Commission for Hotel El Ganzo, Puerto los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico

As well as supporting music and the arts, the long-term project at Hotel El Ganzo includes the accommodation and development of local communities. Immediately in front of the hotel is the local fishing port and the names of the fishermen's boats contrasts with those of the more ostentatious boats in the international leisure marina further to the west. In the leisure marina, the boat's names tend to refer to the escapism of vacation (e.g. Endless Summer), whereas the local fishermen's boat names encapsulate a more superstitious and personal relationship with the their livelihood. References to mythology, reverence and romance (inc. many female names) adorn the pangas, but there is also humour and mischief at play, with names like: El Ladron (The Liar); La Ingrata (The Ungrateful) and Jariouso Uno (The Horny One).

The work (Pangas de Pescadores) draws attention to and celebrates the fishing port and its community. The painting of the boat names onto the hotel’s walls builds a somewhat playful relationship between these names and the specific locations in which they are placed: La Ingrata nestles behind an idylic palm tree; Ariadne is found down a distant corridor and Jariouso Uno is on an exterior balcony of a guest room, visible to the fishermen in the marina below. The last piece of the jigsaw was the employment of a local sign writer who had painted the names onto many of the boats in Puerto Los Cabos.

N.B. this work was destroyed by hurricane Odile, which severely damaged the hotel and its surroundings in 2014.

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