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My Visit to the Chavez Family
Tricia Goldberg
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I first met three members of this rug weaving family—Federico, his son Eric, and his daughter, Janet—in April, when they came to San José, California, with an exhibition of their work at the San José Museum of Quilts and Textiles. ...my friend Deborah Corsini, the museum’s curator, talked enthusiastically about a family of traditional Zapotec weavers who would be bringing their rugs to the museum... About two months later, my husband, two daughters, and I found ourselves in Teotitlán del Valle, a two-bus, twenty mile trip from Oaxaca, the capital of the state of Oaxaca.
Eric Chavez has dedicated himself to reviving and maintaining centuries-old traditions of natural dyeing. As Federico wove and Janet wound bobbins, Eric explained how indigo produces many shades of blue and cochineal yields various reds, pinks, purples, and oranges.
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below: Janet winding yarns
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below: Eric Chavez shows some of the colors that can come from cochineal. Adding lime juice makes orange; baking soda turns it purple.
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Federico’s rugs are often rooted in the indigenous Zapotec traditions of geometric, loom-controlled patterns, but increasingly they contain his own, more personal, experimental designs based on images from nature as well as motifs from Zapotec mythology. He stands at his loom, operating its two pedals with one foot. He uses plain, straight wooden bobbins and packs the weft with a simple plastic comb.
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below: Tapestry rug with cochineal dyes
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Janet ...told us she hoped ...to participate in a celebration a week later, in which she and other women would parade through the town in traditional costumes, carrying ornate canastas (baskets) on their heads holding saint’s images.
...She modeled the costume for us—a long, wrap-around wool skirt (dyed and woven by Federico) and an elaborately embroidered floral blouse—and before our eyes she changed from a modern young woman in jeans to a traditional Zapotecan maiden.
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Below: Janet Chavez in the procession of the canastas in Teotitlán (Norma Hawthorne at left)
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We had also decided to purchase a small rug that we had admired on Federico’s loom …We value our rug for its beauty and as a link to the Chavez family and the art of Oaxaca.
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left: Federico cuts our rug from his loom
below: Federico, Tricia, and Eric
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Scheuer Tapestry Studio: Tapestry as Collaborative Art
By Ruth Dundas (formerly Scheuer)
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It was my intention to start a tapestry studio for artists to learn to work collaboratively in this very slow paced medium where thorough technical training would yield much more exciting work than the separation of the weaver and designer had in France. After helping Jean Pierre Larochette to found his San Francisco Tapestry Workshop with Phoebe McAfee and Ernestine Bianchi in 1977, and after finishing the first American apprenticeship at the Gobelins Tapestry Manufactures in Paris in 1980, I opened the doors of the Scheuer Tapestry Studio in Greenwich Village in New York City in 1982. The first apprentices were Beverly Godfrey, Mary Lane and Susan Fuerth.
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below: The Scheuer Tapestry Studio, 1985
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...many other artist-weavers completed the apprenticeship program and went on to work on tapestries for the Scheuer Tapestry Studio. Joyce Hulbert, Mindy Passow, Deborah Hildreth, Deborah Gordon, Ilona Mack Pachler, Susan Giller, Eve Alexander, Susan Martin Maffei, Jennifer Sargent, Susan Minnich, Lee Hogan, Jiwon Hahn, Tracey Sellers and Grace Liddy all worked on tapestries for various projects and were credited with weaving, and in some cases, designing tapestries for the Studio.
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below: The Scheuer Tapestry Studio Weavers, 1984.
Bottom row left to right: Mindy Passow, Ilona Pachler, Deborah Hildreth, Ruth Scheuer
Back row left to right: Tracy Sellers, Deborah Gordon, Mary Lane, Beverly Godfrey, Susan Minnich, Joyce Hulbert
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Once the apprentices were trained, we needed to take on commission work from private and corporate sources in order to be able to weave tapestries large enough to support our studio approach. We completed about 70 tapestries in seven years for many clients... Our themes also came from our urban environment. Typical examples are the private commissions, “View from London Terrace” showing the skyline of New York’s London Terrace with a mille-fleurs background and "Queensborough Bridge."
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below: The Scheuer Tapestry Studio, "View from London Terrace", 1988
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below: The Scheuer Tapestry Studio, "Queensborough Bridge", 1985
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My own work dealt with the many-layered aspects of urban isolation, often with photographic reflections such as in the “Narcissus” series where a series of young urban men portray the legend of Narcissus. I was touched by the way that people in New York lived behind glass – meeting, overlapping and touching each other’s lives without leaving a trace. “The Messenger,” woven by Beverly Godfrey was one of a series of people behind glass.
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below: The Scheuer Tapestry Studio, "Narcissus – 3", 1990
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below: The Scheuer Tapestry Studio, "The Messenger", 1987 woven by Beverly Godfrey
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“The Urban Chase” was our most extreme example of collaboration. It was an answer to the “objectivity” of photo-realism. Four weavers took one of my photographs of taxis reflected in the tripled paned windows of Balduccis and cut it into four parts. Beverly Godfrey, Deborah Hildreth, Susan Martin Maffei and I all did separate “interpretations” of the same image, which we then wove independently. When the four-part work was reassembled, it was an affirmation of the individuality of vision. Although the lines of the work made the image readable as one, each section was radically different in the way it was seen and portrayed by the artist. This throws out the window the idea that a photograph depicts reality.
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below: The Scheuer Tapestry Studio, "Taxis: Urban Chase", 1985; woven by Beverly Gdfrey, Deborah Hildreth, Susan Martin Maffei, and Ruth Dundas, (previously Scheuer)
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