Season 2 Episode 5: Border Material: Mending with Consuelo Jiménez Underwood

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[Theme Music Plays]

Jennifer Snyder: Welcome to ARTiculated, I'm Jennifer Snyder, I work as the Oral History Archivist at the Archives of American Art.

Ben Gillespie: And I'm Ben Gillespie, the Arlene and Robert Kogod Secretarial Scholar for Oral History. This podcast receives support from the Alice L. Walton Foundation.

 Weaving is all about crossings, and Consuelo Jiménez Underwood's work braids the natural, the manmade, and the historic together through human experience. Textiles embody and extend tradition, and in Underwood's hands, textiles are also sites of recognition and reconciliation.

And this episode, we will trace Underwood's roots and the legacies she has cultivated during her prolific career.

[Theme music ends]

Jennifer Snyder: Consuelo Jiménez Underwood was born in Sacramento, California in 1949 to a Chicana mother and a Huichol father. Throughout her childhood, her family moved often as agricultural workers who followed crop cycles between California and Mexico. Underwood attended San Diego State University, where she learned the current trends in painting and developed a deeper connection to the work of her ancestors, especially through weaving classes with Joan Austin. She spoke about her turn to textiles in her 2011 oral history with Mija Riedel.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Oh, my gosh. So there I was, enrolled in painting, and—I was concurrently sneaking in a weaving class. And I found myself ditching the painting classes to work, to go to the cafeteria. I work out my frame loom, because Joan taught me how to weave on a framed loom like my father had done.

So I found that so much more intriguing than–I remember my mandate was Well, in drawing they say if you want to be a good drawer, you have to do a drawing a day. So if you want to be a good weaver, do a weaving a day.

Dyeing was important only because it was one of the vocabularies that I needed to know of the ancestors.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Spinning, dyeing, weaving, surface design. I needed to know the basic vocabulary. If I was going to take on the whole art community with textiles, I better know it all. I said—and it's just really cool that the gods set it up that Joan knew it all. She grew up–a Portuguese man, a fisherman off of San Pedro. She would go off at 4:00 in the morning, so she understood work, to go do knots and help her dad fish.

So she knew handwork and she understood it. But she couldn't understand metallics in my work. I remember getting to San Diego, and we had to do Navajo rugs. And I'm like, I'm not going to weave with wool. I'm never going to—if I was in Alaska, okay. I'm going to do cotton and linen. This is a desert here, folks.

Ben Gillespie: The United States saw a surge of textile art in the 1960s and 70s as artists including Dorothy Liebes and Sheila Hicks brought weaving to the forefront of art. Works in fiber connected with renewed feminism during the period, as weaving was often referred to as women's work, and textiles also drew upon rich traditions in Native American Art. Resistance to sexism, colonialism, and easy borders compelled Underwood's work from the outset. Underwood spoke about her immersion and art history at school and how she approached her own niche and the art world.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: I knew that presentation was there, but it wasn't something that we talked about in—in fact, in a lot of schools, that's the thing that the students will always complain about. Presentation wasn't answered. It was just about making the stuff. But how do you market it?

Mija Riedel: Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: How do you put it out there? I'm like, Ooh, I don't know, you know? Well, I kind of know how I did it, but I knew then because I was also reading autobiographies. I wanted to know the autobiographies of artists.

Mija Riedel: Okay.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: And that's how I got to know, really well, van Gogh, because I really loved his letters.

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Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: I remember reading Rollo May—

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: —The Courage to Create.

Mija Riedel: —to Create. I remember that book.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: I remember, courage, coraje, controlled anger. Yep, that's certainly what I've got. And I remember that was the one that showed me the soul of art-making. That's what I learned from that.

Mija Riedel: Really?

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes. He really spoke about that inner—that inner thing that's necessary to create art, you know.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: So it resonated. It was almost a spiritual book, but it wasn't. Van Gogh's—I just remember, "Exaggerate the essential; make vague the obvious." I remember that. I never let go of that quote from van Gogh: "Exaggerate the essential; make vague the obvious." Those were, like, my mantras, you know? Kandinsky—

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: "Few can see beyond the veil of reality." And I'm thinking, Those are my veils, yes.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Put a veil over my work, but it will make it not so pretty. It doesn't matter. It's the statement. You've got to get through my barbed wire and fence filter to understand what's underneath, why it's the way it is, why it's woven, why it's beautiful, and why it's what it's about.

