Where is your studio?
It’s in my family home in New Mexico. Being at home is my favorite: I have a small woven runner placed on the dresser right next to where I work. The weaving is one of my grandmother’s pieces—she wove it when she was about 14, so the piece is roughly 94 years old. My grandmother and her sisters were weavers, and my dad used to build looms in the ’70s for hippies who were coming through Taos.
The runner has always been in the house but recently has become something I cherish. It’s a little daily reminder [of my grandmother and our family lineage of weavers].
When did you start weaving?
Back in 2017, I was living in New York and working in fashion. I had just gotten laid off, so I came home for a little bit to regroup. During that time, [I visited] one of my friends, who was working on a farm in the La Madera playas. He had Churro sheep, which are some of the oldest sheep in New Mexico. One day when I was helping him in the field, one of the sheep crossed through a barbed-wire fence, and a huge piece of wool was on the barbed wire. My friend said, “You just roll it on your hands or on your pants, and it spins it into a little piece of yarn.” So I did that, and I liked the feel of it. I created a makeshift loom and made a coaster.
This interview appears in Issue 33 of Alta Journal.
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What materials do you use?
I get my wool from a couple of local ranchers. I will also go down to Mora, New Mexico, and see what they have, as well as Española Valley Fiber Arts Center, because they also work with a lot of ranchers who produce Churro wool.
What’s your daily routine?
I’ll wake up, make a pot of coffee, and answer a couple of emails. While I’m drinking coffee, I’ll be doing sketches. I’ll head to the loom and work on whatever current project, weaving for three to four hours. I’ll usually take a break in the afternoon, weave a couple more hours in the afternoon, and then make dinner. After sunset, I’ll switch over to more of the fashion aspect of the studio: making patterns and samples and producing orders.
How do you find inspiration?
A lot of my fashion and weaving collections are telling stories of my family history and its relation to New Mexican history. I’ll try to develop those ideas into physical objects. How do you take a story and make it into a tangible object? As I’m weaving and the pieces are coming to life, I start developing new ideas, and the wool, the fabrics, start talking to me.•
Steven Vargas is an actor, a dancer, and a journalist based in Los Angeles whose work focuses on the intersections of media, social justice, and performance. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, E! News, USA Today, Dance Magazine, ARTnews, and more. He runs an independent weekly newsletter, LA Art Spot.
