Lower the racquet, remove the blindfold, and admire the artistry of the piñata—a form dating back hundreds of years. Pinata makers are pushing the boundaries of party favors, creating sculptures out of wood, foam, wire, and clay that are displayed in art galleries.
Third-generation maker Yesenia Prieto grew up making piñatas whose modest selling price belies the hours of manual work. While she and her team still make fragile piñatas for parties, her individual, complex pieces reflect the artistic potential of the craft. They have had two installations at a local gallery in Los Angeles and have an upcoming show in San Diego.
Why we wrote this
What we are willing to spend on something becomes a message of value that is closely linked to the creator of the object. By expanding their art, piñata makers are asking viewers to reconsider these traditional art objects—and the people who make them.
“We’re trying to show you what they would look like if they were valued more,” says Ms. Prieto. “If [people] understand how it’s made, they know it’s not machines that just crank these things up like that.” She and other makers hope to create both art and more of a craft long thought of as cheap and disposable bestow respect and dignity.
“There’s a shift happening,” she adds. She often sees pinatas in galleries. But there is [still] a necessity for us to fight hard to survive.”
Dallas
Would you bring a sledgehammer to David? A flamethrower for the Mona Lisa? A shredder for the latest Banksy? (Actually scratch the last one.)
Then why, some people ask, would you want to pulverize a piñata?
Alfonso Hernandez, for example, wants you to lower the bat and remove the blindfold and appreciate the artistry of a form that dates back hundreds of years.
Why we wrote this
What we are willing to spend on something becomes a message of value that is closely linked to the creator of the object. By expanding their art, piñata makers are asking viewers to reconsider these traditional art objects—and the people who make them.
The Dallas-based artist has created life-size piñata sculptures of Mexican singer Vicente Fernández and Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas. He wants the public to help turn an industry into art.
“Piñata makers have never treated it as an art form,” he says. “You are taught to do it quickly. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, just hurry up because they’re going to break it.”
Dissatisfied with the generic mass production that has defined their discipline for decades, piñata makers are pushing the artistic limits of party pieces. These larger and more detailed pinatas are made from wood, foam, wire and clay and are sculpted to look like popular icons and life-size lowriders. Some move, some are political and some even talk. Rihanna is a fan, as are, increasingly, art galleries.
For generations, the real cost of cheap piñatas has usually been borne by the piñata makers themselves, who work long and arduous hours for less than minimum wage. By proving that piñatas can be more than just party favors, people like Mr. Hernandez hope they can both create art and bring wider respect and dignity to a craft long thought of as cheap and disposable.
“It’s an underappreciated art form,” says Emily Zaiden, director and senior curator at the Craft in America Center in Los Angeles.
“Piñatas are so accessible. They appeal to everyone,” she adds. But there is also a downside. Piñatas “can be about appropriation, it can, I think, be about the trivialization of a cultural tradition.”
A new generation of Hispanic artists, she continues, “are seeing how much metaphorical potential piñatas have and how deeply it reflects their identity.”
Mr. Hernandez is familiar with the grinding of piñata making. He tried to sell the first piñatas he made for $100 only to end up accepting $40. He quickly learned the importance of speed and volume. He’s wiry and lean — the result of losing about 40 pounds in weight during a sleepless four-year tear of making piñatas seven days a week. And he speaks with a rattling impatience, as if he needs to get his words out as quickly as his piñatas once did.
Today, Mr. Hernandez works more slowly, with more care and craftsmanship in his East Dallas garage workshop. And across the country, other pinata makers are doing the same.
change of purpose
There are many questions about where piñatas come from. They may have originated in Europe, China or the Aztec period – or in all three independently. There are few surviving written historical records of the origins of piñatas — another sign of how underappreciated the craft was, Ms. Zaiden believes.
“A lot of this work probably wasn’t collected or preserved in the same way as other types of art,” she says.
“It’s really all speculation and oral history,” she adds, “but that goes hand-in-hand with the idea that these are ephemeral objects.”
For centuries, pinatas have been used in religious ceremonies in Mexico. Typically built to resemble a seven-pointed star symbolizing the seven deadly sins, they decorated homes — and were smashed — during the Christmas season.
Their religious significance faded over time and they became a popular children’s birthday feature. But as the pinata industry became commercialized, quality and craftsmanship were subordinated to quantity.