But Kandinsky's—I mean, these are the writings that I would go read during San Diego State, which is really formidable, formidable years of art-making. It really ingrained on me the walk of the artist, especially in the studio, the studio walk of the artist, as opposed to the promotional exhibition—

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: I didn't learn that at San Diego. In fact, I wasn't even brought up—I was just really focusing on, How do I make a cool weaving that isn't round, has no hoops, and says something? How—and pay homage to the—to the elders, because I always felt the elders, the anonymous women, indigenous women that died. I always would make prayers to them when I would begin the studio work, paying honor to their spirit, because their spirit was still there, but they died horrific deaths, and I knew they wove better than I did.

Mija Riedel: Now, who were you thinking about in particular here that wove so well but had horrific deaths and yet had not—

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Mija Riedel: Okay. Okay.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: My grandmother, who had a very bad death, her mother, who I never met—I never met my grandmother either—that was a specific...

Mija Riedel: And she was a weaver.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes, my Huichol grandmother.

Mija Riedel: Okay.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: She could weave. She didn't do much of it, but her mother—my great-grandmother–was the weaver, Huichol embroiderer, and who knows what happened to them, because Mexico was doing a lot of extermination too.

And I know here on the plains the Gatling gun was tried out on the Native Americans, you know, and then they used it in the Civil War. They banned it in the Civil War, but they used it on the Natives. So there were just gunned-down, villages. So those are the anonymous women I was thinking about.

Jennifer Snyder: Underwood's work often uses unexpected material from plastic to barbed wire, mirroring her engagement with geography and history. Long based in Silicon Valley's Cupertino, Underwood shed light on her technical innovations and inspirations to Mija Riedel:

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: The materials have to fit because you already made up that rule. So what's here? Oh, computers, wires and plastics. That's how I got into the plastics and wire—

Mija Riedel: All right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: —because they're what Silicon Valley was all about.

Mija Riedel: Of course.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: So then, How do I put that—well, I'll just cut—I figured out ways. The barbed wire was the coolest because—

Mija Riedel: So that's when the barbed wire first happened.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes.

Mija Riedel: Okay.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes, because of the material. So what are you talking about? Well, I really would like to talk about the Virgen, how the Virgen is really not that real beautiful one, but she's everything. That's when all these dark portraits of Virgens came out.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: At the same time, I was exploring plastics and mixed media in the loom. The other thing I want to talk about is borders. The barbed wire. That's the ultimate border material. So how are you going to use that? It's impossible to weave. Then the Virgen de la Frontera, the big giant one that I made, that was the first time that I had used barbed wire.

Mija Riedel: Okay.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: If you noticed, I put five of them in there.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Then three at the top.

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But the first one is kind of like this, because I struggled to put—This is horrible. How am I going to get my idea that I want them—in every 10 inches I want a barbed wire? It's got to be in there. Ding! Get a tube. Weave the tube. Put the barbed wire in the tube. Pull out the tube, and it's already in place. One, two, three, four in the top row—wow—and even three at a time at the top. It was such a cool process.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: That was, like, ding, you know? That was a big—that was San Jose pushing me: Get exciting here, because these weavings are putting them to sleep. Put some content in there.

And that’s why I owe San Jose so much, and at the same time it was open. They didn’t go after me.

Mija Riedel: At this point, didn't you also embrace fringe?

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: That was to confront that mindset that weaving is—it's just—you know the jujitsu? When they come at you, you grab their hand and just keep pulling so that they fall? Well, it's like, You don't like weavings? Well, how about fringe, because I knew I hated fringe.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Well, then, here's fringe. That was the white one.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Or I'd just let the fringe—and they loved the fringe.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: They really—

Mija Riedel: Well, I'm just thinking about how metaphorically oriented your work is. The whole idea of embracing fringe—

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes.

Mija Riedel: —is so interesting that that came so early.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yep.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: From denying it all through San Diego State.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: There was no fringe. But I saw that this was a really serious case. I'm not going to hide who I am. I'm going to throw it in their face. It's weaving. It's fibers. It's threads.

Mija Riedel: And I love the idea, too, that fringe is synonymous and antithetical—well, not antithetical but synonymous. And also, it both is and is not the border in the work, in that it just ties right in—

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: The edges.

