Count Me In!

Cynthia Weill holds a doctorate in education from Teachers College Columbia University. She is on the board of a foundation -- Friends of Oaxacan Folk Art -- that seeks to promote and preserve the artists and artisanal work of the state. Count Me In is the fourth book in her First Concepts in Mexican Folk Art Series. The Aguilar Sisters are Mexico's most beloved artisans. They learned how to make clay figurines from their mother, Isaura Alcantara Diaz. These lively independent women are considered great masters of Mexican folk art and have been presented to Queen Elizabeth, Queen Sofia of Spain, various Mexican presidents and Nelson Rockefeller. Their humorous ceramics of the people of their town and state are in museum collections the world over. The collection of parade figures from Count Me In was acquired by the Field Museum in Chicago for its permanent collection. Notes and photographs based on the process of developing the figures are in the archives of that museum as well as in those of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut.