Off to Peru, 2019
Every year Andean Textile Arts sponsors a benefit tour to Peru - sometimes two, in the case of special events, such as the Tinkuy conferences. The organization always sends two board members as representatives who act as general ambassadors and friendly helpers, in addition to our Peruvian tour guide and his assistant. Naturally I hoped to be asked to serve in that role one day.
That opportunity came last year, when I was asked to go on the annual tour, along with Anita Osterhaug. I was excited that my turn had come up, and was particularly looking forward to traveling with Anita. You may recognize her name as former editor of Handwoven magazine, but before she held that position she directed instructional videos for Interweave.
In 2010 Interweave invited me to come to their headquarters in Loveland, CO to shoot my doubleweave sampler videos in anticipation of my book that was released that year. Anita was producer for the videos, and along with a couple videographers we spent three very full days working together. It was such a relaxed and fun atmosphere that I felt surprisingly comfortable being on camera, and after sharing dinner and a few glasses of wine both evenings, I felt that I had a new friend in Anita.
Since I had signed up for the 2010 ATA tour to Peru on my own I was happy to learn that Anita and her husband Job would also be on the trip. Whenever you travel with someone else you form a special bond based on the experiences that you have. This turned out to be a particularly eventful trip for both myself and Anita as we have both ended up working with the weavers in Peru through ATA since then.
So Anita and I shared our first journey to Peru together, and now we would share our first experience of being board reps on the ATA tour. We got lots of helpful advice from other board members who were old hands at leading the tours and we were very fortunate to end up with a stellar group of tour participants. It turned out that four of us would be on the same flight from Houston to Lima, and I met up with Anita, my friend and weaver extraordinaire Laura Viada, and her sister Anne at the airport.
After landing in Lima close to midnight and spending the night at the airport hotel we met up with most of the remaining tour participants the next day for the flight to Cusco. What a treat it was to be met in Cusco by our Peruvian guide, Raul, and his assistant Alvaro! Raul is Nilda Callañaupa’s nephew, and he also grew up in the community of Chinchero surrounded by the traditional textiles of the area. He is the perfect guide - incredibly knowledgeable, a great storyteller, and has a wonderful sense of humor that puts everyone at ease. He was beautifully balanced by the soulful Alvaro, who was learning much about the textile traditions of his country along with those on the tour.
I found that I loved being in the role of ATA representative and being able to share my love of Peru and the weavers there with people who were experiencing it for the first time. While most of the tour consisted of experiences I had had on my previous three trips, there was one very special event that stood out for me, and I think for everyone on the tour, as the highlight of our time there.
CTTC, the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, tries to have a day each year when the young weavers from the association can gather in one place to share stories and songs and play games together. This year CTTC decided that the adult weavers should get to have a day of fun like that too. As it happened, the day of the Encuentro was scheduled during the time of our tour. It wasn’t originally planned to be on our itinerary, but when asked if we would be willing to give up another event to attend the Encuentro, we said ‘absolutely, yes!’.
Sandi Cardillo and her husband Richard were two of the participants on the tour. Sandi became a board member of ATA shortly after this, and Richard, as well as another participant, Andy Holman, did a fabulous job of documenting the day in photographs. Sandi wrote a beautifully written and heartfelt blog for the ATA website. I can’t top what she wrote, so I will invite you to go read her blog post for yourself - A Day in Pisaq: Falling in Love with a Land and Its People.
I will, however, add a couple stories. We were thrilled to not just observe the dances and contests and games that went on that day, but to join in wherever we could. There was a competition in which members of each community got up and sang a song in Quechua that had to relate to weaving in some way. We couldn’t understand what they were singing, but enjoyed watching the fun they were clearly having. When they were all finished we decided that we should perform a song for them too. So our group got up and sang ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ complete with all the hand motions. They didn’t have any idea what we were doing, but had a great time laughing at us.
Another competition that was particularly dear to my heart was in doubleweave pickup. A tent was set up to shelter ten weavers, one from each of the CTTC communities. They had narrow backstrap warps already set up, and were given three hours to weave an image of a condor, without any preplanned image, straight out of their heads. A few of the weavers struggled with the technique while others got right to it and made amazing progress.
I wanted to be able to take one of these weavings home with me. It was hard to choose which one because several of them were quite impressive. Even though it wasn’t a winner in the competition because she wasn’t able to complete the image of the condor in three hours, I was drawn to one being woven by Catalina Champi Ojeda from Patabamba. Catalina agreed to take her piece home and finish it over the weekend so that I could buy it and take it with me, complete with the backstrap loom.
The yellow thread on the finished piece marks how much she had woven on the day of the Encuentro and the rest of the piece is what she wove over the following few days. Imagine being able to envision the complete image of the condor with nothing to look at, particularly the one that was woven sideways! I am completely dependent on what I have drawn on graph paper and it is always a humbling experience for me to see what these weavers accomplish with very simple materials.
At the end of the day everyone reluctantly packed up their things to go home. Our tour group gathered together to say goodbye as over 200 weavers from the CTTC communities lined up and gave each of us a handshake and a hug. It was an experience that I will never forget, and it is especially poignant now that, just a few months later, it is unimaginable to have such an experience.
Peru has been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus. Tourism has been completely shut down, which means that there aren’t opportunities for sales of their textiles, and the weavers are no longer able to gather together at their weaving centers. Most of us are accustomed to working alone, but for them this is truly their community and their family. I invite you to go to the ATA website, https://andeantextilearts.org, to learn about the work we are doing to support them, and if you feel so moved, to make a donation.