Mija Riedel: Yes, exactly.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: The edges. For me, I put that border on me just so I could pass into San Diego. Just so I could make that transition from textile to art. Well, Get rid of the border that defines craft. Make it like a painting. Stop wearing their rebozos, you know?

[Musical Transition]

Ben Gillespie: Underwood's works often deal with the US-Mexico border and the complex human and ecological realities along it. We spoke with Mary Savig, Herman Lloyd Curator of Craft at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum about an early Underwood in their collection:

Mary Savig: It's a Virgin de Los Caminos Virgin of the road. And this is one of her earlier works, uh, with the border fence motif in it, or the barbed. And as the story goes that she's told this started out as a baby blanket for her daughter. And then she started thinking about the little girls in the border.

And so she decided to make this for all of the little girls in the border and at the center of the quilts, she embroidered a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe. And this is a figure that travelers pray to as they cross. And then, um, so then she also has the barbed wire that's about the border fence and, uh, There's also, um, the word caution is very faintly embroidered and the running family motif or faintly embroidered throughout the background.

If you look at it online, you can't really see, but you know, textiles are always better to experience in person because they do not translate very well to the digital world. It just has all of these different layers and juxtapositions of materials that tell a full story of emotions of memories in a way that's not really black and white, but it is really complex.

And it, I think is this full expression of a lot of her inherited memories and then also her own.

Jennifer Snyder: While Virgen de Los Caminos of 1994 is approximately five feet tall by three feet wide, Underwood also pushed herself to make larger works to grapple with larger topics. She spoke about two such works in her oral history:

Mija Riedel: The first time that I noticed the caution image, there may be another one, but…

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Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: I think that was the first series. Cause by that it was 1990, early nineties and the thing came up around 87 was when I noticed. Caution sign. Okay. And, uh, that was really horrific, horrific to see that sign. And, uh, so I'm, I got it thinking of us as animals, you know, caution, deer crossing, you know?

And so, um, that affected me and that's when I first started using it.

Mija Riedel: Before we leave the caution image altogether, I want to talk about Run, Jane, Run and See Jane Run from 2004 and 2005 because those, if I'm not incorrect, are the last time we see the caution image so prominently. But they were huge. Those pieces are…

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes. The See Jane Run is 10 by 17 feet.

It's huge. And it's this like the Rebozo tiny little squares. It came from another ball. So, but no, that one was made for. For an installation in Oakland. Okay. And then that also became really small. The little squares became tiny to use it also. And then I went, you know what I can, it's like having the ying and yang cause [?] never knows what to order, coffee or Coke.

He said, when I used to write. I was like, ah, what do you want? Uh, both hot or cold. I don't know. But they both caffeine, you know, and they both dark and they both taste good. One burns and one's hot. Okay. Uh, so there I was, no, I older. I know I blended it iced coffee. Okay. But back then, it was like, we don't want larger, small, uh, so the seating run with a giant squares.

It's huge. The idea of, um, The decimated family. Cause I had made, there was like a hundred and something people that had been killed over the, and they said, and I read, you know, when somebody gets run over at 70 miles an hour, the only thing that's left are fragments of clothing, which is why pieces of cloth, nothing else is recognizable shoes, pieces of paper.

And usually these people don't carry anything of ID because they don't want to get got. Um, Wow. Just pieces of clothing. Wow. Oh my gosh. What kind of clothing would they wear? Well, they usually wear, you know, I'm reading the article, dark, um, uh, clothing that isn't easily recognizable, you know, kind of blended and uncle oil or that kind.

So, um, so that's what I did. I went through my closet, look at clothing that would fit the same and. And then held it tenuously with safety pins and silkscreen golden silver, because that's how, that's what the fight is ultimately about money. Um, and, uh, it was kind of like an homage to those people. If I had the names, I probably would have made it a little initial on each square.

Yeah. But that's what that piece is about. And why was it so big? I wanted to make a huge statement. You know, how big can I go? You know, I made the statements later also with tiny that's about as small as like, how big can I go? The whole idea of being a quilt as well

Mija Riedel: as,

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: yeah. Powerful textile again, totally fabric and put together with no stitching.

Mija Riedel: Mija Riedel: Before we leave the caution image altogether, I want to talk about the Run, Jane, Run and See. Jane Run from 2004 and 2005 because those, if I'm not incorrect, are the last time we see the caution image so prominently. But they were huge. Those pieces are 10 feet by—

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes. The C. Jane Run is 10 by 17 feet.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: It's huge.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: The rebozo became really small. The little square became tiny to use the rebozo. Then I went, You know what? I can—it's like having the yin and yang—Consuelo never knows what to order, coffee or Coke, when I used to drink Coke. It was like, What do you want? Uh, both.

