Question: What is the difference between Artist and Artisan?
Are artisans also artists? This is a question that has been ruminating in my mind for a while now. It was triggered again recently when I attended the Weave a Real Peace (WARP) conference in...
Jump into the magic of Oaxaca, Mexico, from January 11 to 17, 2025. During this six-night, seven-day immersion tour you will discover (almost) everything this UNESCO World Heritage city has to offer. You will take...
10/30/24 Day of the Dead Tour in Oaxaca: Hands-on Bucket-List Experience
On October 30, 2024, we give you a wide-ranging, immersion Day of the Dead experience of a lifetime! Construct a Day of the Dead Altar. Participate in a workshop using wild marigold botanical dyes. Savor...
Just a brief note to tell you why I haven’t been writing lately. I’m in Denver and go into a surgical procedure this afternoon at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center to repair L4-L5 vertebrae...
Zinacantan + San Juan Chamula, Chiapas: Magic Towns
My friend Chris Clark writes a blog called Color in the Streets. It is her musings about living on Lake Chapala, Jalisco, and visiting many regions around Mexico during the last six years since she...
Join us in Oaxaca from December 6 to 14, 2024, for a spectacular insider’s view of the textile culture and history of this World Heritage colonial city. We have created this experience in collaboration with...
Last Tuesday I drove from Taos to Denver through the La Veta Pass studded with snow capped mountains on my way to the annual meeting of one of my favorite textile organizations, Weave a Real...
Feliz Dia de las Madres! Happy Mother’s DayThe sentiment is the same around the world wherever Mother’s Day is celebrated: love, gratitude, and appreciation. It is a day to honor and celebrate mothers and those...
Mother’s Day, started by social activist Anna Jarvis in the early 20th century to honor her own mother, has now become the second most popular holiday in the United States for gift-giving, following Christmas. Groups...
New Shipment Arrived for Shop Oaxaca Culture: Shop Mother’s Day
Three more very large shipping boxes just arrived from Oaxaca and we’ve just listed their contents on the shop! We are featuring handwoven and densely embroidered huipiles and blusas, rebozos, neck ties and bandanas, handwoven...
My friend Chris Clark writes a blog called Color in the Streets, and just reported on her recent trip to Chiapas with us in February 2024. Chris lives in Ajijic, on Lake Chapala, in the...
We have just returned to the USA from Oaxaca. From January through March we traveled the Costa Chica along the Oaxaca coast, the highlands of Chiapas, Oaxaca’s Mixteca Alta, and the folk art villages around...
One of the sublime pleasures of living in Mexico is being able to savor her homemade chocolate. Chocolate, the word, comes from the Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. In its original tongue, it is...
Come Join Me! WARP Annual Textile Conference 2024 in Colorado
WARP stands for Weave a Real Peace. I have been a member since 2017 when I helped organize their international conference in Oaxaca, and provided most of the programming. I love this organization. It is...
I arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Thursday afternoon. After getting up at three o’clock in the morning to get in the taxi at four o’clock to arrive at the airport forty-five minutes later, I’d...
Butch came to me six years ago, joining Mamacita and Tia, to form a tribe of three. At the time, he may have been six years old, sleek, muscular, a commanding presence. Today, he is...
I spent the morning with Estela Montaño and Edith Montaño MartÃnez at their home and workshop in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca. Xi-GuÃa is the name of the town in Zapteco, the indigenous language here. We...
Stay cool and fresh as spring is here and summer is just around the corner. Preview sale of Oaxaca and Chiapas cotton and linen blouses before we put them in our shop. The shop won’t...
Day of the Dead 2024 Photo Workshop Instructor Featured in Elle Magazine
Elle Magazine Mexico features an interview with photographer Luvia Lazo from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca. Luvia is leading a photography workshop here in October 2024, just before Day of the Dead. The interview is in...
Deep Into the Mixteca Alta: Oaxaca Textile + Folk Art Study Tour 2025
5 nights, 6 days, March 12-17, 2025 — Starting and ending in Oaxaca CityWe go deep into the Mixteca Alta, a mountainous region of the Sierra Madre del Sur in the north of Oaxaca state...
Surprises in the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca: Handwoven Palm Baskets
OMG. Shuko and I went a little crazy in the Tlaxiaco (Tla-hee-ah-koh) market that happens once a week on Saturday, starting at 7:30 a.m. in the Mixteca Alta This is a tianguis similar to the...
Pilgrimage to San Pablo Tijaltepec, Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca
The map says it’s just under five hours from Oaxaca City to the remote Mixtec village of San Pablo Tijaltepec. For those of us who traveled there last Sunday on our Mixteca Alta textile study...
I’m reposting this from The Mezcalistas team and Susan Coss, who is a mezcal educator and runs Mezcal in a Bottle throughout the USA. She operates out of the Bay Area of Northern California. There...
In the Triqui Village of Chicahuaxtla, Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca
Our friend Shuko Clouse captures the essential emotion and experience of being in the Triqui village of San Andres Chicahuaxtla in the Mixteca Alta as she traveled with us this past weekend on a textile...
Threads of Connection in Oaxaca + Chiapas: Norma Presents at OLL, Tuesday, March 5
This Tuesday, March 5, 2024, at 4:30 p.m. I will be making a presentation at the Oaxaca Lending Library titled Threads of Connection in Oaxaca and Chiapas: Meeting Artisans Where They Live and Work. If...
Looking for Frida Kahlo + Diego Rivera in Mexico City: Art History with a Textile Twist
Arrive Thursday, February 27 and depart Thursday, March 6, 2025, 7 nights, 8 daysCome to Mexico City to explore the lives of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera through their art, and meet contemporary Mexican fashion...
Textiles, Pottery, Paper, Masks and More on Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacan
In addition to the monarch butterflies, what draws us to Michoacan is its extraordinary artisan traditions. Rich in cultural diversity, the Purepecha villages cling to their language and pre-Hispanic customs. Many of the craft and...
In Patzcuaro, Michoacan: Weaving and Guitar Making in Ahuiran and Paracho
Many of you have heard about the famous Ahuiran, Michoacan, feather weaver Cecelia Bautista Caballero, who died in 2022 at the age of 83. I wrote about her in 2019, the last time we visited...
Why Visiting Monarch Butterflies is a Bucket List Experience
For two days, our group of fourteen travelers and three guides rode horses, hiked, climbed, and pushed ahead to see the Monarch butterflies in Michoacan and Estado de Mexico, Mexico. We reached over 11,000 feet...
