Arts & Culture
HEART of Saguache works to achieve a culture of belonging for BIPOC people in the San Luis Valley. Our arts and culture projects are intercommunity and intergenerational. We are committed to bringing resources and recognition to San Luis Valley cultural practitioners. We honor the ancestors of these artists and support the future of their practices.
Tiva Trujillo, The San Luis Valley, 1979. Courtesy of History Colorado.
San Luis Valley
Colcha
Embroidery
The San Luis Valley Colcha Embroidery Project is a collaboration between HEART of Saguache and The Range in Saguache, Colorado. This project supports exhibitions, workshops, scholarship, and colcha embroidery artists. Colcha embroidery is practiced in the San Luis Valley as a traditional art informed by Spanish Colonial culture with Indigenous and Anglo-American influences. Colcha embroidery artworks from the region often illustrate personal histories and local landscapes, capturing complex memories of the Valley. Periodic efforts to pass on the tradition through workshops have created a dynamic conversation around colcha embroidery in Southern Colorado, with influential connections to communities in Northern New Mexico, where the art form originated in the early 19th Century.
Somos Agua
Somos Agua is an ongoing intercommunity mural project started in Saguache in 2017 in collaboration with Sisters of Color United for Education and The Range. This traveling silk painting is dedicated to the water protectors and has participating intergenerational artists from Saguache, Crestone, Center, Denver, Jefferson County Indian Education, Sheridan, and the International Indigenous Youth Council.