Introducing Border Loomers

Introducing Border Loomers by Fernando Serrano

I want to tell you about a project that has become one of the most important things I do.

Border Loomers is a binational fiber arts initiative rooted in the US-Mexico border region. We offer free, bilingual community workshops in traditional Mexican weaving to communities in Bisbee, AZ, Douglas, AZ, Naco, Arizona, Naco, Sonora, and Agua Prieta, Sonora. No experience needed. No cost. Just show up.

That's the simple version. Here's the longer one.

WHERE IT STARTS

I'm originally from Naco, Sonora - a small border town split down the middle by a fence. I grew up moving between two countries, two languages, two ways of understanding the world. The border was never abstract to me. It was the line I walked every day.

When I left to study at Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende in 2021, I was there for metalsmithing. But I found something else too - a weaving practice that changed the direction of my work entirely. In June 2025, I returned to train in traditional rug weaving under master weaver Yumiko Murai, whose teaching connected me to a lineage of Mexican textile knowledge that I hadn't known I was looking for.

COMMUNITY FUNDED

That training didn't happen alone - it was made possible by the generosity of our community through a GoFundMe campaign, an Artist Opportunity Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and support from the Bisbee Arts Commission. People believed in this work before it had a name. That support is woven into everything Border Loomers does.

"What would it look like to bring this knowledge back to the communities it belongs to - not as exhibition, not as archive, but as something living and accessible?"

WHAT WE DO

We teach traditional Mexican weaving - wool, natural dye traditions, off-loom structures, the history and technique behind the textiles. We run workshops and we work with youth & elders through off-loom programs in schools and community spaces on both sides of the border.

Everything is bilingual. Everything is free. We show up with looms and we teach whoever comes through the door.

Over the first year that has included grandmothers and teenagers, artists and people who had never touched a loom before. That range is the point. This knowledge doesn't belong only to trained artists or collectors. It belongs to the communities where it was made.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Border Loomers is in an active growth phase. Our GoFundMe is live and building momentum - every contribution goes directly toward materials, looms, and keeping workshops free. We're working toward 501(c)(3) nonprofit status through the DreamBuilder program at Cochise College, which will open up new funding pathways and formalize what we've been building.

I'm currently a 2025-2026 Assembling Voices Fellow at Columbia University's Incite Institute, developing the long-term institutional vision for Border Loomers alongside a cohort of artists working at the intersection of art and social change.

We also just refreshed our visual identity. That dashed red line in our logo? That's the border. It's where we live and work.

WHERE WE'RE GOING

The long-term vision for Border Loomers is a permanent cultural institution on the border - a gallery space dedicated to Mexican folk art and living textile knowledge, staffed by the communities it serves, funded by a stable nonprofit infrastructure.

We're not there yet. We're in the middle chapters, building the foundation. But every workshop we run, every person who sits down at a loom for the first time, every dollar that comes through the GoFundMe - it's all part of getting there.

If you want to support this work, follow along, or bring a workshop to your community, I'd love to hear from you. Everything you need is linked below.

con cariño,

Fernando

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