September 2024

Greetings EVFAC Community, here’s September!

✴︎ Congratulations to Artist of the Month : Trish Spillman!

✴︎ Fall Fiber Fiesta - All vendor slots have been taken! Sign up for the WAITLIST here

✴︎ Join us! Saturday, September 28th - All Member Annual Meeting & Potluck. Meeting at 1pm, potluck at noon

✴︎  After many discussions and many, many steps - we are excited to announce that a new HVAC mini-split system for heating & cooling will be installed beginning Monday September 9th! In January, the solar portion of the system will be installed, and EVFAC will be bringing in the new year running on 94% solar! This has been a hefty project to figure out, and we’re very grateful for a generous private donation that enabled us to take this leap!

Announcements

Annual Members Meeting, September 28th, 2024: 12pm

A note from the Board:

Dear Members,

We would like to request your vote on what we will call our dear fiber arts center for the future.

A few years ago, under the last board, the name was voted to be changed from Española Valley Fiber Arts Center to New Mexico Fiber Arts Center. At the time they had opened a store in Santa Fe and were still organizing the state wide Fiber Crawl. While we admire the ambition of those times, we have found that trying to serve the whole state is unsustainable requiring a much larger budget and staff than we have been operating with since COVID. We feel it is more important to focus on education and maintaining our wonderful building in Española. It is the boards opinion that we need to return to our founding principles of serving the Española Valley community. While everyone in New Mexico is welcome to join and participate, it is not in our ability right now to actively serve the entire state. The Board feels strongly that the name in the bylaws should be Española Valley Fiber Arts Center, a name that has an identity related to our location and reach.

Some of our accounts have been changed to New Mexico Fiber Arts Center, but a large portion has not been changed and to do this is very time consuming. We, the current board, and our small staff would prefer to focus on programming, facilities improvements, and many other tasks that would cultivate enrichment for fiber artists in the area; rather than spend lots of time filing documents with a multitude of bureaucratic organizations. We hope you as members agree with this preference as well, as it is more in line with the center's mission statement.

This is a choice that will be decided by a vote of the members.

To be clear, there are two options you can vote for:

A: The center shall be called the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center

B: The center shall be called the New Mexico Fiber Arts Center

Please email your vote to board@nmfiberartscenter.org

We would like all of you to send in your votes by September 28th when we will hold our annual members meeting. If you would prefer to vote in person at the meeting, that is an option as well.

There will be a potluck at noon followed by the meeting starting at 1. This meeting will be in person at the center, as well as on the Zoom platform for remote attendance. To request a Zoom link, please email board@nmfiberartscenter.org and you will be sent the link shortly before the meeting.

Thank you for your continued membership and support of the center.

Sincerely,
The Board

A note from Amanda re: Fall Fiber Fiesta:

Thank you to all those who have registered for Fall Fiber Fiesta 2024. We had an unanticipated fast response to the event registration this year, with all 41 booths being registered and paid for before 3pm on September first. 

While I am excited by the participation, I am saddened we have to turn down artists due to the limited space. We will continue to evaluate our registration process for this event. The first come first serve process is what I have used for the past four years setting up the show, and we have never had more than 41 vendors apply. 

Please bring your thoughts about the Fall Fiber Fiesta event to the member meeting, September 28th (Potluck at 12pm, Meeting at 1pm). 

Again, thank you for all your applications and registrations. If you a vending in the show and can not attend the event, please cancel in a timely fashion. This will allow those on the wait-list to be notified as soon as possible. I hope to see you all at the member meeting on the 28th.

Thank you,

Amanda Speer

EVFAC Education & Media Coordinator

Youth Fiber Studio

Check out our Youth Fiber Studio page, and our UPCOMING Youth Classes! We have some exciting opportunities coming up this fall and beyond. Youth ages 9-14 of all skill levels are welcome to enroll! 

Upcoming Open Classes

Check out this amazing workshop, just added to the EVFAC calendar:

Mineral Hide Tanning with Marissa Sieck

Mineral Hide Tanning with Marissa Sieck

October 19th, 20th, & 21st: 10:30am-5:00pm

Members: $335
Non-Members: $410
Materials Fee (Paid directly to instructor upon arrival): $75

Minimum: 5 Participants
(Class needs 5 students to run, tell your friends!)
Maximum: 9 Participants

Learn to transform a sheep hide using a natural mineral tanning method into a beautiful, soft, cozy sheepskin rug, blanket.. or textile for some future sewing projects! Each student in the workshop will leave the class with a beautiful naturally hand tanned sheepskin!

This workshop is great for hide tanners at all levels, farmers, shepherds, textile artists, bodyworkers, cultural workers, caregivers, Activists, and you! No prior experience or knowledge is necessary.

This is a three day workshop at EVFAC, October 19th-21st, 2024. Leave this workshop with your own beautiful naturally tanned hide!

Food+ Amenities: Please bring your own lunch, snacks supplies, and water bottle!

