M: I won’t be able to make the nest transportable. I thought of a few ways to do it,
but it was not gratifying (though making an art-work does not always have to be
gratifying anyways). The point is that I could not help wondering, "Is it not
the bird that flies away, and not its nest? ".

And yes, it is. The bird flies away, the nest awaits for its return.

The issue is that making it transportable involves practically making an apparent
hornero nest and what I want to make is a hornero nest, for humans but real.

On the other hand, I could not help but wonder

Why should the work have to travel? Sure, now everything travels.
But should I have to adapt this work to a situation that is almost completely
alien to it? Yes, I know: today works travel, sell, they are shown here and there.
But aren’t these secondary factors?

Not that I find your suggestion unusual, but it would certainly change the
nature of this work.

Nature of the work. What thing or part of a work is its nature?

The work appears after long searching or when we are no longer searching, or it
just falls suddenly like fruit from a tree. The work is seen the way we see the
first drop announcing the rain.

It may happen sometime to confuse water falling from a balcony with water
falling from the sky; it’s these things about living in the city.
But rain is rain and the water from a balcony does not taste the same.

Yesterday, after the storm, Tomás said, "In these days after the rain falls
everything looks more defined, each leaf is what it is. Each thing has its
importance." And it is so true.

That which is seen can be modified, it may take another form, and even agents
completely foreign to the work may be the ones to make it take a different turn ...
The important thing is that in this being transformed the work does not lose
temperature, its temperature. A temperature that all the things of this world
have when they are true, when they are made with love, when they are what
they’re meant to be.

When the work has that temperature it mysteriously starts breathing.
Yes! The work breathes, as all living things breathe.

I'm sure you'll understand. The nest cannot be anything but solid, heavy mud.
It is also important to work step by step, as the hornero would.
Thus the nest is made of adobe, it is not transportable.
And perhaps the only way to move it is by breaking it.

The nest does not travel, but can be done over and over again anywhere
in the world.

Every rainy season the hornero makes a nest. Once its chicks grow, it
leaves it and builds a new nest to shelter future offspring.

Other birds inhabit the old nest: sparrows, buzzards, parrots.

Sometimes the hornero leaves the nest half done; that happens when it
realizes that it misdirected it. So no matter how hard it worked, it
leaves it, it deserts it just like that.

There is a saying that goes: "lightning does not fall on a house with a
hornero’s nest”. Apparently it’s good omen if the hornero makes its
nest on the roof of a house or nearby, because it’s a sign that the
land will provide abundant fruits.

So how could I make of a nest like this a mere imitation?

Catalina León, 2008