Española Valley Fiber Arts Center

Coming into Española from the south, the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center is a small, refurbished adobe building on the right side of the road. Its front wall carries a mural painted in the summer of 2017. The lead artist was Nani Chacon, who brought youth from Española, Ohkay Owingeh, Abiquiu and Ojo Caliente in to paint it with her. The National Endowment for the Arts, the McCune Charitable Foundations and private donors paid for the work. The building stands at 325 South Paseo de Oñate in the town’s historic district. Española lies about 20 miles north of Santa Fe on the banks of the Rio Grande, between Santa Clara Pueblo and Ohkay Owingeh.

The front room holds looms, colored yarns, handmade textiles, books and supplies. Part of the stock is consignment work by member artists, and in 2024 the shop sold $23,266 of it. Debbie Harris has run the shop since 2019. She handles orders, donations and rentals from Thursday through Saturday, with Michelle San Buenaventura as retail assistant. Beyond the shop are the work rooms:

• a remodeled dye kitchen
• a silkscreen studio
• a sewing area with machines and sergers
• a wet-felting machine
• looms of many kinds: walking looms, floor looms, upright tapestry looms, rigid heddle looms and table looms

Members rent the looms for use on the premises. They do not leave the building.

A rag rug in an afternoon

Walk In & Weave is the program most travelers meet. A staff member seats the visitor at a loom and starts a 26-by-36-inch rag rug. No experience is required, and the rug is usually finished in one session of about four hours. The fee is $80 plus materials. Weavers may bring their own upcycled cloth or buy it at the center. The program runs by reservation only. In 2019 Hyperallergic called it the center’s flagship educational program and reported it popular with tourists and locals alike. San Buenaventura is among those who teach it now.

Longer classes are taught by working fiber artists. The October 2026 calendar:

• June Covington, drop spindle and spinning wheel, October 5
• Mary Margaret Archuleta, Intermediate Rio Grande Tapestry Weaving, October 8 to 10
• Dain Daller, Introduction to Multi Harness Weaving, October 15 to 18
• Hilary Lorenz, block-printed textiles, October 23 to 25

Emily Trujillo, whom the center calls an eighth-generation Chimayó weaver, is listed to teach Rio Grande and Chimayó weaving December 10 to 12. In 2024 the center counted 354 students in 69 classes.

Three free groups meet on weekends, open to anyone:

• Spinning Adventures meets the second Saturday of the month, noon to 3. It is led by Glenna Dean of the Abiquiu Dye Studios. Newcomers need no equipment.
• Rigid Heddle Group meets the third Sunday, with Peg Ickes.
• Crochet Club meets the fourth Sunday, with board member Mary Pahl.

Their next meetings were listed for October 10, 18 and 25, 2026.

On most Tuesday mornings for the past nine years, the center has also held a fiber class for adults with disabilities. Member artist Vanessa Harris began it, and Kate Jacobsen now assists. Caregivers from Las Cumbres Community Services bring clients, and on many weeks a dozen or more adults work there, each on a project of their own.

The center organizes the annual Fall Fiber Fiesta, which its history page calls New Mexico’s largest show dedicated solely to the fiber arts for over a decade. The 2024 Fiesta was the largest to date. It spread into the Montezuma Lodge with more than 40 artist-vendors. The center’s events calendar lists the next one for December 4th through 6th.

Production weavers for Chimayó

Some of the people behind the counter learned their trade in these rooms. The Chimayo Weaving Apprenticeship, sponsored by Ariat, teaches production weaving on Spanish floor looms. Classes are held at the Española center. Apprentices are paid hourly through three weeks of classes, then by the piece once they have proved their ability. The pieces are small: 5 by 5, 10 by 10 and 10 by 15 inches. The work is done standing, and the center warns it can be physically taxing. Graduates choose to weave for Trujillo’s Weaving Shop, Ortega’s Weaving Shop or Centinela Traditional Arts in Chimayó.

The first round finished in February 2023. Kim Zitzow, now the center’s director, was in it and weaves for Centinela. The second round took nine apprentices and finished in July 2024. San Buenaventura was one of them. The center’s page states no dates for a 2025 apprenticeship.

