Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.

THIS TIME, ON COLORES!

EIGHTH-GENERATION CHIMAYO WEAVER EMILY TRUJILLO SHARES WHAT SHE LOVES ABOUT WEAVING AND WHY SHE'S DEDICATED TO KEEPING THIS TRADITION ALIVE.

THE INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN INDIAN ARTS "MAKING HISTORY" SERIES CONCLUDES WITH YUPIK PHOTOGRAPHER AND TEXTILE ARTIST GOLGA OSKAR.

WORKING TO REVITALIZE TRADITIONAL LANGUAGE, DANCE, AND ATTIRE, HE HAS BEEN A CATALYST IN SHARING YUPIK CULTURE WITH THE WORLD.

TOLD THROUGH 50 QUILTS, THE JAMES MUSEUM OF WESTERN AND WILDLIFE ART'S EXHIBITION WEAVES RICH TALES OF AFRICAN AMERICANS' JOURNIES AND LEGACIES IN THE WEST.

"THE TUDORS: ART AND MAJESTY IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND" EXHIBITION OFFERS A DEEP DIVE INTO THE INTRICATE LIVES OF ENGLAND'S ROYALTY..

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES!

A TRADITION'S SURVIVAL >> Faith Perez: Can you tell me about the weaving you brought with you?

>> Emily Trujillo: Okay, so, this is a weaving that I did yesterday and it is a basic Chimayo.

So, this is the kind of piece that I teach people how to weave and this is, um, not pressed yet.

So it'll look a little a little flatter.

It'll be a nice pretty little art piece.

>> Faith Perez: Yeah, I saw a lot of your students holding um, weavings that were like, the same as size this.

>> Emily Trujillo: This is a very traditional Chimayo weaving, except it's actually a little bit modern because I added, it's not perfectly symmetrical.

>> Faith Perez: Yeah, I love the colors too.

>> Emily Trujillo: Thanks.

It's actually all naturally dyed.

So this is a natural sheep color.

This is cochineal, and this is indigo.

And then this is Madder Root.

So this was just last year.

We dye yarn, and so I know how to do natural dyes.

And that's something that I want to teach as well.

[Music] >> Faith Perez: What do you love about weaving?

>> Emily Trujillo: I really love the process.

I love the history behind it.

I love the fact that it's a part of my family and it just makes me feel connected to other people and my ancestors, and just my culture.

When I was learning how to weave, my dad's loom was right next to my loom, and we'd weave together and we'd listen to music together and we'd joke together.

And it was a very precious time for me.

So I kind of miss the days when I was in my apprenticeship.

But it was very beautiful.

And I've met a lot of really wonderful people.

I've had a lot of really great opportunities.

I love my students and I love seeing them continue.

So to me it's a way to build a community and talk to more people and connect with people as well.

>> Faith Perez: What was it like watching your mom and dad weave, 'cuz they're both weavers, right?

>> Emily Trujillo: Yes.

I took it for granted absolutely.

I didn't really appreciate how hard it was.

Um, but it was really, um, it was a really beautiful thing, I think, watching them make these patterns.

So I think watching was, it taught me a lot about how to make patterns and weave myself, before I actually wove.

[Music] >> Faith Perez: You've said every person weaves from a personal experience.

What's some personal experiences that you weave from?

>> Emily Trujillo: New Mexico has always been a big part of my identity.

I absolutely love it here.

I love the people.

I love the landscapes.

I love the culture.

So I decided to weave.

This is a modern Saltillo, in the sense that it has Saltillo motifs, such as the center design and the border.

But the background is actually a New Mexico landscape.

The top of the piece is a thunderbird.

So, I had that kind of traditional concept watching over New Mexico from the skies.

And then the hourglass in the center is actually the timelessness.

So it's kind of a symbol indicating the timelessness of New Mexico.

[Music] >> Faith Perez: You weave a lot of what you love into... >> Emily Trujillo: Yes.

What I, the thing about weaving is it takes so long that if you're going to weave something, you have to love it or it's the worst.

>> Faith Perez: So how do you then combine the traditional with contemporary?

>> Emily Trujillo: One thing you consistently see in a lot of traditional pieces is there's a lot of symmetry.

I love to play with asymmetry, which is a little unusual.

And also, I do a lot of combining of different shapes and motifs.

The standard Chimayo colors, the traditional Chimayo colors are red black and white.

And I'll do like neon.

There's this bright neon pink, which isn't very popular 'cuz a lot of people don't buy it.