Mija Riedel: [Laughs.]

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Hot or—I don't know, but they're both caffeine—

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: —and they're both dark and they both taste good. One burns and one's hot. So there I was.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Now I blended it: iced coffee.

Mija Riedel: [Laughs.]

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Okay, but back then it was like, What do you want, large or small? So the See Jane Run with giant squares, it's huge, the idea of the decimated family, because there was, like, a hundred and something people that had been killed over the—and I read—when somebody gets run over at 70 miles an hour, the only thing that's left are fragments of clothing, which is why pieces of cloth. Nothing else is recognizable—shoes, pieces of paper. And usually these people don't carry anything of ID because they don't want to get caught.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Wow, just pieces of clothing? Wow. Oh, my gosh. What kind of clothing would they wear? Well, they usually wear—I'm reading the article—dark clothing that isn't easily recognizable, to kind of blend in. And I go, Oh, I know that kind.

So that's what I did. I went through my closet and looked at clothing that would fit the saying and then held it tenuously with safety pins, and silk-screened gold and silver because that's what the fight is ultimately about, money. It was kind of like a homage to those people. If I had the names, I probably would have made a little initial on each square, you know, but that's what that piece is about.

And why was it so big? Well, I wanted to make a huge statement. How big can I go, you know? I made this statement with the rebozo, with tiny—that's about as small as I can—but how big can I go?

Ben Gillespie: Run Jane Run currently hangs in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and we asked Mary Savig, Curator of Craft, to tell us about the significance of this work and how it inhabits the gallery space:

Mary Savig:  it is a touchstone for a lot of our visitors to understand various complexities of the U S Mexico border through her experience and just standing in front of it. Um, this work has a really powerful presence. It's a very large scale work. It's about 10 feet tall, so it is quite monumental.

And. It is bright, caution yellow. So I think the first things you notice about it are the scale and the color. And then you notice these details that I think start to become really powerful in it. First, there are a lot of exposed threads there, warps. So Consuelo here is making it a tapestry weaving. So she made this on a loom and typically. The, the warps are the long parts and the wefts are the horizontal parts that go through the warps and in a lot of tapestries. But by the time it's done, you never see the warps.

They're completely covered by the west. And here at the top of the work, she's exposed a lot of the warps more than a foot of them. And it gives it this really raw exposed. Feeling. And I think that energy, that expression is what sets up the entire narrative, because then you also see the caution sign and she wrote with, with her weaving the words, caution,

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and then below that you see a family running.

And this is from the running family sign that she first saw along the 4 0 5 freeway. By San Diego and in her oral history interview, she's I think it's in her interview. She talks about seeing that for the first time when she was on the highway and how distraught she was at that, because here's this family that represents children and parents trying to cross the border.

And the only thing that's up to protect them from speeding cars is the side. So I think that becomes this symbol for her for a lot of different issues with the border, um, the caution signs, the barbed wire or something else that she puts in. A lot of her works and caution tape. I think a lot of these are symbols for a broken system, a system that is really, um, these, these works are really symptoms of a broken system.

It's in protecting people, it's doing the bare minimum. It's responding to people, but it's not really acknowledging the humanity of the people and how they're trying to seek safety. So all of it, all it is is are these, these minor steps that don't, they're really just symptoms of a system that's failing.

So she's. Call that out. And then she's also trying to replace, I think the humanity or instilled the humanity of the migrants, especially at this little girl, that's probably Jane and Jane run. So you see the family. And then when you look deeper, you see that there are even more, um, intricate textures. You can see that she's been weaving with barbed wire.

And that was a technique that she had to develop because can imagine trying to weave with barbed wire on her moment. It's probably painful and very difficult. So she devised a technique where she wraps it first and then she puts it through. And then there's also caution tape. So you see. This juxtaposition of really soft cottons and linens with these really harsh textures.

And I think that play itself is really about, um, it's really in with a lot of her own emotions. So there's a softness to it. There's this idea that, um, there is still possibility for mending. when I think of her work, especially with the barbed wire, I think a lot of Gloria Anzaldua's description of the borderlands, especially the fences, this 1,950 mile long open wound.

