I’ve spent the last week weaving with a fantastic group of people at my retreat in Taos, New Mexico. I love teaching in my home state and I especially love spending time at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos.
Lest you think this is some high end hotel, let me tell you a bit about the place. My Taos retreats are held in the former home of Mabel Dodge Luhan, a renowned author, artist, and socialite, who spent the last decades of her life gathering people around her in this house far from her roots in Buffalo, New York. Though some of Mabel’s actions can be seen as problematic today, it is undeniable that she did manage to get many artists to come and spend time in Taos. They created works of art that made Taos into the artistic center it now is.
Ceramic roosters line the parapets of Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos
I love spending a week in the house, eating in Mabel’s dining room, watching the fire in her living room, and sleeping tucked snugly into small adobe rooms. This house is not really a hotel and we are simply guests in this space. Listening for the voices of the artists who visited is easy to do when you’re staying in rooms named after them: Mary Austin, Georgia O’Keefe, Robinson Jeffers, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather among many others. The food is glorious*, the rooms hold the hush of adobe, and a dusting of snow against the stucco and the ceramic roosters Mabel loved or the cooing of pigeons in her bird houses adds to the feeling of being embraced by this place.
Mabel bought a small house in 1918 and added onto it continually until her death in 1962. The house was purchase by Dennis Hopper in the 1970s and later by a couple non-profits, the last of which still owns it.
I really enjoy gathering in the living room of the house later in the evening to enjoy the fire in the kiva fireplace and chat about life. The fire is warm on winter evenings, there are always cookies and tea available, and invariably someone breaks out a bottle of wine or scotch for those who can enjoy it. I think it is evidence that Mabel’s spirit of community sharing lives on in this house.
Mabel Dodge Luhan’s living room looks much like it did when she lived here.
Kiva fireplace at MDL House
The retreat
Some mornings we gathered in the beautiful yoga studio to talk about tapestry before we started weaving.
After finishing our fantastic breakfast spread each morning, we spent our days tucked into the Juniper House workshop room exploring designing for tapestry weaving. I enjoy these in-person retreats so much because I get to watch students find a concept they want to explore, work with it, and find a resolution to their question after a few days of work.
For the masterclass I asked them to bring ideas they wanted to explore. From a jumping off place they each went their own direction exploring issues of color use, materials, technique, form, and expression. Many ideas were trialed. Some were rejected and some were embraced and improved upon. There are more photos in the gallery at the end of the post.
The weavers outside of Juniper House, L to R: Barbara, Kim, Marlena, Kantu, Mary, Elaine, Sally, Gwen, Suzanne, Linda, Sally, and Val with me standing in the back.
Saturday Market at Stables Gallery. Our group bought a lot of Taos Wools yarn!
On Saturday we walked over to Stables Gallery where there is a Winter Market on Saturdays through March 4th. There were many vendors. We especially wanted to see the yarn of Taos Wools created by Joe Barry. And indeed, our group did a good job of clearing out his stock. He had some beautiful tapestries as well. There were other vendors selling everything from fantastic food (the fresh salsa was incredible) to jewelry and other art.
The table in the front of the workshop room not only did a lot of laughing, they got a lot woven. Reference book in the center of course.
The adventure
San Francisco de Asís church, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico
I have never had a student in a retreat I was running who was exceptionally difficult or caused a lot of friction among the group. I often muse about why this might be because I have experienced problems when teaching other places. I think maybe it has to do with the adventure. I currently hold retreats in three different places and they are all rather funky, out of the way, and require some dedication to get to. I think people who come to them either already have a healthy sense of adventure or they’re willing to stretch themselves until they find it. And therefore the groups are always wonderfully full of laughter, questions, exploration, and people helping each other to learn.
Taos is a wonderful place to relax. I really do believe that time moves slower in New Mexico. I saw a sticker at Guerrilla Graphix that said “Mañana does not mean tomorrow. It means not today.” In some ways that sums up a lot of New Mexico. I definitely find myself relaxing there and in fact I don’t believe you can live in rural New Mexico without having some willingness to just let things unfold in their own time. I always hope I can take some of that with me when I leave.
The retreat was about allowing time for that unfolding around tapestry weaving and I was thrilled to see that everyone in the class found a path during our seven days together.
A January sunrise over Taos Pueblo land from Mabel Dodge Luhan House.
The gallery below has more photos from the retreat and Taos. Click on them to enlarge, arrows will scroll on a computer, hover for full captions. On a mobile device they will all appear in one long line.
Colcha embroidery by Maria Graves
With gratitude to Barbara, Kim, Marlena, Kantu, Mary, Elaine, Sally, Gwen, Suzanne, Linda, Sally, Val, and the marvelous staff at Mabel Dodge Luhan House for making the last week so special.
On the last morning there we were treated to the colcha embroidery work of Maria Graves who is the mother-in-law of Bobbi at MDL House. Her work was stunning and it was fun to learn more about colcha and see two tables full of examples of this rare art.
*You can stay there as a bed and breakfast guest and that includes breakfast. If you’re at a conference held there, you also get lunch and perhaps even dinner if your facilitator arranges it.