You have to have like, a specific audience.

It's like, I love that screaming pink.

But, I found this box of yarn in the back of the shop and I was like, "Oh my god.

This is my favorite color.

I'm going to weave with this."

And my dad was like, "Oh cerise.

Nobody buys cerise."

So, I waited for him to go to lunch and I made an entire skein's worth of spools.

So he couldn't tell me "no", because that would take so much time.

There was no point.

It was a waste of time.

So, I wove half a piece while he was gone and then he came back and he couldn't tell me to unweave it because it was already there.

So, I finished it and I called it "Can You Take Me Seriously Now Dad?"

And um, just to be a brat.

Because I'm the youngest daughter.

I have to.

And it sold immediately.

And I went and I was like, "High-five dad.

You'll never guess what's sold."

And he just reluctantly like, gave me a high-five.

Just like, "Ugh.

Why?"

And uh, no one has ever questioned me using that bright pink since.

>> Faith Perez: Why do you think this tradition is being lost?

>> Emily Trujillo: So, if you ask the locals, there's a lot of different reasons why.

They'll tell you because kids would rather play video games or they just didn't want to.

Or, you know, some of the older, older folk will say that they're lazy, which is not really the case.

Um, I personally think it's because it is not an instant gratification type of art.

And then, also another thing is, it's not necessary anymore.

One thing is that trade has always been, it was a very lucrative way of making a living.

Like even during the Great Depression, it was helping people survive.

So, you kind of see that in older generations of like my grandpa's age, where it was such an important part of their way of life.

It's not as relevant to our livelihood anymore.

>> Faith Perez: Well how do you see the future of Chimayo weaving?

>> Emily Trujillo: To be honest, uh, that's very unclear.

Because, it really depends on if people take interest.

The more exposure we get and the more people get interested, I think the better chance we have of helping it survive.

I just don't know what's going to happen.

But I'm going to try and save it.

I'm going to try and really get us out there so people know what we're doing and know what we're about.

So that kids at least know about us.

>> Faith Perez: Why is it important for you to save this tradition?

>> Emily Trujillo: So, this tradition has been around for a very, very long time.

It is important to my family.

I am an eighth generation weaver, if that tells you anything about how important it is to me.

And if you've ever studied New Mexico history, it's actually, in my personal opinion, quite important.

It's a part of our history.

It's a part of our culture.

It's even if it's just this one little rural town, it's still important.

Like, don't discredit it.

CARA ROMERO I'm gonna be in the photo and they are going to be pressing the button and they're going to help us.

You guys come forward a little bit.

GOLGA OSCAR My Yup'ik name is Qukailnguq and I'm from Kasigluk, Alaska which is located in the southwest.

I really didn't know anyone around here.

I was really nervous to travel because it was my first time going out of state.

I didn't go out of the state until the age of eighteen because, you know financial situations are so hard back home.

When I first got to IAIA I had to open myself up to communicate and get to know everyone.

I do a lot of mixed media which range from photography to textile work.

So, my textile work focuses on my culture, and I do a lot of beadwork, and within photography I focus on indigenous portraits.

More on indigenous concepts of capturing the identity behind the person.

So, I started my sewing career back in high school - my freshman year.

One of my first projects were "cangsuat", little objects that were easy to make.

I started a year later to make - to progress more to bigger items - bigger attire.

And then from there it just kept going and going, until I got to IAIA.

That's when I started to explore different formats and begin to challenge myself to create something unique.

IAIA inspired me to regain my indigenous identity, because back home its really westernized.

Nowadays, indigenous communities are assimilated to Christianity.

So, for me, coming down here, seeing other indigenous tribes, it was really inspiring for me to pursue what being indigenous really means to Natives like me.

So then from there, IAIA really inspired me to pursue identity and I started to explore different formats of attire.

Especially those who are really assimilated to western knowledge - western culture.

I really want to indigenize the space in order for the next generation to inspire the further oncoming generation.

I really want a majority of my generation to my next generations to regain their identity and to see Native identity as an important aspect of today's society.

Once you really get into that world of indigeneity, it's really unique.

I'm like, revitalizing a majority of my ancestral work because no one back in my community creates them anymore.

No one explores what I do.

For me growing up, my grandma, even my mother, always share your knowledge with everyone, you know like even when you're out of your village, or when you're out in the world.

(singing) Everyone is thirsty for knowledge, like seeing other environments and how culturally different it all is.

As you keep traveling, as you keep going with life, you know life wasn't meant to be in one spot.

