About the Artist

Married to Eliseo Rodriguez, Paula Rodriguez worked with him in the revival of straw applique, a Spanish colonial art form found in the villages of northern New Mexico. 

The craft employs the use of straw to emulate gold leaf in the decoration of crosses and retablos (religious screens) found in the churches.

No one knows exactly when straw appliqué art arrived in New Mexico. Noted folk-arts scholar E. Boyd, in her 1959 booklet Popular Arts of Colonial New Mexico, claimed that the Moors taught straw art to the Spanish, and that the Spanish then brought it to their northern colony. The claim is entirely possible, but Spain and the Moors were not the only Europeans working in the medium: both Belarus and Poland have a long history of making intricate art pieces using straw. The process also exists in the Netherlands and the Peterborough Museum in England has a collection of straw inlay art created by French prisoners during the French Revolution.

Although straw appliqué crosses are attributed to the Spanish colonists, it was the Pueblo of Santa Ana, where artists continued to make straw boxes and crosses and still practice this art form today, that likely kept this art form from completely dying out in the early twentieth century. However, credit for the revival is typically given to the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and Eliseo and Paula Rodriguez for rescuing the art form from oblivion in the 1930s. 

In 1936, Eliseo was hired by the Federal Art Project, a part of the Works Progress Administration. Project director Russell Vernon Hunter asked Eliseo to revive straw appliqué, an almost extinct art form that had flourished in northern New Mexico in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By a painstaking process of trial and error, Eliseo learned the technique, teaching it to his wife.

When the Museum of International Folk Art opened in 1953, the Rodriguezes finally got a chance to see earlier examples of the art form and learned that they had done a good job of imagining it. Nonetheless, they continued to refine their technique and to expand beyond the traditional geometric designs, integrating narrative, figurative imagery into the objects they created.

Together they researched, experimented and refined the craft and it became their creative passion, teaching their children and grandchildren the technique as well.

The couple showcased their work at the Spanish Colonial Arts Society's Spanish Market and conducted workshops in straw appliqué at the Museum of International Folk Art and at the New Mexico State Fair. In 1994, Paula was honored with a Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts and in 2004 the couple received a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship.

Both she and her husband’s work have been collected by the Smithsonian Institution, the Millicent Rogers Museum, the Museum of International Folk Art, and the Albuquerque Museum. Private collectors from the United States, Europe and Mexico have purchased their work.

Sources: askArt, Santa Fe Living Treasures, The New Mexican, Windsor Betts, U.S. Department of State, Masters of Traditional Arts.org