THE NEIGHBORS- KIM NAYLOR

Violette is often describing her friends and neighbors as great artists, or true artists. I had the opportunity to meet a few of those great artists, still living and producing, and joined Violette on her mission to document their artwork and have it exhibited. On our trips to the neighboring towns, Violette would often swing by a friend’s house to check in and visit with them, on one such trip she took me to the Picuris Pueblo to the home of Kimberly Naylor. Kim is a woman who does not show her artwork often, but has quietly been working at her practice for years- making careful collages resourced from collected magazines, packaging, brochures and other discarded publications. She pulled out some of her work for us to see, and I was lucky to buy a couple of prints of her scanned collages.

“Josie” - A portrait of an important woman in Kim's life:

“Easter Tree” - A gift for her nieces and nephews, depicting the Easter tree that they would make together:

THE (MY) QUILT

Between trips out to town, walks in the woods, and lovely snacks and meals, I made a quilt in the first five days of my stay. I worked intuitively, using some techniques I have seen, and then cutting it up and putting it back together a few times. At some point, as I often do, I realized I needed pink. Violette taught me to use a bigger seam allowance and iron open all of the seams to allow more flexibility. The morning she helped me finish it with straps on top and a zipper at the bottom, we took it- ‘hot from the oven’- to Truchas to show the quilt class, to Penasco to show the Hersday group, then to Taos to submit it to a show. The woman organizing the show has been making quilts for years, and I was somewhat intimidated, but the experience of showing my work to people that are far from my typical viewers felt like an important challenge. Below is the progression of the quilt.

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."

THE SETUP.

I arrived in the mountains of Ojo Sarco late at night, and the next day revealed a wonderland of fabric to sort through, sewing machines to tinker with, ponderosa forest to adventure into, and all the other workings of Violette's home studio and in-town classroom. She has been teaching a quilting class in the neighboring town of Truchas, at a building that could be considered the community center. Her classroom is off of the library which is a great resource for internet, scanning & printing, and research for the class. It is also the classroom that her two middle-aged students went to school in when they were ten years old. Truchas is a tiny town that sits cliffside over a truly striking valley, with Los Alamos on the other side. We also made a visit to the local free box- a small building on the same pull-off as the dump. Violette helps manage the free box, which is stocked with beautifully random clothes, electronics, and housewares. She visits frequently to tidy it up and take home fabric for her stash. I made out with some items to wear, and some items to cut up.

sewing and tending the wood stove, and tending our bellies- an all-day job:

the hub of Truchas, the library/senior center/clinic/classroom:

inside the class:

freebox score: