¿Sabe cómo puede pedir ayuda de Dios pero a veces llega en una forma tan inesperada que no lo reconoce? Este ya pasó conmigo. You can read about it all here, after I get back. Then I am coming home to resume (with friends) the work of trying to create a new category of visa for artisans who want to travel from all over the world to the US to share their traditions and their art forms, an Artisan Visa that at the moment does not exist. (Watch their blog for that!) After that I will be going to El Paso, where I will spend three weeks volunteering with Annunciation House (.org), a shelter and assist for refugees coming into the country, some of whom are Mayan weavers. In ten days I will be flying to Colorado to join the celebration of Schacht Spindle Company’s 50 th Anniversary, half a century of making equipment for spinners and weavers. But blogs are supposed to be short, so this is all I will say for now. There is a lot more I would say about weaving and weavers, schools and museums, international cooperation… And I will, until I die. And if they have had a chance to try their hand at a backstrap loom, double that sentiment. Having spent the past 20 years taking weavers to the markets here to see and buy Guatemalan textiles, I can tell you that most want to raise the price, not lower it. In the end, the weaver ends up with pennies. Someone who has no clue about how cloth is made may well bargain hard, reducing the price as much as possible, and sadly, sometimes with really bad manners. And I know that an informed buyer will not argue price. Now I live in Guatemala, where many weavers want and/or need to sell their work. The hard part is deciding what to do! So many ideas, so many great textiles, colors, patterns, and messages - inspiration abounds. The more one learns of any kind of weaving, the better weaver she or he will be. We take classes (workshop junkies, we fondly call ourselves), study weaving books, travel to textile cultures all over the world, go to museums with textile collections, and in every way we can think of, eagerly absorb all of the textile knowledge we can. What are all those sticks for?!?!įor those who do decide to become weavers, the hundreds or thousands I have known have all been hungry to learn all they can. I do not think that everyone needs to be a weaver, but the more people who can sit with a loom for just a few minutes the better. In addition, that knowledge can lead to a greater environmental awareness, which is increasingly important. Certainly knowing how to weave leads to greater enjoyment of any textile, and there is more understanding and appreciation of what goes into textile arts. I believe that the more people understand sources, the better off everyone will be. Weavers, on the other hand, do know how cloth comes into being, and why that matters. It’s all around us, and they have very little sense of how it got to us. But rather than argue, I prefer to share some of my own “manifesto” about weaving, what I believe after 40+ years of teaching weaving and 20 years of working with Mayan weavers.įirst, for most people, cloth, like air or water, is taken for granted. There are many things to disagree with in that statement, including that it is not the opinion of all Maya, many of whom work with the museum. This was a comment on a Facebook page in response to a story about teaching backstrap weaving in a museum in Guatemala. This is folklore-ization and appropriation. Neither are they contributing to the rescue or maintenance the Mayan communities are striving for because their weaving classes are for foreigners and non-Mayan Guatemalans. What this museum does is earn money using the identity of the Mayan community because they exhibit the collective knowledge of our communities, and without our consent. It is not necessary to learn to weave to value the science and art of weaving. (Para español busca Todos Deberían Aprender a Tejer, otro post.) A weaver from up north learning about Mayan weaving.
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