Los Testamentos
On view: September 12–December 7, 2025
Opening reception: Friday, September 12, 4:00-6:00 pm
Film screening: Saturday October 25, 6:00 pm
This fall the San Luis Valley Colcha Embroidery Project will present the momentous work of artist and collector Kathryn Nelson at The Range in Saguache, Colorado. Los Testamentos brings together seventy black and white silver gelatin prints Nelson made in the late 70s and early 80s to document the colcha embroidery and weaving artists in the communities of Capulin, Center, La Garita, Saguache, and San Luis. The photographs are presented alongside colcha embroideries and weavings that Nelson collected during her time working to record the lives of these artists.
Featured artists in the exhibition include Eppie Archuleta, Rebecca Benton, Cordy Duran, Patsy Garcia, Margie Gurule, Agueda Martínez, Mary Martinez, Lydia Martinez, Senon Martinez de Chavez, Viola Martinez, Loyola Medina, Sadie Pacheco, Carina Quintana, Marcella Quintana, Nora Quintana, Virginia Rodriguez, Joyce Romero, Olivia Medina, Cecilia Sanchez, Bernie Trujillo, Evelyn Trujillo, Tiva Trujillo, and Julia Valdez. The photographs and artworks provide extraordinary images of everyday life in the San Luis Valley from nearly 50 years ago.
Kathryn Nelson was born in 1940 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. She moved to Colorado in 1958 to study sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is an artist, curator, and collector who worked in photography, ceramics, jewelry making, and interior design. She became a documentary photographer in 1975. She photographed and recorded oral histories in the San Luis Valley, and in Grover, Colorado through her Grassland Women project, with the support of the Colorado Council on Arts and Humanities. She exhibited her San Luis Valley work at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin in 1981 and at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities in 1982. She is retired and resides in Colorado’s Front Range.
The San Luis Valley Colcha Embroidery Project is digitizing Los Testamentos, the ‘slide and sound’ documentary Nelson made on the art of weaver Eppie Archuleta and colcha embroiderer Tiva Trujillo. A special screening will take place at The Range on Saturday October 25, 2025 at 6pm.
In conjunction with Kathryn Nelson’s Los Testamentos, the San Luis Valley Colcha Embroidery Project will present a free two-day colcha embroidery workshop at The Range on Friday, September 12, from 12:00-3:00 pm and Saturday, September 13, from 10:00 am-1:00 pm. Materials and food will be provided. Please RSVP by emailing Trent Segura at trent@noonontheinternet.org. All skill levels are welcome, spots are limited.
Image credit: Kathryn Nelson, Margie Gurule, 1980.