What to wear: Please check the weather and pack accordingly with lots of layers for the surprise high desert weather patterns! We will be outside for the entire weekend and in the Fiber art center's parking lot, so bring a hat, warm clothes, sunglasses, and sunscreen if needed depending on the expected weather (wear layers!).

You will get intimate with a fresh hide! you might get some hide on you, and you will probably smell a little like that, along with some of your own sweat. Please wear clothes that you don’t mind getting dirty and/or bring an apron. Wear closed toed shoes.

All tools and materials are included with the materials fee. This is a unique opportunity to build community, intimacy with place and ancestors, and land-based embodiment practices.

Accessibility: Part of the work will include being on your hands and knees, using string and needles, working with sharp objects, standing or sitting in a chair for 5+ hours, and repetitive use of arm motions and your full body to soften and work the hide. If you really would like to participate and some of parts explained above sound difficult, please reach out and we can see if we can come up with creative solutions! You can email Marissa with questions at riverinehart@gmail.com

If you would like to bring a friend/partner/family member to help you with your hide throughout the weekend there will be an additional $100 teaching fee. Myself and any helpers at the class will be able to also provide hands on support. This option will be available when registering and paying, see form below.

Marissa Sieck (they/them) is a hide tanner, plant tender, wilderness guide, and soon-to-be therapist. They live and tend to land and a small herd of sheep and goats in southern Tiwa speaking lands of so-called Albuquerque, NM at Chispas Farms, located in the South Valley. Marissa's experience has been guided by grief, love, and longing. They come to this work with deep curiosity and reverence for the animals and the practice of hide tanning. Their way in the world has centered around community, relationships to the human and more than/other than human world, accompaniment, social justice, and care work. Hide tanning has been a teacher in the cycles of life, death, and rebirth and ancestral connection. They love sharing this practice with others in a way that honors their lineages and opens doorways to other ways of being in the world, while also learning the practical and physical skills of transforming skin into textiles.

✴︎ More awesome classes just listed for October and November! Check out our Classes page to register!

At the Center

EVFAC’s Artist of the Month

Meet Trish Spillman

Our newest Artist of the Month needs no introduction: it's the founder of EVFAC herself, Trish Spillman! Trish will be EVFAC'S September and October Artist of the Month and she has a beautiful collection compiled of DECADES of her own handmade works, from embroidery to weavings to gorgeous wreaths on display! For the entire months of September and October you will be able to come into EVFAC to see a sampling of the creative energy that led to her creations and inspired her to start EVFAC back in the 1990s.

The focus of Trish's collection is the sharing of her works with the public but there will be a selection of items available for purchase from her collection available online at our Artist of the Month Collection page.

Artist Statement:

My exhibit is a sampling of the variety of my artwork over the years. The pieces include pictorial rag hangings, rag runners, panty hose rugs, embroidered wall hangings, shawls, towels. felted jewelry, and my newest pinecone wreaths. 

At the age of 10 I did my first weaving. It was a small purse done on a simple cardboard loom for a third grade study of Navajo culture.

75 years later I am still weaving! I have expanded to embroidery, crochet, beading, felting and quilting. Always of great importance to me is use of color and a bit of glitz!

Now my focus is to use a lot of my fabric, yarn, dyes, pantyhose, and beads before I get too old! I am trying to “reuse, recycle, and repurpose.”

I am fortunate to have friends come to my studio weekly to weave and help me with things I can no longer easily do: making warp, tying up looms, helping with dye pots, and using my stash of “stuff”.

I remain a strong supporter of EVFAC, which I founded almost 30 years ago. I hope you enjoy my current work as well as works from the past. - Trish Spillman

EVFAC is proud to highlight and promote our local artisans!

Would you like to be considered for Artist of the Month?

Email Debbie at retail@nmfiberartscenter.org Please include a couple of photos and a brief description of the works/skills you would like to showcase. Selected artists will be featured in our online Artist of the Month Collection and in our storefront window. They will also receive a special commission rate for their month!

Around Town

Check out Tyrrell Tapaha’s show, up through Sunday at The Valley Taos! Tyrrell is a talented young weaver, working with pictorials, text - even a weaving of a cell phone screen - ! A lot of imagination and gumption in this exhibit.

Tyrrell Tapaha (Diné, b. 2001, Goat Springs, AZ) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is centered around weaving, textiles, and fiber arts. Tapaha grew up on the Navajo Nation, where intergenerational pastoral living was handed down through their grandfather, great-grandmother, and other relatives. Working as a sheepherder, Tapaha’s artmaking process begins with the raising of sheep and finishes on the loom. Their textiles are made with raw natural animal and plant fibers, hand-spun and hand-dyed with local flora. Tapaha’s weavings are intimately interwoven with their feelings and memories, illuminating the complexity of their lived experience, the rich history of their community, and imagined futures. Tapaha continues to live and work in the Four Corners region of Dinétah.