Delamater Freeman (later Marion D Freeman Wakeman) was born in Montclair, New Jersey, on 5 December 1891 and died in Northampton, Massachusetts, on 22 September 1954 (not 1953 as stated in most online sources). Freeman graduated from Smith College, Northampton, in 1914 and then joined the Art Students League, where she studied with George […]
Hilda Marie Osterhout was born in Brooklyn, New York in about 1925 and died in 2016. She grew up in a well-to-do family and, after attending Packer Collegiate Institute, was “presented to society” at the “Allied Flag Ball and Victory Cotillion in New York.” She then studied at Vassar College, where she won the Dodd […]
This beautiful architectural sketch for a major railroad and hotel complex in Chapala offers intriguing insights into plans at the start of the twentieth century to transform Chapala into an international tourist destination. The drawing is dated 1912. This is despite the fact that the company that eventually built the La Capilla-Chapala railroad was not […]
Frederic Jennings Haskin was born 1873 in Shelbina, Missouri. With only the most rudimentary formal education, his first job, at the age of ten, was as housekeeper for a weekly publication called Torchlight. Many years later, Haskin became its publisher, and a correspondent with papers such as the St. Louis Globe Democrat and the Kansas […]
Ajijic’s sister city connection to Studio City in California had already been going five years by the time journalist Bill Reed wrote about it in 1967. The sister city program was part of the People to People initiative begun a decade earlier by former US president Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1964 the executive board of […]
What was Ajijic like in 1967? Fortunately for us, that was the year when long-time journalist Ellis E. ‘Bill’ Reed reported from Ajijic on the status of the village’s sister city relationship with his home base of Studio City, California. Reed, then the Executive Editor of the Valley Times in San Fernando, first highlighted the […]
The sculptor (María) Leticia Moreno Buenrostro (1930-2016) began her artistic career as a child. Moreno was born in Tizapán el Alto on the southern shore of Lake Chapala on 30 November 1930. Her grandfather and one of her uncles had apiaries, and Moreno used to take some of the wax to model small figurines of […]
Hello Michael, You emailed me two photos earlier today (31 March 2023) taken in Ajijic in the early 1950s, and asking me about your parents. Unfortunately, my email responding to you was returned as undeliverable. Please can you contact me – via this email – and let me know your correct email and, if you […]
This year (2023) marks the centenary of D H Lawrence’s visit to Chapala, where he wrote Quetzalcoatl, the first draft of The Plumed Serpent. At some point in the trip, perhaps en route to Chapala, Lawrence stayed at the Hotel Ribera Castellanos (located on the lakeshore between Ocotlán and Jamay). This hotel, often called simply […]
Artist and author Henry F. Edwards lived in Ajijic, with his wife, Corinne, and their numerous children, for many years in the 1960s and 1970s. Henry ‘Hank’ Edwards was born on 9 May 1933 and completed studies at the University of New Mexico; San Diego State University; and the University of California. He served in […]
This post considers the extraordinarily productive career of historian Álvaro Ochoa Serrano, who has dedicated much of his life to writing about his two main loves: Lake Chapala and mariachi (in its broad historical sense of music, folkloric dancing and partying). These two interests are not necessarily as unrelated as you might think since some […]
More than sixty years after his first solo exhibit in 1951, Canadian artist Duncan de Kergommeaux displayed a series of charcoal and graphite on mylar drawings called “Winter Days,” completed following a visit to Lake Chapala in 2006. Duncan de Kergommeaux was born in Premier, in northern British Columbia, on 15 July 1927. His career […]
Lona Mae Christians, later Isoard, (1903-1992) was a long-time resident of Ajijic in the 1960s and 1970s. She was born 8 November 1903 in Williamsburg, Colorado, and died 22 Sep 1992 in Walnut Creek, California, aged 88. Lona married her husband, Max Conlin Isoard (1900-1974), then a medical student, in June 1926. The couple had […]
American artist Garrett Van Vranken (1887-1961) and his wife, Tommie (Thomy) E Carruthers Van Vranken (1888-1962), lived their final years in Chapala. George Garrett Van Vranken (sometimes Vanvranken) was born in Cadillac, Michigan, on 16 December 1887. He completed four years of high school before serving in the military during the first world war. Known […]
