An Evolution of Rio Grande Weaving

This is actually a fairly complete history of Rio Grande weaving.  A few weeks ago we were a part of a group of amazing experts on the local Hispanic culture of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado that met in Alamosa, Colorado. The participants are all instructors for something called the Hilos Institute.  The Institute is, we learned, about teaching instructors at Adams State University about the culture that a lot of their students come from, so that they can be do a better job as teachers.  And what they wanted us to understand, was how to organize our knowledge around teaching about Hispanic culture to their instructors.    We learned about “backwards design”, which turned out to be a very logical idea about teaching according to a goal of what you want your students to be learning.  So this idea popped into my mind.  This is (obviously) a spreadsheet.  And it includes pretty much the whole of what we want people to understand about how our weaving tradition evolved through the major historical periods of Hispanic New Mexico’s history.  It’s a little bit disconcerting to put your life’s learning into a spreadsheet like this, but hey, simplifying life is supposed to be a good thing, right?

Each of these images is good for a blog post or two, and has provided inspiration for countless weavings.  So, no, it isn’t really all that simple.  But here it is, anyhow, for your viewing pleasure.  We’re still happy to come show you lots of pretty pictures and explain this all in detail, should you want to invite us to speak…