Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center: keeping the doors open...

Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center (EVFAC) is an important place.  In this northern New Mexico valley, it represents a place where people can go to learn a craft, buy supplies, or teach.  They have been there for me in warp emergencies, knitting needle situations, a spinning wheel crisis, and yarn-supply predicaments.  They have offered up their reference library and evening lecture series, free spinning Saturdays and knitting get-togethers... And in this recession they are struggling to keep the doors open.  It is an organization that has served this community for many years and has managed to expand significantly in the last decade.

EVFAC has a large collection of looms and weaving equipment they use for teaching classes, or you can rent them to do your own project.  They have a wide variety of teachers including people like Jason Collingwood, Jennifer Moore, Karen Martinez, Beatrice Maestas Sandoval, Irene Smith, Robin Reider, James Koehler, Connie Enzmann-Forneris, Diane Bowman, Lisa Trujillo, Ted Hallman, and many many more.  They also have a dye studio and offer other kinds of fiber and artistic classes (see their class schedule on their website).  They support a kids fiber camp in the summer and are teaming up with Northern New Mexico College to offer traditional Rio Grande weaving classes this fall.

They have a great library for members.

And offer frequent lectures and informational events.

Cornelia Theimer Gardella talking about one of her tapestries at EVFAC, April 2011: L to R--Janet Austin, Pamela Topham, Terry Olson, Conni Gardella, Karen Chiu, Joyce Hayes

They showcase work of their members including this wall which was hung for a contemporary tapestry tour of the area in April 2011.

Contemporary tapestry work of Cindy Dworzak and Evelyn Campbell

I didn't really know how I could help the center survive until my partner suggested I teach a class there and donate the proceeds to EVFAC.  So now it is scheduled.  I'll be teaching Color Gradation for Tapestry September 16-18.  See the link with class description HERE.  All of the class fees will go to the center.  I'll also be showing some slide presentations including one about the Bauhaus project I completed with the late James Koehler and Cornelia Theimer Gardella in 2010.

They have shows of members work.  The current show is by Andrea Ortiz.

Traditional tapestry by Andrea Ortiz

There are quilts and clothing as well as felted pieces and baskets.

Here is the magnificent naturally dyed yarn of Liesel Orend (which you can buy!)

And they have a studio space in the back where you can rent space for your loom (or rent a loom too!) and have your own spot to work.

EVFAC has a great newsletter.  You can view it HERE.  In it you'll find all the scheduled events as well as equipment for sale and information about shows and other happenings.  And if you live in some other part of the country, consider a trip to beautiful New Mexico to take a fiber class.  Espanola is at the heart of a rich tradition of fiber art and within striking distance of both Taos and Santa Fe.

It is summer!  

Go and take a class (consider taking mine! September is beautiful in New Mexico)

or stop by with your knitting and sit on the couch and meet some new fiber friends

or go to one of Jen's spinning Saturdays and pick up some new tips from a master

order some yarn for a project or buy some they have in stock

check out their gallery or enter your own piece to show there

participate in their Ghost Ranch shows

above all, become a member.

A blue day...

I took a class today with Liesel Orend through Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center (EVFAC) about indigo. Liesel is an amazing natural dye master and a great teacher. I learned a lot about different kinds of indigo vats and thoroughly enjoyed the magic that is indigo. I even finally understood how to balance a vat and how to keep using it continually. I think I see an indigo vat in my future.

We did four different indigo dye vats: a soda/spectralite vat, a fermentation vat, a fresh plant (woad) vat, and an instant indigo vat. We started out picking woad in Liesel's dye garden. It is still very early in the season, and there wasn't much dye in those plants. We did it to see what we would get anyway.

Unfortunately my camera focused on the ground behind my hand, but this blurry yarn was the result of dying with the woad plant, a very light blue-green.

I think this is called the flower on the top of the indigo pot. I believe this was the fermentation vat. I liked the colors from this vat the best, but maintaining one is much more fussy! I doubt that I have the patience to maintain the temperature on the vat at all times, much less to wait a week after the bath is exhausted before I can use it again! Underneath this purple, the liquid is a grassy green.

Yarn coming out of the soda/spectralite bath.

Some of the yarn we dyed. People brought all kinds of fibers, some already dyed to overdye. I liked the results on good-quality wool and silk the best. Poor quality yarn (Clasgens anyone?) still looks bad once dyed in indigo.

