New Mexico’s fiber artists at Futuros Ancestral are weaving technology with tradition to preserve heritage textile practices for future generations.
Textiles have always existed at the intersection of art and technology. Cotton and wool fibers were some of the earliest known databases. Pre-Columbian Incas used knotted strings, known as quipu, for sophisticated, quantitative record-keeping. The first computers used punch cards for calculations, a method derived from the Jacquard loom’s system of encoding patterns onto cards to control the warp.
Fiber arts reflect humans’ innate affinity for math. But today, Big Tech’s obsession with efficiency and optimization has become an ouroboros devouring the very practices that made smartphones and computers possible.
In rural Northern New Mexico, however, intergenerational weavers are trying to balance progress and preservation by integrating technology with tradition––on their own terms.
Different weaving niches represent communities that have inhabited the terrain for generations. Pueblo fiber arts, like cotton-fiber weaving and embroidery, constitute a continuum of dynamic creativity, and Navajo weaving, revolving around Churro sheep, also has a strong presence in the region, in part because of its popularity in colonial trade markets. Rio Grande weaving is an umbrella term encompassing Hispanic textiles, including Chimayó weaving, which derives its name from the village along the High Road to Taos.
Once a utilitarian skill set with reliable income opportunities, heritage fiber-arts practices risk dissipating in the digital era as earning potential concentrates in tech-oriented fields and urban zip codes.
Futuros Ancestral, a weaving and design studio based in Taos, is exploring how technology can be ethically leveraged for cultural longevity.
“Using technology would break down some of the barriers that the tradition faces, keeping it from being lost in a way that could only happen in this day and age,” says Emily Trujillo, Futuros Ancestral co-founder and eighth-generation Chimayó weaver. “My family and I are able to give lectures to communities all over the world via Zoom and other modes. This is critical… to the survival of our knowledge.”
The studio has constructed a neural network of weavers in Northern New Mexico using design thinking principles: research, ideate, prototype, test, and refine. Design thinking is a nonlinear, agile product development framework used in tech and adjacent fields. Its human-centered approach engages frequent input from the intended user throughout a project’s lifecycle. This iterative development process nudged the founders to reconsider if tech solutions are the most pressing needs for Rio Grande and Pueblo weavers in the area.
Weaving traditions have connected Indigenous communities extending in every direction from the northern Rio Grande rift for millennia. When the Spanish arrived, they brought their Churro sheep, while Manifest Destiny introduced the railroad, bringing new materials, new people, and new markets. Rural communities adapted to rapid shifts from subsistence and trading to cash economies. Hispanic villages in Taos County created idiosyncratic designs to distinguish themselves from trading post competition in Santa Fe. One can trace the evolution from the classic striped Rio Grande blankets, to the Mexican-inspired Saltillo diamonds, to the Trampas-Vallero stars, to the signature Chimayó, which features two horizontal weft stripes bordering a center design.
We fall in love with the art form, and it brings us back to the land, back to the water, back to the sheep, back to the plant, back to the fiber.
Renowned Chimayó weavers Irvin and Lisa Trujillo taught their daughter Emily how to weave at age five. Not wanting to live in her parents’ shadows, she resisted the craft as a teenager. After studying neuropsychology and ethnology in college, she recognized the urgency of preserving her own culture.
Trujillo turned down a neuroradiology career to become an educator of Chimayó weaving, continuing the legacy of her grandfather Jacobo Trujillo, who taught WPA-sponsored weaving courses in the region. She teaches throughout Northern New Mexico and works at her family’s gallery, Centinela Traditional Arts.
The other half of Futuros Ancestral, Layne Jackson Hubbard, earned a PhD in neuroscience, computer science, and cognitive science from the University of Colorado Boulder. After finishing her dissertation, she moved back to Taos and needed to do something generative with her hands. Weaving was a natural fit.
“You’re just this spider playing around on this grid, and it was so perfect for my brain,” she says. “It’s both rhythmic and soothing when you get into the flow, but also deep problem solving. Deep geometric and mathematical problem solving.”
Their lives converged at the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center, where Jackson Hubbard took a course taught by Trujillo. Trujillo expressed a desire to develop a remote weaving curriculum for students to reference outside of workshops for continued learning. Jackson Hubbard told her about the Taos Center for the Arts Community Arts Fellowship funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Together, they applied to develop a digital weaving curriculum—instructional videos along with illustrated diagrams and weaving patterns—to be beta-tested by a small cohort of weavers. In June 2024, Futuros Ancestral was born. Since then, the studio has launched three weaving cohorts, hosted community education events, and curated exhibitions showcasing the work of their mentors and members.