Life is meant to explore the outer world, like, make change, you know, and be part of the change.

Especially when it comes to indigenous communities.

UNRAVELING HISTORY Emily Kapes: This exhibition is "Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American West," and it explores the path of Black history in our country for hundreds of years through quilts.

There are 50 quilts in this exhibition, and all of them are very different because they're by almost as many artists.

Each quilter took a topic that was compiled by the curator, Carolyn Mazloomi, and she's the founder of the Women of Color Quilters Network.

And so, all of these quilters are part of that organization, and they rose to the occasion in an amazing way.

A lot of the quilts explore the 1800s and that was a real boon for settlement in the West.

Former enslaved people saw an opportunity to live in the West because there was the chance of less oppression, there was more opportunity, and they really wanted to expand and grow their communities.

Each quilt highlights either an individual or a group or an event in history.

About a quarter of cowboys were black.

This quilt features Bill Pickett, and he was known for inventing steer wrestling called bulldogging.

He just is a wonderful addition to the show because he really represents those Texas cowboys.

This quilt features Abby Fisher, and she was an accomplished businesswoman and she even wrote one of the very first cookbooks by a Black woman.

She started as an enslaved person in South Carolina and eventually made her way to successful businesswoman in California in the 1870s.

I think this quilt is one of the most amazing in the show.

The depth that the artist was able to get where it really looks 3D is amazing.

This story tells the horrific events surrounding the Tulsa Massacre.

This massacre happened in 1921.

The goal of the Tulsa attackers was to find any reason to whip out and destroy the wealth of this self- made black community that had become extremely prosperous.

It was known as Black Wall Street.

The details here are really incredible.

All of the fabric is layered in a way that looks sculptural.

There's so many emotions that I think of when I, I look at this.

It's a story that is worth remembering and worth acknowledging, and that is relevant today.

The quilters for this exhibition come from all over the country.

There's even one from the Tampa Bay area.

Gwendolyn A. Brooks' quilt is right behind me.

Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks: My name is Gwendolyn Aqui- Brooks and I live in Wesley Chapel, Florida.

I didn't really grow up quilting and there was no one in my family, as far as I know, that was a quilter.

I picked it up as an adult.

I'm self-taught and all of my quilts are hand-sewn.

In addition to being a quilter, I'm also a mixed media artist.

I also write.

I do author books and I'm also a printmaker.

The quilt is about a teacher by the name of Mrs. Floyd.

She grew up in Massachusetts.

She had a son named Oliver.

They went to San Francisco, California.

She tried to enroll her son in school.

And when she got there, she found out because he was African American that she could not enroll him in school.

She went to church, African Methodist Church, and the people there gave her money for a school.

In that school, she not only had African American students, she had Native American as well as Asian children.

It took me over a year to create this quilt.

Emily Kapes: I love the color.

So, the patchwork, the fabric selection and all of the unconventional materials from the lace to the pair of glasses.

I think once seeing this exhibition, visitors are going to think of quilts even more elevated than they might today.

Darlene Williams: It's amazing.

Each quilt telling a story about their life.

Ralph Sharpe: The time involved to put it all together and their ability to put it into a quilt, it's like somebody with their paintbrush and being able to do it on a cloth is just amazing.

Darlene Sharpe: You look back to these very difficult times and you see what they went through and how they persevered through it.

Stephanie McNeal: I am here with my girlfriends for our annual girls trip.

We graduated from Atlanta University and we have been taking a vacation together for, this is our 31st year.

We like to do something cultural in every city that we visit.

The history that's here and just the ingenuity of Black people was just amazing to me.

I grew up in a small town in Arkansas.

It was not taught.

So, we didn't learn anything about African Americans in the West, period.

Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks: I never learned about it in school either and that was very interesting to do the research and to find out about these people in the West and their actual contributions that they made.

Emily Kapes: There's such different perspectives that are important to share, and you don't always find them in traditional art history.

And I think it just adds to The James Museum experience of really showing different perspectives of the West.

TRANSCENDING TIME The luxury on view in the galleries is by design, as the Tudors intended to send a message with their art.

The Tudors had a legitimacy issue.

You know, it wasn't without question that Henry the seventh should be king.

And so, as someone who was trying to project legitimacy.

Art is an incredibly powerful tool.

Unlike royal life today, the grandeur of these portraits, armor and furnishings wouldn't have all been seen by everyday people back in the 1500s.

In fact, much of this collection, hasn't been widely seen.

This is a really rare opportunity to see a lot of works.

