Lisa Trujillo·
Chimayo
Chimayo is the style that Irvin and Lisa learned first, before learning to weave the older parts of the tradition. There is a logic and a mindset that is central to weaving the Chimayo style. And there’s all of that going back and forth between shuttle weaving and tapestry weaving. It may be the first style that we learned to weave, but it isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do. Let’s start by describing and defining the style the best we can. A Chimayo has two stripes and a center design. The bigger the piece is, the more room there...
Lisa Trujillo·
The Perfection Spectrum
One of the most common questions I get asked in the shop it, “What happens if you make a mistake?” My standard answer is, “Either I fix it or I don’t. And the goal is to find mistakes quickly.” I assume that people ask this because of the nature of tapestry. They understand that the decoration is inherent to the structure of what we are making and not a surface decoration that could be easily altered. So when we make a mistake that we want to correct, it means un-weaving the error. Sometimes un-weaving the error requires un-weaving a...
Lisa Trujillo·
Art from the Fire – 2000
“Flame 2000” by Irvin Trujilllo In May of 2000, the Cerro Grande fire burned through the Jemez mountains across the Rio Grande Valley from us. It resulted in a huge column of smoke which would descend on us for days at a time. The wind blowing incessantly only made things worse. It burned out a lot of homes in Los Alamos and caused both Los Alamos and White Rock, where our kids went to school at the time, to be evacuated. For those of us in the valley, it was just extremely frightening to watch the fire destroy so...
Lisa Trujillo·
Weaving Words
I’ve been thinking a lot about the words we use when we talk to customers. I have to be careful when I use these old words to describe an even more ancient craft, that I don’t lose my very modern listener and potential customer. Once upon a time these words were useful in prose and poetry because everyone was aware of how their clothes were made, there were people all around them involved in the process. But the industrial revolution changed all that. I thought that maybe it would help me to put these communication problems into words, Just to...
Lisa Trujillo·
Dyeing
As weavers we care a lot about color. Irvin’s father, Jake Trujillo, emphasized to us over and over that color is the most important part of the end product we are producing. It is color that will “make or break” a piece. The way that a person relates to color is very personal. It’s emotional too, even if it’s at a subconscious level. We tend to use color in a strong and pure way, since we work with blocks of color. We don’t blend color like painters do, and even the way a lot of tapestry weavers do. So...
Lisa Trujillo·
Jerga
A part of the Rio Grande weaving tradition that goes back to Spanish Colonial times is called jerga. Historically, jerga was woven as a utilitarian fabric, used as a tarp, or carrier, or for wrapping things up. It was strictly a wool textile. Someone with wealth might demonstrate that by putting jerga down as a floor covering. It was woven in long strips and cut and seamed to make a piece of fabric of the desired size. And many of the jergas that survived to the present are very large. The Spanish Colonial jerga was woven on four-harness looms using...