7th Generation Master Weaver Irvin Trujillo

Story by Noelle Bartl

The winding roads in northern New Mexico to picturesque Chimayó will take travelers on a reflective journey that intertwines the past and the present in the weavings made by Master Weaver Irvin Trujillo (AS 74) and his wife Master Weaver Lisa Trujillo.

As a seventh-generation Rio Grande weaver living in Chimayó, Irvin’s work has evolved from the traditional styles of his forefathers. He incorporates design ideas from historic Rio Grande weavings of Northern New Mexico while adding his own aesthetics that reflect his own experiences and today’s times.

“What I want to do is design themes that are important to my life,” Irvin said. “One piece I wove documented Chimayó’s only bank robbery.”

Raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Irvin spent weekends in Chimayó, working in the family apple orchard and on the farm where they grew chile and corn. Young Irvin enjoyed playing drums and was first taught the family weaving legacy at the age of 10.

“My father showed me how to carry a design. He didn’t draw pictures or sketch his weavings,” Irvin said. “He didn’t even take pictures of his weavings. I only had verbal instructions from my father.”

Irvin always felt as if he grew up outside his culture. At the same time, he struggled to imagine himself succeeding like all the Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers.

“In Chimayó, everyone spoke Spanish so I clearly wasn’t one of them, but in Los Alamos my Spanish surname seemed foreign, so I wasn’t one of them either. I was stuck somewhere in the middle,” Irvin said.

ENMU offered Irvin a music scholarship, but he turned it down to study machine design and civil technology. “I was drawn to the smaller friendly campus,” remembers Irvin. “My ENMU professors, like Robert Pendergraft and Merle Quisenberry, engaged with all of us students. In fact, I recall Mr. Pendergraft sending us out in the countryside in the middle of the night to learn how to survey using only the stars. It was fun and fascinating.”

Returning to Los Alamos for employment at Los Alamos National Laboratory found Irvin at a drafting table all day long in a high-security windowless vault. He yearned for more, but didn’t know exactly what was calling him. The ENMU alumnus went on to earn a civil engineering bachelor’s degree at the University of New Mexico, where he also met his wife, Lisa. He started working for the Corps of Engineers before the need to weave became too great to resist. The idea of his working in a cubicle for 30 years was not in his plans for the future.

“I hated it. I longed for the brilliant, ambient light; the openness and fresh air of Chimayó where I would return to weave for extra cash over the semester breaks,” Irvin stated.

The degrees Irvin earned from ENMU and UNM were vital to his success as a master weaver and business owner. Dying yarns involves chemistry. Descriptive geometry and drafting are used to build his many looms – especially his 12-foot-wide loom. Math is necessary to calculate materials needed for each weave, the time to make the item, and the costs involved in running a flourishing business. “My process is very much about all kinds of variations of logic and math, color and energy,” explained Irvin.

In fact, it was his father Jacobo Ortega Trujillo who helped Irvin and Lisa with developing their business plan. It seemed only fitting to establish the business on the family farm in Chimayó and name it Centinela Traditional Arts in honor of the generations of Centinela Weavers of Chimayó.

When Irvin and Lisa began researching traditional Hispanic designs and techniques, they learned that Irvin’s father was actually well-known for his weavings. Irvin began spinning and dying yarns from his father’s notes.

Irvin dyes his yarns using natural ingredients; cochineal for reds, cota for orange/yellows, chamiso and peach leaves for yellows and yellow/greens, black walnut for tans, madder root/black walnut for orange/brown, indigo for blues, indigo over chamiso for dark greens and blue/ greens, to name a few.

“My father emphasized that each piece must be one-of-a-kind. As I developed my unique weaving voice, the vocabulary for my distinctive designs evolved,” acknowledged Irvin. “Weavers start with a ‘cartoon’ as the pattern to execute a specific image. Not knowing the final outcome makes each weaving a journey.”

“Weaving in Northern New Mexico existed for generations and is just as important as other traditions.” Irvin is doing all he can to preserve the tradition and pass along his knowledge to the next generation. His daughter Emily is an eighth generation weaver based out of Albuquerque. Irvin is documenting his designs, techniques and the dying methods in numerous binders stored in the family safe. He teaches apprentices in his studio.

Irvin earned the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellow Award in 2007, the highest accolade honoring folk artists. In 2015, he received the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. Although his list of awards over the past 35 years is numerous, his tapestries speak for themselves.

Many of his tapestries have been included in permanent collections and exhibits in museums around the world including the Smithsonian American Art Museum (“The Hook and the Spider” tapestry) and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

“Weaving is a wonderful art form,” Irvin said. “It is a means of expressing ideas in the same way that painting, sculpture or photography can. It’s important for me to keep learning and expressing what I’ve learned.”