We have dozens of lenders to this exhibition, over 90 works of art, and a lot of the loans are coming from collections in England.

So, they're coming from the royal collection, they're coming from the Victoria and Albert Museum, churches in France, in Belgium, they are coming from Vienna, all over the world.

The Tudors' rein started in the late 1400s and includes the infamous Henry VIII, known for his many wives, including two he had killed.

This dynasty also gave way to England's first ruling queens Mary and Elizabeth.

Mary and Elizabeth really had to rewrite the playbook for Queenship in portraits by the time Elizabeth becomes queen.

She has a number of options at her disposal.

And we see the first in the Hampton portrait where she's holding the carnation.

She's a marriageable beauty.

She's set against this elaborate backdrop of fruit and flowers, suggesting her fecundity, fertility, the potential heir that might be the product of this union.

And she's around 34 when that portrait's painted, and she has recently become queen.

So, then we move forward a few years or decades.

And by the time she's in her fifties, she's still unmarried and she really embraces the cult of virginity.

So, she's basically saying, "All right, I've looked at the market.

I don't see anything that's for me out there."

Instead, she decides that she will stay a virgin queen.

And in that sense, she's married to her people.

While these portraits may captivate people today, back in Renaissance England the tapestries would have claimed the spotlight.

"We have two textiles that come from the field of the cloth of gold, which is a historical event in 1520, where Henry the eighth, met his rival, King Francis, the first.

And we know that Henry the eighth, who was a very substantial, large, muscular, six foot two, we think, man And Francis, the first was a bit on the slimmer side.

Henry really underscored this point by arriving the first day, dressed or undressed, as the case may be, as Hercules.

And so, from there on, they basically brought together some of the most sumptuous tapestries.

A lot of the tapestries that were present there were actually woven with gold thread, which is why the event took the name the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

So the cope, which is a liturgical vestment that we have in the exhibition and the tapestry that shows the creation and the fall of man, which is one of the series of ten, are both woven with gold thread and were present at this event.

The importance of the textile art of this period can be understood today by taking a closer look at some of the royal portraits.

Each of the portraits is really also kind of an essay in embroidery, in tapestry, in these luxurious textiles.

So, you might be looking at a portrait of a queen, and she's standing on a Turkish carpet against a cloth of gold hanging, wearing, you know, elaborate gold network, wearing incredibly elaborate embroidery.

And so, I think when you have the sense of the textile as being really the star of the collection, and then the fact that it's featured in a portrait, is the sitter telling you something about what they value and how many resources they have.

The artists creating these works also angled for status.

One example of this is with the portrait of Henry's VIII only son, Edward VI, as a baby.

We know that he was a really frail child, but you would not get that sense from the portrait where he looks like the image of his father, really.

He's a very robust, healthy baby holding a rattle as if it were a scepter.

And this, we know, was a gift that was given by the artist Hans Holbein to Henry the Eighth.

And what better way to curry favor with your major patron than to give him a portrait of his long-awaited male heir?

We also know that Holbein, in exchange, was given a Gold Cup and cover because that kind of gesture would not go unrewarded.

Another portrait in the exhibition carries both significance and mystery.

Seen here is Abd al- Wahid visiting Queen Elizabeth to perhaps discuss trade, or, more discretely, an alliance against Spain.

The idea of an ambassador from Morocco traveling that kind of distance in 1600 and speaking face to face with Queen Elizabeth is really incredible.

It's also the first portrait of a Muslim person painted in England that we know of, so incredibly fascinating and amazing picture to have on loan.

The impressive works in "The Tudors: Arts and Majesty in Renaissance England" may seem like truly from another world.

But arguably there are still ways to relate to these works, now hundreds of years old.

One of the fascinations with royalty now comes from the idea of celebrity.

And royals are so much in the news and, you know, part of, part of, you know, social media and conversations that we have and the kind of entertainment venue that I think it's easy for us to enter into that kind of spirit when we're looking at these figures.

But, also you can think about the more kind of human aspect of the story.

For instance, the idea of you're losing a mother in a young age, or the idea of trying to reinvent yourself, the stress of, you know, I think that Elizabeth had of being the queen and trying to convince people that she wasn't an impostor.

She had the knowledge, she had the intellect, she had the power to be in that role.

I think those are the kinds of things that a lot of us can identify with.

No matter what your status is, that struggle for legitimacy and that desire to be understood and remembered is something that transcends time.

The award-winning arts and culture series ¡COLORES!

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Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.