I brought two skeins of Brown Sheep Worsted and a half pound skein of Harrisville singles. I dipped the Harrisville into the soda/spectralite vat three times. I did one skein of the Brown Sheep twice in the fermentation bath and the other once in the instant indigo bath. I will probably use the Brown Sheep yarn for a small knitting project. I liked the fermentation bath colors the best, but was also very pleased with the Harrisville. It dyed evenly and was quite dark. See the photo at the top of this post for those yarns.

A big thanks to Liesel for all her help, for sharing her beautiful studio and dye plants, and for answering my completely unrelated natural dye questions for an upcoming project. It was a stellar day.

Fuller Lodge Show

I am a member of the Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center.  I can't say enough good things about this organization.  The people who work there are amazingly helpful and the variety of classes and services for weavers and other fiber people are wonderful.  I think the fact that a place like this exists at all in a small town like Espanola is a miracle.  If you're ever in the area, go and visit. EVFAC has a couple shows a year and I think this is the first time for them to have a show at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos.  I haven't been to Fuller Lodge yet, but I'm going tonight for the opening.  Fuller Lodge has a website where they actually post photos of the work.  Unfortunately the photos aren't fabulous, but I think the fact that they do this for their shows, which go up frequently, is quite amazing.  The website is www.artfulnm.org.  Click on the EVFAC exhibit link.  The pieces I submitted to this show are old ones for me.  I like the piece with two panels and the large green circles the best.  That piece is called Meridians and it hung at my sister's wedding at Quarai (an old ruined adobe church south of Albuquerque).  The newer pieces I have I am saving for some juried shows and for the Bauhaus show which may hang before the end of this calendar year.  So it will be odd to go to a show where I have work hanging that I don't really connect with that much any more, but I suppose that happens for most artists at some point.  I feel like I have moved so far beyond those pieces that I'll have trouble talking about them.

Here is a photo which I am including mostly to mark my progress.  This is the piece that I'm weaving at James Koehler's studio and I realize that you can't tell what it is at all yet, but I just want to remind myself that I am making progress!  When that tape

 measure says 48 inches I'll be really happy.  :)  It says just over 14 if you can't read that.

And I went hiking last Saturday north of Taos at Cebolla Mesa.  It was hot down on the Rio Grande river.  There were pasque flowers

 out along the trail (at least I think this is what these flowers are... I'm not a botanist though and could just be really wrong).  Last night we got a couple inches of snow and the school I work at on Fridays was cancelled.  I never tire of getting snow days as an adult... reminds me of the glee of getting them as a child (oh so very infrequently in Gallup, NM).

Piedra Lumbre

I grew up in New Mexico, and have spent many happy years since leaving for college living there and visiting. I now live just north of the Colorado border near Blanca, CO, but the red rocks and the blue skies of New Mexico call me back over and over. Last week I made a trip to Ghost Ranch--a place of many happy childhood memories. Now I go there to hang weaving, mostly through Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center. The Piedra Lumbre (the name for the area around Ghost Ranch which means valley of shining stone) is most certainly one of the most stunning places I have ever had the privelege of spending time. It is really indescribable--the blue sky, multiple colors of red and yellow rocks, the blue reservoir, the sagebrush, Georga O'Keefe's famous Pedernal mountain... and then there is Ghost Ranch, that oasis of green alfalfa and friendly people. Anyway, I went to Ghost Ranch's Piedra Lumbre center to hang a new set of weavings there. One of them was my newest piece, This Time I Dance II. The new piece was a further exploration of ideas from This Time I Dance (see prior post) and used the same colorways.

In my experience, when hanging weaving shows in New Mexico, the weavings all get laid on the floor as they are chosen to put on the walls. This is always difficult for me. After all, I spent many hours making that piece of art which is now in danger of being stepped on and is undoubtedly picking up fuzz and dirt from the old carpet it is lying on. But my friend Conni (www.corneliatheimer.com) convinced me to take a deep breath and let it go, and indeed, the show was hung without incident. If you visit the show (it hangs from now until July 6th), you'll notice the wide variety of art hanging there. They are not pieces I would probably group together, but it is an interesting representation of work being done in northern New Mexico fiber arts. So if you're going through northern NM any time soon, stop and visit. Ghost Ranch is always worth the time, and the weaving shows there are always something to see.