Cempasúchil flowers, a plate of salt and everlasting candles sit on tiers of tables at El Mercado at Historic Market Square. No photos show who the altar honors, but a hairbrush, perfume and pistachios symbolize and welcome Mexican artist Yolix Luna’s mother for Día de los Muertos.

Leonor Lozano-Cordero died in 1990. The following year, Luna set the first Día de los Muertos altar for her mother outside of her puesto, Muñecas at El Mercado, which she opened in 1984. Luna has set the ofrenda for about three decades.

Día de los Muertos is a celebration that dates back to Pre-Hispanic Mexico. It honors small children and saints on Nov. 1 and all the dead on Nov. 2. Families often honor their dead, including dogs, by putting out an ofrenda so their spirits visit.

In the first years of Luna’s ofrenda in the early 1990s, a plate of apples, oranges and pears, along with bread and cinnamon sticks in a small corner drew the attention of tourists, who curiously scanned the tables that made up the altar. They saw catrinas, alebrijes and retablos— items some had never seen before. 

“I used to make them small before because people thought I was a bruja [witch], because I would set an altar for my mother,” she said. “Now people understand and now they accept it and put it up themselves.”

At Market Square last Tuesday, tourists passed by admiring the altar adorned with monarch butterflies — this year’s theme. Tourists took photos and leaned in to see the detailed clay art molded as plates of mole and arroz. After admiring, they walk over and begin to turn the pages of Luna’s book, Celebracion del Día De Muertos, showcased on a white podium.

Luna desires for people to understand Día de los Muertos so that the tradition lives on and is never forgotten. In 2017, the same year Disney released the movie “Coco,” she published her book that explains how to celebrate respectfully, instead of adopting only some elements like sugar skulls and papel picado.

How to celebrate Día de los Muertos

Día de los Muertos is not Halloween, said Luna’s daughter and store manager, Alejandra Calvillo Cerna.

“It has nothing to do with Halloween. … Since it’s around the same date, people think Día de los Muertos is Halloween and it’s not,” Calvillo Cerna said. “That’s the main part that should be separated.”

Remembering the dead and setting out things to welcome them is enough to properly celebrate, she said.

“What was wrong with the movie ‘Coco’ is that you don’t necessarily have to put the photo or the person won’t come,” Luna said. “As long as you keep remembering them, they can come back to be with you.”

“Our dead are welcomed with food, with an altar,” Luna said. That’s what she teaches students passing by on field trips and to tourists.

In her book’s opening, Luna writes, “This book was created out of a personal anxiety to spread information about one of the most ancestral and most popular traditions of Mexican culture.”

The book follows the dialogue of a conversation between a grandmother and her grandson as she teaches him about the origins of the celebration. The grandmother stands for knowledge, Luna said, while the grandson represents the possible continuation of traditions.

“Carlitos, that’s why I’ll continue to repeat, don’t forget me and remember me with great joy on Día De Muertos,” the grandmother says in the book. 

Luna has a second altar at her shop in La Villita, Yolix Luna Fine Art. Her puestos display plenty of her art, but it’s only 20% of all her work.

She’s been called a “Mexican Van Gogh,” inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s rhythm and the movement of swirls across the canvas, which she recreates with acrylic paint using the impasto technique. She also recreates his pointillism style in her San Antonio-specific artwork, but on bark paper and decorated with a folk art border. 

You can recognize a Yolix Luna piece by how the artwork is centered around the sun or the moon — on brand with her last name — and how it is inspired by states in South Mexico like Guerrero. And her art will always be colorful.

An artist for all of her 76 years, Luna’s work gained traction with portraits and clothing of her iconic Muñecas, little dolls with large black eyes and red circles for lips wearing colorful clothing, which customers traveled far to purchase in San Antonio in the late 1980s. Luna paints original work, sells prints and prints some artwork onto clothing. Día de los Muertos also has a heavy influence on her art and has become a big part of her identity as an artist today.

This year, Luna collaborated with Mexican artist Bobe D’León to exhibit “I die, if you forget me…” to bring awareness to to the unique handcrafted textile clothing made by the indigenous community of San Bartolomé Ayautla in the Mazateca Baja region of Oaxaca, Mexico. The community is slowly losing its art of embroidery.

“If not appreciated, it’ll die soon,” D’León wrote in the announcement to social media about the textile work.

“Although death signifies being forgotten, the Celebration of the Day of the Dead instructs us to see death as a continuation of life,” Luna writes in her book.

And maybe it does continue.

“One day, I was very busy and I told my mom [in heaven], ‘I didn’t bring your pistachios.’ Well, when I put the altar away, there were pistachio shells.”