Heritage Fellow Eva Castellanoz Virtual Residency

Local Learning’s virtual residencies with National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellows take us into the communities and lives of master folk artists.
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Acknowledgements

The Local Learning National Heritage Fellows Curricula are supported in part with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. | All portraits courtesy Alan Govenar, director of Documentary Arts, unless otherwise noted.

NEA National Heritage Fellow, 1987 Master Corona Maker and Healer

Wonderful people introduced me to art. Now I know that my parents were artists all through their bones. My dad would go to the river and get tree limbs and start to forge a chair with his machete. Then he’d make his own paint from plants he collected. While he was doing that, my mother would go out and get reeds to weave the seat for the chair. One was working in one corner and the other one was in the other corner, and they would start singing corridos (Mexican ballads) to each other, just out of their hearts, you know. Nothing was written down. So I grew up around that.

-Eva Castellanoz

Eva Castellanoz has been making paper and wax flower bouquets and coronas, or crowns, for more than 50 years. Eva is also well known as a community curandera, or healer. She has a lot to share about self-discovery, courage, and living a meaningful life.