THE NETWORK

There is an impressive network of support for fiber arts in Northern New Mexico. The grassroots network of artists and craftspeople spread out in rural communities is documented and charted in the New Mexico Fiber Arts Trails- a guide to rural fiber arts destinations mapped out in three trails. The 71 listed destinations include museums, open studios, farms, mills, galleries, trading posts, and anything else that is part of the process of collecting fibers, weaving them into fabric, and cutting them up and sewing them together to make things. Over the two weeks that I spent in the area, I visited several spots on the trail. We attended a tea & crumpets fundraiser at a local weaving studio, a weekly gathering of women at the Art for the Heart studio & gallery, and visited The Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center- a big player in organizing the entire trails program. The center is a meeting place for artists- offering supplies, a gallery space, and classes in their huge facility full of looms and sewing machines. I met Diane Bowman there, who wrote a sort of mission statement for the center that I found particularly poignant:

"The Espanola valley fiber arts center is a school, a gallery, a source of supplies, a place to work and share and learn. Our commitment is to promote the fiber arts and to be a support to the fiber artist. We are a community that celebrates individuals in their uniqueness, as artists and as entrepreneurs. We believe that our strength comes from the connections that form between people who are doing what they love and working together.
At the center we know that earning an income from the work of our hands has meaning beyond the obvious. It is a yes to authentic and soul satisfying work, a yes to building a life that includes family, culture and community. There is value in taking time to create something handmade, something that carries within it an imprint of the soul of the creator. Despite the messages we are bombarded with every day, not everything in this world has to be faster, larger, or more. The individual handmade object, like the individual life, has intrinsic value."