And I think Consuelos work is really. way forward to help mend that and help to think through the borderlands and offer, a hopeful perspective and one that also restores the humanity of people who are in the borderlands.

Jennifer Snyder: While barbed wire is often cutting and dangerous, Underwood has also found nuance in its manufacture and purpose. She recounted a lesson from her experience teaching at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Oh, my gosh. So I've been struggling with California barbed wire since the early '90s, learning how to weave it, right, and how to stretch it and all that. I didn't realize, but California barbed wire is, like, almost pencil diameter, the two, and then you twine them together.

I go to Penland and the barbed wire they give me, it's like the core, the lead part is —that's how wide the diameter is, and they're twisted together.

Mija Riedel: So much narrower,

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: finer, lighter, easier. I'm like, "Wow, where did this come from? This is very different from the California barbed wire." Then some young lady said, "Well, Consuelo, we have to take care of our horses."

Oh, excuse me! Of course, we don't want to hurt the horses over here. In California, who cares? It's for people, you know. That was so funny to me, but ever since then, I've been ordering just the thin, that's what's out there, the thin gauge. Cause it's just like, oh my gosh, my fingers were so they were like, I was afraid to pick up things because they break things, you know?

Cause I was so used to working with the barbed wire.

Ben Gillespie: Mary Savig unpacked this episode in greater detail for us:

Mary Savig: And for her, that was really this reflection point.

It's something that I, of course now reflect on quite a bit. For how we, we do have this means to set up ways, to keep people safe. And yet at our own border where there are human beings, we're still using these really painful fencing materials, but, you know, for animals, we don't do it the same way. So the question is why.

And so she, she has since begun using some of t he finer gauge barbed wire and her work because it's easier to weave with.

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And then I also think it's a great opportunity to think about that difference through her work too.

[Musical Transition]

Ben Gillespie: While lines and wires can create borders, Underwood is more interested in what goes or grows across borders. She described the significance of the natural world in her world and the links she feels with her Native heritage to Mija Riedel:

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: But I felt I had enough, and I already dreamed my grandmother a couple of times. So then my Huichol link—I never met her, but I felt that I had dreamt her. I felt that through the dream world, I could connect. Here I was in Yaqui land with the honey, going into this ritual thing. And I'm going, Wow, it really is indigenous. I could see the similarities, you know, of an indigenous way of being, which is pretty similar in many basic levels.

I felt that if I explore this—not explore it, but live it—that it would be enough to keep me going, give me food for—to come back over here and say, Yes, folks, we're not Spanish; we're not English. We are indigenous. It is really real.

Mija Riedel: Mija Riedel: And that seems to tie in very deeply to your environmental sensibility, because with that deep immersion in Yaqui experience seems to also have come at the same time that the presence of the flowers in your work, over and over again, those four state flowers, either abstract or not—

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes.

Mija Riedel: Mija Riedel: —in weaving or in installations, that those have become increasingly significant in the work.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Because in Yaqui land, the men wear flowers on their—embroidered wrist bands and wrist cloths, and in kerchiefs. They keep saying, "A real man can wear flowers. There's nothing feminine about that." It's like they confront their femininity, and they accept it.

That was so cool and important to me, and to be able to say, Yes, kantoras tell the elders they did wrong. To have the woman be the overriding law, that's pretty cool.

Mija Riedel: Mija Riedel: Yes, I think we haven't discussed that yet on the card. So just in quick summary, that that's a way that decisions are—well, I'll let you explain the way the decisions are [made] concerning that Yaqui culture, and the women have the final say.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Right. In the Yaqui culture there's many societies, men and women societies, that are church-spirit related. One of the societies of the women is the kantoras, kind of like the cantors in Hebrew, but the cantors in Hebrew are men. In Yaqui land they are women.

There's eight pueblos. Each pueblo has a council of elders. The elders are elected. They listen to problems. If you have a problem, you go to the council. They meet once a week. So you tell them what your problem is, and the council of the elders listen, and everybody gets to have their say.

When everybody finishes talking—and it can take an hour or three days—then the elders decide what the solution is. Then the kantoras hear the solution, hear the problems, and if they agree with the council, the kantoras will say, "Okay, go with it." If they don't agree, they say no—the kantoras say, "No, it doesn't sound right. Go back and talk again." Then they have to go back and talk again. So the kantora, the woman, has the ultimate say in what is being decided in the pueblos.