In the planning phases for Futuros Ancestral, Trujillo and Jackson Hubbard anticipated the cohort would amount to six beta-testers. More than fifty people applied. Through individual interviews with each applicant, Jackson Hubbard started to wonder if the digital learning curriculum was the most urgent need.
“One of the first big insights for me was that the community component might be even more important,” she says.
They initially created two cohorts. Rio Grande members are more experienced, and enrolled to test the digital curriculum. They are also peer mentors for the Emerging Weavers, novice fiber artists eager to get on a loom and learn.
Taoseña Christa Valdez recently returned to her hometown after some time away and joined the Emerging Weavers cohort to reconnect with her heritage. Her commitment earned her access to the Rio Grande weaving curriculum.
“I like that there are multiple modes of learning,” says Valdez. “But I think at the end of the day, if given a choice between online learning versus in-person learning, there’s just nothing like… being there in person.”
The Emerging Weavers cohort also supports fiber artists pursuing independent study projects. Benita Ortega Rael specializes in wool-on-wool colcha, a local embroidery tradition. Today, it is a challenge for colcheras to acquire sabanilla, the plain weave fabric used as the backing.
“For me, it’s about the sabanilla,” says Rael. “If we can get somebody inspired to do just this plain weave, I think that would be great.”
Tiana Suazo (Taos Pueblo) joined to learn how to weave ceremonial regalia and grow cotton to make yarn. Jackson Hubbard set out to find someone to teach her Pueblo weaving, which led her to Louie García (Piro of Socorro del Sur Pueblo and Chicano), fiber arts researcher, educator, and co-founder of the Pueblo Fiber Arts Guild, and Nila Rinehart (Taos Pueblo), who learned Chilkat and Ravenstail weaving while raising her children in Tlingit territory. Rinehart is now learning Pueblo weaving after returning to Taos in 2020.
In December, García taught a workshop to twelve students from Taos Pueblo—from teenagers to septuagenarians—about Pueblo weaving techniques and their histories.
“The weaving art form was going to sleep, and we don’t want to see that happen,” says Rinehart. “Pueblo people have a long history of weaving and textile arts, primarily for clothing and ceremonial purposes, not necessarily for trade purposes. And so it’s still very important to our tribal way of life to be able to weave these articles.”
The Weavers and Their Teachers, Futuros Ancestral’s first exhibition, ran from November 1 to December 1, 2024, in the Encore Gallery at the TCA. Spellbinding tapestries by the Trujillo lineage showcased Chimayó, Vallero, Saltillo, and Rio Grande styles. Celebrated Diné weavers, including Roy Kady and Tyrrell Tapaha, presented an expansive interplay of technical mastery and artistic self-actualization.
Another wall showcased relative newcomers who have become acclaimed fiber artists on a regional and national scale, like Joan Potter Loveless, Rachel Brown, and Kristina Wilson. Cotton sash belts, twill mantas, and revival weavings by García effluxed prayerful intentions, while Rinehart demonstrated Ravenstail weaving alongside a Chilkat robe she made for her grandchild.
After the TCA fellowship culminated in January, Futuros Ancestral received a Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Area grant to expand Pueblo and Rio Grande weaving in Taos County. The studio is working with Taos Historic Museums to create a collaborative space for yarn processing, natural dyeing, and Rio Grande weaving. Jackson Hubbard is partnering with the Harwood Museum of Art to curate another exhibition at the end of the year.
As Trujillo progressed through creating the remote weaving curriculum, she wrestled with gray areas between disembodied technology and heritage arts practices. She worries that digitizing cultural weaving patterns for widespread use makes them more susceptible to appropriation.
“I’m personally trying to find a way to navigate incorporating technology in a way that doesn’t remove humanity and spirit from Chimayó and Rio Grande weaving,” she says.
Back in the Encore Gallery, a cloud of cotton grown by García floated in my palm, cellulose threads tickling my skin. Five days earlier, I had cradled a tuft of Navajo-Churro wool sheared from Tapaha’s sheep, rich in lanolin, keratin, and ferrous dirt from the grazing range. The spaciousness of these fibers seemed to contain stories spanning millennia—of technology and trade, continuity and disruption, tension and resolution.
On the loom’s xy-axis, these raw materials manifest into patterns shaped by geometric precision and generational knowledge. Futuros Ancestral recognizes that cultural preservation isn’t about embalming the past, but creating a living grid for a future where innovation and heritage converge. Through the design thinking stages, the studio realized technology may function as a tool, but will never supersede land stewardship and community ties.
“We fall in love with the art form, and it brings us back to the land, back to the water, back to the sheep, back to the plant, back to the fiber,” says Jackson Hubbard. “And it develops our fierce protection of those elements and understanding that we can’t do it alone.”
