Teaching a Lost Art

The country’s oldest Madonna will don a custom-made cape and gown embroidered in a tangle of cornflowers just in time for Spanish Market.

The miniature costume crowns the career of designer and seamstress Julia Gomez. The traditional colcha embroiderer says it means more than the blizzard of awards and honors she has received over a 20-year pursuit.

Franciscan friars brought the statue of La Conquistadora (Our Lady of Conquering Love) to Santa Fe in 1625. A diva with her own chapel, she reigns inside the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis.

“She has 200 dresses,” Gomez said. “People have been making her dresses forever. She has silks and satins and fabrics from all over the world, so I was very intimidated. What could I make that was special?”

So Gomez hand-spun, wove and embroidered the ensemble from churro sheep wool she helped shear at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, the 18th cen- tury Spanish Colonial living history museum south of Santa Fe.

Gomez is one of 15 fiber artists still working in colcha, the traditional Spanish Colonial embroidery technique, at Spanish Market, slated for this weekend. A free Contemporary Spanish Market will wind around the Plaza’s side streets.

About 250 local Hispanic artists will sell santos, religious paintings on deer or elk hide, straw applique, tinwork, ironwork and textiles at the largest exhibition of traditional Hispanic art in the United States.

A retired home economics teacher and history buff, Gomez takes this traditional stitchery back to the flock of churro sheep grazing at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, where she teaches children about this hand-woven, hand-spun art. She also teaches colcha at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art.

In danger of becoming a dying art as recently as five years ago, colcha has seen a revival, thanks to prominent award-winners like Gomez, museum classes and school workshops, said Pat Price, education curator at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art.

“It’s something like a quilting bee,” Price said with a laugh. “We sit on the banco of the portal so we can answer visitors’ questions.”

Gomez provides the materials to newcomers, including her own hand-spun and dyed yarns.

“She shows them the stitch,” Price added. “She has patterns they can copy.”

“We share ideas and we have a show and tell,” Price continued. “We have a lady that comes all the way from Albuquerque.”

The club started with two members two years ago; today, it includes up to 10 embroiderers. Last winter, the women taught the stitch at A.J. Martinez Elementary School.

“It’s a little hard for third-graders,” Price said. “Some of them struggled with it. Some children at that age have trouble threading a needle. She has a little needle threader that she calls ‘the cheater.’ I think the kids love that name.”

Gomez hand-spins and weaves the yarn using natural dyes simmered and soaked from native New Mexico plants. Onion skin produces gold; chamisa makes the yellow. Madder root turns orange, while green leaches from wild spinach. The cochineal insect, which feasts on prickly pear, produces the rich reds so critical to traditionally embroidered flowers. Gomez weaves the background cloth or sabanilla, sometimes washing it in yucca root to soften its naturally coarse texture.

Evidence of Gomez’s passion for her art adorns her Santa Fe home. Colcha pieces hang from her walls, framed by tin crosses and wood; tucked inside plastic storage bins and hiding under the bed. Skeins of wool provide the centerpiece in a dining room basket blooming a galaxy of hues. When you talk to Gomez, you can tell she is as love with the history as she is with the fiber.

She learned the stitching technique from Monica Sosaya Halford, then teaching at the Museum of International Folk Art. Similar to the couching stitch of English embroidery, colcha is a long stitch held down by small diagonal tacking. The technique leaves little yarn on the back aside from a shadow outline. There are no knots.

“In the colonial days, they didn’t have much yarn to waste,” Gomez explained. Women “brought the religion, and they always stole some time to do an altar cloth or a religious image. They had lived in Spain and Mexico, where there was beautiful embroidery.”

The colcha stitch is unique to colonial New Mexico, where supplies were scarce.

“There was a short period when they were shearing the sheep and spinning the wool,” Gomez continued. “After the Santa Fe Trail opened, they could trade for commercial wool.”

Gomez stitches traditional designs of flowers, leaves and animals across hand-woven cloths, baptismal shawls and wall hangings. She embroiders in the doctor’s office, at the bank and while waiting at the pharmacy. She embroidered up and down the Camino Real while she was riding a tour bus. At home, she embroiders while she listens to 1950s rock, Spanish radio or watches the History Channel.

Her most striking work conveys a personal touch. She embroidered a table scarf for her only daughter Sarahmaria. In the center, birds circle a baptismal font, with lilacs, Rocky Mountain iris, morning glories and hollyhocks sprouting from the corners. The traditional Spanish birthday song “Las Mañanitas” served as the catalyst, especially the second verse: “On the day you were born, all the flowers were born/And at the baptismal font the nightingales sang.”

Other pieces depict New Mexico themes: she’s stitched the birds of New Mexico, the butterflies and the flowers. Research is half the fun.

“Last night, I was looking up morning glories,” Gomez said. “They’re from Mexico. The Aztecs used to use them to talk to the sun gods.”

She’s still working on a wall hanging of Our Lady of the Assumption, inspired by a painting of the same name at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. The penned outlines of angels still await her needle and fuzzy yarn.

“It’s really hard to gauge the amount of time (spent on each piece) because I go from one thing to another because I get bored,” she said.

A nonstop engine of creative combustion, Gomez wants to pen a coloring book on her butterfly table scarf theme. A doctor has asked her to design a wall hanging for a cancer center.

She injects historical anecdotes into the conversation like a sports fan spouts statistics.

Don Juan de Oñate came through New Mexico trailing 7,000 animals; 4,000 of these were sheep, she said.

“I have a need to teach the history,” she said. “It’s not my art; it was passed onto me and my job is to pass it on.”

If You Go

WHAT: 57th annual Traditional Spanish Market
WHEN: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
WHERE: The Plaza
COST: Free
CONTACT: 982-2226