Sunday Visit: Porfirio Gutiérrez & The Responsibility of Tradition

This week for Sunday Visit , we catch up with Porfirio Gutiérrez, a Contemporary Zapotec American textile artist based in Ventura, California, and Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca. Porfirio Gutiérrez comes from a long line of traditional Zapotec weavers, and his art practice remains dedicated to the deep knowledge and spiritual dimensions of his ancestors. He uses traditional Zapotec knowledge of dyes and materials and reinterprets Zapotec weaving language to create pieces that speak to his creative vision of the complexity of the Americas. The story of his art has been told in The New York Times, PBS, and the BBC … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Harvard’s Forbes Pigment Collection

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with the Forbes Pigment Collection director Narayan Khandekar. Narayan is the director of Harvard’s Straus Center and the senior conservation scientist, who oversees the Forbes Pigment Collection. Watch the video recording here: The Forbes Pigment Collection is an assemblage of more than 2,700 pigments (and counting!)—is in active use by conservation scientists at the museums, who rely on the samples for testing and as reference materials in the analytical laboratory. For that reason, most of the collection can be glimpsed only from outside the glass-walled Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. Former Fogg Museum … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: A Verb For Keeping Warm

This week, we’ve got video from our live FEEDBACK FRIDAY featuring A Verb For Keeping Warm owner/founders Kristine Vejar and Adrienne Rodriguez. You might know Kristine from her book The Modern Natural Dyer. Watch the video recording here: RESOURCES: AVKW offers the following weekly meetups: + Wednesdays, noon-1pm PST – Verb Broadcast – showcasing items new to our shop as well as newly completed projects made with materials from Verb + Thursdays, noon-1pm PST – Maker’s Help – have questions about natural dyeing, knitting, sewing, etc? Come on over and trouble-shoot! + Fridays, 5-6:30pm – Maker’s Meetup – a casual … Read more