Churro rug, 35” x 64” , handwoven by Janet Rivera Switzer. All hand dyed colors.

I am a weaver but not an artist - I did in fact nearly fail a college art class because I couldn’t understand the dogmatic talk about design principles and elements. What design abilities I now possess resulted instead from a stint as a mapmaker, which was a fallout from studying geology and archaeology and being in the right place at the right time, and which obliged me to design maps out of an inner sense of what looks right and what doesn’t.

Design is only part of art, though. A real artist has something intangible to convey. I just want to create handwoven things that add beauty and a southwestern sensibility to a room.

Southwestern weaving is really all I know - the complicated drafts and patterns that fascinate weavers with “back east” or northern European influences don’t motivate me as does a peculiar mental image of myself weaving on a Rio Grande style loom in a very old low-ceilinged adobe room. Where that imagined scene comes from I don’t know but, in the community of Ranchos de Taos, at Chimayo Trading del Norte, there is a back room that looks just like the one in my reverie.

After learning the basics of weaving from a neighbor, I studied with Brook Hemenway (a disciple of the famous Taos weaver Rachel Brown who played such a big part in the founding of Tierra Wools), with Lynda Teller Pete (a renowned Navajo weaver), and with Lisa Rockwood Trujillo (a noted Chimayo weaver). I don’t fancy myself a teacher. Instead, to give back to the southwestern weaving community, I moderate the Facebook group, Weaving Southwest’s Mutual Admiration Society.