Phoebe Gonzales Rohrbacher | Recuerdos Maternos / Maternal Memories

Feb 16

Phoebe Gonzales Rohrbacher
Recuerdos Maternos / Maternal Memories

EDGE GALLERY
April 5 - 27, 2024
Opening Reception: April 5, 5-7pm

I have always been interested in using art to express and understand the ambiguities, complexities and perceptions of my identity, especially as it relates to my mixed white and Northern Nuevo Mexicana Latina heritage.

My maternal great-grandparents left their villages in rural Northern New Mexico to find work, and my mother’s parents moved from New Mexico to Portland, OR in the 1950s. Unfortunately, due to a number of factors, including racism, pressure to assimilate and lack of proximity to family, my mom’s generation lost many cultural traditions and practices, including the Spanish language (particularly our dialect). My generation is relearning and deepening our connection to our culture and a number of us speak Spanish. I have found that my ease speaking Spanish started to increase as I began to practice colcha embroidery.

I started teaching myself colcha embroidery in winter 2021, the year after my daughter was born, using books and the internet as sources. My brother Miguel told me about Colcha embroidery, which I had never heard of and directed me to get the materials and start that very day. “I know you, and if you don’t start today, you never will.” I followed his instructions and began to learn. During the summer of 2022 I studied under master artist Julia Gomez at El Rancho De Las Golondrinas in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She taught me to process, spin and dye the wool with the traditional techniques and natural dyes. Julia is 82, and most of the other master artists are elders as well. They worry that their knowledge will die with them. I hope by continuing to learn and practice colcha and by teaching it to my daughter, who has already learned basic stitches, I can play a small role in its survival. To my knowledge, I am the only person making colcha in the Yukon.

My other art in the past has addressed issues of my identity, and I see my practice of colcha embroidery as a continuation of this exploration. However, with colcha, (unlike any other medium I have used) I am connecting to a place-based traditional art form, specifically from my ancestral homeland. Spinning wool, dyeing with natural plants and embroidering my pieces allows me to reclaim my identity as a Nuevo Méxicana. I now practice an art form that belongs to MY people.

PHOEBE GONZALES ROHRBACHER

Phoebe Gonzales Rohrbacher (b. 1985, Juneau, AK) is a Nueva-Mexicana artist. She received a BA in art from Seattle University and was a recipient of the 2010 Rasmuson Individual Artist Award.

After previously working mostly figuratively in oil, she shifted her focus to Northern New Mexican Colcha Embroidery in 2021.

Gonzales Rohrbacher hopes that by continuing to practice this art form and by teaching it to her daughter, she can play a small role in its survival. To her knowledge she is the only Colcha embroidery artist in the Yukon, where she moved with her family in the winter of 2022.

She lives on the traditional and contemporary territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council, in Whitehorse.