Robert Lewis Taylor (1912-1998) worked as a journalist on the St Louis Post-Dispatch before joining the staff of the New Yorker magazine. He wrote numerous books in a productive literary career which spanned four decades and included a Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for his novel The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, a novel about the travails […]
Talented British artists Richard and Nancy Carline never lived in Ajijic, but did visit friends in the village more than once and completed several paintings of the area. Richard Cotton Carline (1896-1980) was born in Oxford to a family of painters. After studying in Paris, and doing some teaching, he working on developing camouflage designs […]
Calvin Tomkins, who later wrote extensively for Newsweek and the New Yorker, completed his first novel Intermission while staying at Lake Chapala. The autobiographical novel was first published by Viking Press, New York, in 1951. The book is not set at the lake; its locales are Santa Fe, New York and New Jersey. It explores […]
Does anyone recognize the artist who painted this attractive gouache of a village scene? It is dated ’62. The indistinct signature appears to start with “PETER” in block capitals. Any and all suggestions welcomed! Other Art Mysteries related to Lake Chapala can be found via our index page for artists. Lake Chapala Artists & Authors […]
Multilingual playwright Samuel McCulloch (1921-1991) and his wife, Jennie, lived in an old adobe house in Ajijic for six years from 1956 to 1962. In a 1958 press interview, McCulloch told a reporter that in Ajijic he was writing plays, working daily from 11 am to 7 pm, with a break for lunch, and that […]
Of all the notable artists associated with Lake Chapala, the one who made the most waves in international art circles in the latter part of the twentieth century was Feliciano Béjar. Feliciano (‘Chano’) Béjar was born on 14 July 1920 in Jiquilpan, Michoacán. Jiquilpan had been in close proximity to Lake Chapala for centuries until […]
One of the modern myths of Lakeside is that long term American resident and benefactor Neill James, author of Dust on my Heart, was the originator of the phrase “When once the dust of Mexico has settled upon your heart, you cannot then find peace in any other land.” Dust on my Heart, published in […]
Despite several popular art sites listing Bert Pumphrey’s exhibitions as including three in Ajijic, I have yet to find any details for them. Pumphrey’s distinctive work is so highly collectible, that he would certainly deserve a place among the Lakeside greats (and in the Ajijic Museum of Art) if his association with Lake Chapala can […]
As explained in a previous post, my on-going fascination with the history of Lake Chapala was stimulated, in part, by the chance discovery many years ago of a copy of Antonio de Alba‘s 1954 book, Chapala. The online claim (made only a few years ago) that Chapala is “the most accurate book to date about […]
Japanese artist Masaharu Shimada, who specializes in sumi-e pen and ink drawings and has held dozens of acclaimed exhibitions in Mexico and his native Japan, lived for several months each year in San Antonio Tlayacapan from 1986 onwards. His exquisite works include numerous evocative monochrome impressionist landscapes of Ajijic and San Antonio Tlayacapan. Sumi-e, which […]
By the 1970s the Ajijic retirement community was sufficiently established that it attracted academic attention. The earliest study, never formally published, was by Dr Edwin G Flittie, a professor of sociology at the University of Wyoming. Flittie visited in 1973 and subsequently presented copies of “Retirement in the Sun,” his analysis of the retirement community, […]
Robert Clutton (1932-2016) lived in Ajijic from about 1959 to 1961. His time in Mexico introduced him to the pantheon of ancient Aztec and Maya gods which so strongly influenced much of his later art. He revisited Ajijic several times after this initial extended stay in the village. “Bob” Clutton, “Roberto” to his Mexican friends, […]
Among the chance events back in the 1980s that stimulated my curiosity about the history of Chapala was finding a book titled Chapala in a used bookstore in Ajijic. While the bookstore lasted only a few months, Chapala has been in a pride of place on my book shelves ever since. Written by Antonio de […]