Connie Fernández

Connie Fernández (born in New Haven, Connecticut) was raised in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious family in Oregon and rural San Fernando Valley, California. Connie has resided in Taos, New Mexico, for more than thirty years following many years in Colorado. She retired in 2014 after a 43-year career teaching inner-city high school students in South-Central Los Angeles, juveniles in a maximum security correctional facility in Colorado, and middle schoolers in Taos. Growing up, Connie was inspired to pursue needlework by her grandmothers. Years later, upon moving to Taos, she began to explore colcha embroidery on her own and had the good fortune to meet Josie Lobato and Rita Crespin at the Fort Garland Museum and Cultural Center in southern Colorado. They validated her work and encouraged her to pursue colcha embroidery as an art form. Connie has studied with Mónica Sosaya-Halford and Beatrice Maestas Sandoval. She enjoys stitching alongside her fellow "bordadoras," many of whom join her in a monthly colcha embroidery gathering at Martinez Hacienda, a Taos "living museum" that was first built during the Spanish colonial era and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Connie uses natural Churro wool and traditional materials, often embroidering on sabanilla woven by Annette Gutiérrez Turk and using yarn dyed by Glenna Dean, yet her themes are often contemporary. Many of her pieces address political and social themes, such as genocide in Rwanda and the tragic suffering of women in Juárez, Mexico. Connie teaches workshops and classes; she also lectures and demonstrates throughout northern New Mexico, where her work is widely exhibited. Connie embroidered the altar cloth for La Capilla de San Antonio de Padua - La Loma, Taos. She rarely sells her work, and instead prefers to donate to various causes. Connie's fervent desire is "to see colcha embroidery embraced by the younger generation, treasured and revered in its historical form, and appreciated as it continues to reflect a living art form." She is a believer in lifelong learning and cherishes the sharing of ideas among her fellow colcha embroiderers.

(photo by Rebecca Abrams, October, 2020)