A trunk show of the weavings of Porfirio Gutiérrez — California-based Zapotec textile artist and natural dyer

Join Porfirio Gutiérrez at the beautiful Fibershed Learning Center on Black Mountain Ranch near Point Reyes Station, California, for a trunk show and discussion of his work. (Address and directions provided upon registration.)

There will be a 45-minute presentation at 6:30 pm on Zapotec textiles having a seasonal imprint and being a historical document, holding both climate and culture.

Please register so that we may better organize: eventbrite.com/e/354337732697

Porfirio will also be teaching a 2-day workshop on Cochineal dyeing in the Zapotec tradition on August 20 & 21 at the Fibershed Learning Center. Learn more and enroll here: eventbrite.com/e/339654233957

Porfirio Gutierrez is a California-based Zapotec textile artist and natural dyer, born and raised in the richly historic Zapotec textile community of Teotitlán del Valle in Oaxaca, Mexico. He grew up immersed in color and surrounded by the wildness of Oaxaca’s mountains, and by the knowledge of plants for healing and for color. His life’s work has been revitalizing and preserving traditional Zapotec natural dye techniques with a focus on reinterpreting traditional textiles and materials to reflect his distinct creative vision.

Working in both Ventura, California, and Oaxaca, Gutíerrez’s art practice maintains his ancestor’s spiritual belief in nature as a living being, sacred and divine. His grounding in Zapotec traditional knowledge manifests in his textiles, reinterpreting the traditional weaving language, subverting and re-imagining the symbols and forms, morphing his textile designs toward the fractal forms and spaces of architecture and the movement he sees in cities and urban environments.

Gutíerrez is a truly American artist, moving freely across the imposed borders between his two countries, as his ancestors and many other Indigenous peoples have done for thousands of years. His designs draw deeply on his experiences of two cultures, moving between the traditional and the modern, but always reliant on the deep knowledge and spiritual dimensions of his work.

To learn more, visit his website at porfiriogutierrez.com or his Instagram.

Photo above by Liz Fish, portrait of Porfirio by Joe Coca