Sabina Lovato went to high school in Gallina, where, she writes, “we were the Coronado Leopards.” Her mother wove for many years. Lovato took up weaving through an apprenticeship with Emily Trujillo arranged by the center and is now a production weaver in Chimayó. She teaches rigid heddle weaving at the center’s summer camp. “I am looking forward to learning how to teach this precious knowledge of weaving to our future generations,” she writes.

That camp is the work of the Youth Fiber Studio, which Zitzow directs. It began in 2024 with a four-week camp for 23 young people aged 9 to 15. By the 2026 camp, enrollment ran to ages 10 through 17, and families paid a $25 registration fee with an optional sliding-scale tuition. In one June 2026 class, campers spun and dyed silk and wool with cochineal, madder, osage orange and logwood. The summer closed August 1 with a showcase that included:

• a pizza party from Dion’s
• a live DJ
• a sidewalk sale
• the campers’ weaving, felting and screenprinting on display

The center then announced a pause of about six months in long-term youth programming to repair equipment and write new curriculum.

The board reaches well beyond the valley. Roy Kady is a Diné shepherd, weaver, spinner and dyer from Goats Spring near Teec Nos Pos, Arizona. “My ancestors, grandparents, and my Shimá (Mother) shared with me stories about how weaving was gifted to us in the creation world by Spider Man,” he writes, “by taking the natural elements of the universe to construct the first loom and then teaching his counterpart Spider Woman about weaving a web of life.” Pando Speer, the center’s media and education coordinator, learned to weave at the center in 2013. She now weaves from an earthship home and studio in Abiquiu.

Inherited looms and a church room

The center’s founding is told in two ways. The center’s own history says a small group of weavers started it in 1995 after learning that many Española-area families had inherited looms but knew little of the Northern New Mexico weaving their grandparents had practiced. Hyperallergic’s 2019 account says the founders were Española-area weavers looking for a place to carry on their own families’ traditions. Both agree that teaching began in a local church with donated looms. The center says the church space was donated, while Hyperallergic says it was rented.

The classes outgrew the church. By the center’s account, the group moved to rented space in Española, hired a manager and formally opened for business in October 1996. Hyperallergic places the move to the present location by the end of 1996. Maria Jonsson, now board secretary, has been a member or affiliated with the center, by her own account, since it opened its doors in 1995. On September 17th, 1997, the group incorporated as a nonprofit membership organization. Its stated mission was to preserve and promote Northern New Mexico’s textile heritage through teaching and through training toward economic sustainability in the fiber arts.

The center calls the purchase and restoration of its present building its most important milestone. The Rio Grande Sun followed the money:

• On September 14, 2006, the paper reported a $250,000 federal grant to rehabilitate and open an arts center in Española.
• On October 19, 2006, it reported that the Consortium of Major Los Alamos National Laboratory Subcontractors had approved $20,000 toward the purchase.
• On June 14, 2007, at its annual meeting, the center celebrated a $200,000 grant from the federal Agriculture Department. Executive Director Diane Bowman said the money would go to new exterior stucco and a new roof, among other work.

In those years the center’s leadership also worked with the New Mexico Arts Division on the Fiber Arts Trails and later the New Mexico Fiber Artisans. On September 16, 2017, the center marked its 20th birthday with cake, weaving demonstrations and discounted goods.

The Railyard, the shutdown and the moths

In November 2019 the center opened a second location in Santa Fe’s Railyard District under the name New Mexico Fiber Arts Center. It served chiefly as a retail outpost. Hyperallergic reported that some in Española worried the center was turning toward a more elitist Santa Fe crowd. “We are not abandoning Española in any way,” Executive Director Denielle Rose said. “We want to work deeper in this community.” She said the center had been founded “in a time where fiber arts was in a lull.”

Within months the COVID shutdown closed the Española shop. It reopened July 17th, 2020, open Fridays and Saturdays only. Volunteers had cleaned the building, including getting rid of the moths that had moved in while it was closed. The September 2020 newsletter, signed by board president Sandra Liggett, thanked Rose for working without pay through the shutdown and reported that she was moving on. It said the center’s financial losses meant it could take on no more paid staff for the near future. The same newsletter invited members to look through a binder at the center of photographs from 2006, donated by Jeannette Flamm.

By 2024 the director was full-time, the retail manager’s hours had been increased and a part-time associate had been hired, and all three received basic benefits. In July 2026 the center was named to the first cohort of the Craft Catalyst Initiative, run by the Center for Craft and Etsy, with an unrestricted grant of $100,000.