Conscious Choice: The King of Cob

March 2008 | On Our Radar

The King of Cob

Over the phone, Antonia Vicente Oxlaj sounds happy. Her business, a restaurant in the sneeze-and-you-miss-it town of San Marcos, Guatemala, is doing well. Her sons are healthy, and, through the din of dusty motorbikes, you can almost hear her smile.

But when it comes to Hurricane Stan, Oxlaj, 51, turns serious.

“I lost everything,” says Oxlaj, who clung to a tree for eight hours as the storm washed away her restaurant on October 10, 2005. “After Stan, not many people came to my restaurant.”

That is, until she met Chicagoan Miguel Elliott.

Elliott, 35, builds structures out of “cob,” an earth-friendly mixture of sand, clay and straw. His work includes the interiors of Chicago’s Butterfly Social Club and Yoga Now’s Gold Coast studio. In November, he traveled to Guatemala for a Mayan astrological conference. Somehow, he stumbled on San Marcos — and, on his second day there, Oxlaj stumbled on him.

“I met one of Antonia’s sons, Arnolfo, and he asked me what kind of work I did,” remembers Elliott. “[Arnolfo] got excited and said that maybe I could build something for his mother.”

Elliott quickly knew he’d stay in Guatemala awhile, and he also knew exactly what Oxlaj needed: an outdoor pizza oven, which is one of his signature creations. A similar oven, shaped like an eagle, sits in a garden near Chicago’s Cabrini Green.

“I had a vision of building two connected pizza ovens – one in the shape of an eagle and another in the shape of a condor,” explains Elliott, who learned how to use cob at a natural construction company in Oregon back in 1994. “There’s an ancient indigenous prophesy that states ‘now is the time when Eagle and Condor energy come together,’ and that is what will save the world.”

Since Oxlaj was looking to draw in more customers, Elliott decided to put the oven in front of her restaurant, named “Los Abrazos,” or “hugs.” The oven would be loosely shaped like a bench: the “wings” of the birds would be ledges for people to sit on, and the “bodies” would be actual ovens. At the time, Elliott was flat broke, but he and Oxlaj struck a deal: for three free meals a day, Elliott would push forward on the project.

After 22 days of labor, including hauling rocks, carting clay and carrying sand from Lake Atitlan, Elliott completed the oven on Christmas.

Instantly, his effort paid off.

“A lot more people came,” says Oxlaj. “I was very grateful for the work that he did. I’m grateful that God sent him here to build me the oven. It’s a big gift; a gift from God.”

If you ask Elliott, his mission in Guatemala has just begun. He’s currently working on a community sauna behind Oxlaj’s restaurant and is also building a cob rooftop for a local bar. He plans to return to Chicago sometime around the start of Guatemala’s rainy season in May.

“There’s so much potential for my role in this town,” says Elliott. “It’s kind of a blank slate. I feel like there’s no end to the possibilities.”

To learn more about Elliott’s designs, visit chicobco.com. Donations to Los Abrazos can be made by contacting Yoga Now Chicago at 312-280-9642.

— Tricia Parker

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