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Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Flowers and women and children, they all make sense. With going back to Yaqui land, it just became more overwhelming how important flowers were symbolic of a way of looking at the world. I thought to myself, Well, we have flowers in special places here too.

We even have a state flower. Take the California poppy. You cross the border into Arizona, it's no longer the California poppy; it's the Sonora poppy. Fancy that, the same flower but two different names.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Because they'll say, "It's not a California poppy. That's a Sonora poppy." But you cross the border, all of a sudden that same flower—so, who's zooming who? Who's labeling what? This isn't the Garden of Eden where we all get to be Adam and name things. I mean, sorry. That was over there in Northern Africa, but it ain't here in the Americas. We don't get caught up in names, in possession. The land doesn't belong to the person. It belongs to the people, the nation.

Mija Riedel: And it's an interesting time, I think, to talk at least about that, the installation, the 2010 installation at the Triton Museum, The Undocumented Border Flowers—

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes.

Mija Riedel: —because that's such a beautiful synthesis of the border influencing your work for so many years, the arrival of the flowers as such a strong environmental statement, and the whole concept of different kinds of borders—

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes. Yes.

Mija Riedel: —or nonexistent borders.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Right, how borders can decimate the natural environment.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: And how is a flower different from an indigenous person of the land?

Mija Riedel: And something you said that I thought was very much to the point is, how do flowers pollinate across that border wall that's being built? How do you pollinate over a 12-foot wall? It just breeds nothing but desert for miles in either direction.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes.

Mija Riedel: Yes.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: It does. And so what is happening is they're creating a desert in the middle of the Americas. In a hundred years there's going to be a wasteland there. Nothing is going to grow. In 200 years it's going to be a Sahara Desert. And it used to be such a rich ecological place.

[Musical transition]

Jennifer Snyder: In her 2020 oral history with Matthew Simms, the Gerald and Bente Buck West Coast Collector at the Archives, Underwood outlined a new project to celebrate American flora:

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: I'm doing this project called—I've always wanted to do it, honoring the state-documented wildflowers. So on men's handkerchiefs, I'm making portraits with crayon onto these handkerchiefs to be connected with safety pins, and there will be all the state flowers, and on the bottom is all their names, their scientific names. Do you know how Adam went around and he documented and identified and—and did everything to those plants? Well, I'm doing that to those flowers, but I'm showing their beauty. And the—and I was like, "Fifty of them?" Because I started like four, right? I don't think we have a wall big enough to photograph all 50. Oh, no. So three days ago, I brought it down, I will just do the state border flowers of the north and the border flowers of Canada. And that's 17, an odd number, we'll just highlight California.

Matthew Simms: Yeah, yeah

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: The kick will be that the four border states and California will have embroidered all across the image the running family with the mom in front—in a very iridescent, see-through, beautiful, reflective thread.

Matthew Simms: Which carries through to your—to the—

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes, totally. And then I'm going, "So it's only 17?" I can actually stitch like borders, you know, like the bottom of Navajo blankets, there's always a border.

Matthew Simms: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: I can stitch those borders on the bottom of—and it's going to be -- oh my God—so I'm so excited because that's something I can do while I'm sitting down.

Jennifer Snyder: And Mary Savig told us about a new project that Underwood has embarked upon that continues her line of questioning around borders, names, and movement.

Mary Savig: So she has this project that is extending from the work with the flowers, where she was learning a little bit about bird migration and how a lot of the birds, when they get to the super tall areas of the US Mexico border fence, how the birds don't, they can't make it over.

Because they're not used to the structures and the way that they navigate, they can't see it. So they're running into it and it is really affecting these bird populations

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and it is directly impeding their own migration. So again, she's using this idea of bird migration as a metaphor for human migration and how these fences again are.

Um, they're obstructing it in a way that becomes. Again, more of a symptom of a sickness that doesn't really change the fact that people and these birds and animals are migrating for bigger reasons. it's a beautiful work because she's made these different bars of darker textiles that are.

That looked like the solid structure of the border fence. And then she's got these beautiful, bright red bird, um, motifs that she, I think pins and sews to the fence. And that's also hopeful because I think, you know, these, I hope these birds will be here long after the fence is gone. Hopefully humans too.