Yesenia Prieto grew up in this world. A third-generation piñata maker, she watched her mother and grandmother at her grandmother’s house in south central Los Angeles, and by the time she was 19, she began making herself. It was a constant struggle to survive, she says.
“I got tired of seeing how poor we were,” she adds. “My grandma was about to lose her house. And we just had to make more money. We had to survive.”
It describes a week in the life of a typical pinata maker. A crew of four makes about 60 units a week from paper, water and glue. Selling wholesale, they make $600 and split it between the four. That’s about $150 for a full week’s work.
“People don’t usually think of pinatas as something artistic,” she says. “One of the main reasons is that the workers themselves earn so little.”
“What you’re seeing is an art form that has to be mass-produced and made in a hurry because they’re being paid bottomless wages,” she adds.
Sometimes it’s literally like that.
In 2012, three women alleged in a court case that they were forced to make piñatas in an illegal factory in the borough of Queens, New York. Locked in an unventilated basement beneath a party supply store, they claim they were forced to work 11-hour shifts for $3 an hour, making about 300 piñatas a week. A federal judge ordered their bosses to pay them over $200,000 in damages, attorneys’ fees and other costs.
What the market thinks the value of pinatas is
In 2012, Ms. Prieto broke away from her family and the mainstream pinata industry. She founded the Piñata Design Studio and set out to create custom, intricate pieces that reflect the artistic potential of the craft.
They created pterosaurs and stormtroopers. For the 2019 Coachella Music Festival, they designed a giant Nike sneaker and an 8-foot-tall donkey. They made a piñata for singer Rihanna for her birthday. (She kept it for a full year before finally breaking it, Ms. Prieto says.)
Courtesy of Yesenia Prieto/Pinata Design Studio
But according to Ms. Prieto, the rush hasn’t let up. They work longer than most manufacturers on their piñatas — up to 16 hours in some cases — but still struggle to sell them for more than $1 an hour.
They’re using the internet and social media – they’re posting pictures of pieces as they’re being made to illustrate the labor involved – and they’re slowly increasing their price point.
“We’re still making losses on certain things. But that’s the goal,” she adds. “To see our work for what it really is. … In order for this art form to survive, [and fulfill] his artistic potential.”
She is now reaching out to other pinata makers to form a cooperative. By working together, she hopes, piñata makers can at least be paid fairly. The artistic quality could also improve. And as people see more elaborate, custom pinatas, she believes demand will grow, and pay will rise with it.
“We’re trying to show you what they would look like if they were valued more,” says Ms. Prieto. “If [people] understand how it’s made, they know it’s not machines that crank these things just like that.”
“There’s a shift happening,” she adds. She often sees pinatas in galleries. But there is [still] a necessity for us to fight hard to survive. At least that’s how I experience it at the moment.”
Look, don’t touch
Artistic piñatas and functional (read: “fragile”) piñatas exist in very different worlds, says Ms. Zaiden. But they can influence each other.
She curated a pinata exhibit at the Craft in America Center last year — including some of Ms. Prieto’s pieces. None of the works were designed to be smashed to pieces. A larger version of this exhibit will be on display at a museum in San Diego this fall. The piñatas conveyed messages on everything from pop culture and junk food to border politics and reproductive rights.
“People love them and they become the focus of this monumental occasion, this celebration,” she adds. “So maybe there’s a chance people will appreciate them as something that’s not just smashed.”
In Dallas, Mr. Hernandez has his own plans and his own dreams.
His business, No Limit Arts and Crafts, has exploded since Texas Monthly featured him in January. He’s making a giant Big-Tex Day of the Dead-themed piñata for the Texas State Fair and a piñata of Selena, the murdered Tejana singer — a job he says “terrifies” him because she being loved like that.
But he wants to focus less on large, individual sculptures. Now he wants to sell DIY kits so kids can make their own piñatas at home. Not only does he want families to get higher quality pieces for their celebrations, but he hopes to help them scratch that same artistic itch he’s had since he was in elementary school. Just as Lego has captured children’s imaginations for decades, he wants pinatas to do the same.
“One of the main feelings you get from it is, ‘Wow, this thing is amazing. I can’t break it,'” he says.
“To sell [that] Feeling is what I’m looking for.”