And birds people have always been moving. And I think a lot of these contemporary structures, what's what these works are trying to say is that they're the temporary part and migration is going to happen. Migration needs to happen regardless of these structures.

Ben Gillespie: Underwood also spoke about the internal drive for her work and her 2011 oral history, as well as the need to keep some things sacred for herself and her community:

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: When I get that feeling, I think, Okay, it's enough, because, Keep it sacred. Don't bring these sacred things. Like in Yaqui land, I can come back from Yaqui land and—I've seen people go to other cultures and bring back a suggestion of that culture and put it in their installation or whatever, and I'm going, That's what we called in the '90s, or no, in the '80s—it wasn't copying. It was appropriation.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: [Laughs.] And I'm going, I don't want to appropriate. So keeping some things sacred, and I think art, to an extent, is sacred, because I know these gifts are coming from another place.

Mija Riedel: Right.

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: I respect that place as sacred. It's very metaphysical. They don't come from dreams, because dreams—I tried that before I was at graduate school, reproducing something I saw in a dream. It doesn't work in reality. The dream world is to inspire me and guide me in this world, but not to tell me what to do, but to guide me.

So the ideas come from beyond the dream world. It's where the dreams come from. I feel like I've spent my whole lifetime, ever since a kid, opening up those channels, because I couldn't get into this world, but I could certainly get into the other world.

I think since I spent this whole lifetime getting into those channels or getting into that world, that the channels are wide open and I have to work at shutting them off.

Jennifer Snyder: Craft history is implicated in realms far beyond art museums, and Mary Savig framed Underwood's work as a hitch for many traditions:

Mary Savig: I think she says that really beautifully a lot in her own interview, where she says I'm a woman. I work in threads. And how it does give this worldview that is always beyond yourself. I think, especially as someone who has Mexican and indigenous heritage, she is thinking about these Metro lineal lines and how she. Learning these traditions and how she is just one conduit and that she is also going to become an ancestor someday.

And so it's this really, I think, important worldview that she's sharing with us through her threads that extends beyond the present moment and into the past in the future. And of course, threads always offer a wonderful metaphor for that as a throughline.

 What I, what I love about her work too, and why it's so important to. contextualize it in craft histories and legacies is because it shows its work. And I think that's a really important part of it is that even with her exposed warps and the way that she has the beams that are included with part of the display, it is about the process. And just by looking at it, you can understand something about how she made it. And I think that way you can feel her presence and her experience and her own hand work, I think is much more, um, palpable in the work itself. And that's what identifies it in this, world and legacy of craft.

Ben Gillespie: Underwood has woven a story all her own, drawing from history, heritage, and hope;

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in her 2011 oral history, she expressed the depth of gratitude throughout her work:

Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Consuelo Jimenez Underwood: Yes, because, remember, I had to make the shrouds to say, Thank you, heroes, for giving me this job, this studio, this M.F.A. Thank you. The other thank you, I guess, was in the tortillas, chilis, and other border things. Thank you, cultura, for identifying me, thank you for allowing me to use a molcajete, for my daughter to be using it.

Thank you for my love of chili and nopales still. Thank you that I have the connection to the indigenous. Thank you, cultura. Mothers, thank you, mothers, for taking care of me. Virgen de Guadalupe, I know you're the ultimate mother and let me give you this greatest honor. I'm going to weave for you the most beautiful rebozo fabric that I can think of.

 [Outro music begins and plays through the end. ]

Jennifer Snyder: For show notes, works cited, and additional resources visit aaa.si.edu/articulated

This podcast is produced by Ben Gillespie and Michelle Herman from the Archives of American Art

It was edited by the team at Better Lemon Creative Audio

Our music comes from Sound and Smoke composed by Viet Cuong and performed by the Peabody Wind Ensemble with Harlan Parker conducting.

For show notes, work cited in additional resources, visit aa.ssi.edu/articulated.

This podcast is produced by Ben Gillespie and Michelle Herman from the Archives of American Art.

It was edited by the team at Better Lemon Creative Audio.

Our music comes from Sound and Smoke composed by Viet Cuong and performed by the Peabody Wind Ensemble with Harlan Parker conducting.

Ben Gillespie: If you enjoyed this episode, please consider rating or sharing it.

The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian institution is a nonprofit organization that relies on donations from individuals like you to sustain our ongoing operations and special programs like ARTiculated. To support our work, please visit aaa.si.edu/support. Thank you.

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