The Smithsonian is going to the state fair with a new exhibit. Read more about the New Mexicans who are featured

A newly opened exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., prominently features New Mexico artists and crafters.

“State Fairs: Growing American Craft” traces the history of state fairs from the early 1800s to the present, focusing on how state fairs have preserved and celebrated local craft traditions. The exhibition runs through Sept. 7, 2026.

“It’s the first exhibition of its kind, a survey of the role of craft in state fairs,” said Mary Savig, the exhibition’s curator. “And New Mexico has a huge role.”

The Land of Enchantment is represented in the show by multiple artists including basket maker Wolfram Krank, ceramic artist Christine McHorse, quilter Carol St. Clair Johnson, colcha embroidery artist Julia Gomez, weaver Agueda Martínez, tinsmith Verne Lucero, basket maker Rowena Mora, straw appliqué artist Martha Varoz Ewing, fashion designer Penny Singer, weaver Linda Nez and ceramic artist Helen Cordero.

“State fairs offer really unconventional or local crafts that have never been exhibited at the Renwick, like Hispanic tin work from New Mexico, for example. So, this was a way to really explore the diversity and strengths of craft found across fairgrounds,” Savig said.

Carol St. Clair Johnson has been winning ribbons at the New Mexico State Fair since 1981, when she was 27. Over 40 years later, she decided to use her stockpile of winning ribbons as the raw material for a large quilt, which she completed in 2023.

“It’s a little bigger than king size,” Johnson said.

Some, but not all, of the more than 600 ribbons in the quilt are from previous quilt competitions. But Johnson has entered and won awards in many categories over the decades.

“A lot of them are from flower shows,” she said. “Cakes, cookies, candy, pie. There’s some for creative arts, jewely making, the bread contest. Knitting, crocheting, needlework, a few for embroidery.”

“Jack-of-all-trades, master of some,” she joked.

The New Mexico State Fair held a special place in Johnson’s heart long before she ever mustered up the courage to compete.

“Growing up, we always went to the state fair as a family. That was a highlight of the year,” she said. “We had fair days every year with the public schools here. We got a half day, so we would go to the fair. I always loved seeing all the different crafts people did that I never dreamed of doing.”

“Mainly, it meant family and togetherness and community,” she said.

Johnson’s family life was far from idyllic, however.

“Part of the reason the ribbons meant so much to me — I realized finally at this advanced age — was that when I was growing up, my dad was an alcoholic. So, I always heard, ‘Oh, can’t you do anything right? What’s the matter with you?’ So, I think when I got that first ribbon, it was like, I finally had proof that I could do something right,” she said. “I think that’s one reason that I kept it. So, whenever that inner voice starts saying ‘You can’t do anything right,” I can say, no, wait a minute, I can do something right.”

As it happened, Johnson could do a lot of things right, and her winning ribbons just kept coming.

“I won at least one blue ribbon every year, except for 2016,” Johnson said. “My son got in a horrible motorcycle accident that year, and I was in the hospital with him. So, my husband took this one wall hanging I had made, and some toffee that I had in the fridge, and I won two second places. That was the only year in the 41 that I didn’t win at least one blue ribbon.”

Johnson’s ribbon quilt “O Fair New Mexico — 41 Fair Years,” representing over four decades of her life, won two ribbons of its own in 2023.

“It got first for memory quilt and best in the miscellaneous quilt category,” Johnson said. “The judge said it missed best in show overall by just a hair. The one that beat it had a lot of appliqué and exquisite quilting. But I did a simple stitch, because I didn’t want to quilt over the ribbons.”

Ribbons upon ribbons

Penny Singer (Diné) is a prominent Indigenous fashion designer known for her contemporary geometric appliqué work. Like Johnson, she has amassed quite an archive of winning ribbons.

“They come from various shows, but the two primary shows that I really work hard for are the Santa Fe Indian Market with (Southwestern Association for Indian Arts), which is in August and which I just did two weeks ago, and then there’s the Heard Museum Guild show that’s in Phoenix in March,” Singer said. “The other ribbons come from the Cherokee Art Market, which is in October, and various other Native American art markets.”

Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, a New Mexico-based fashion curator and co-curator of “State Fairs,” selected Singer’s work for the show.

“Penny Singer has been a staple, in terms of someone who’s been active within the Indian markets, local and national, for decades,” Bear Robe said.

Singer’s earliest ribbons date from the 1990s.

“I wanted to make something out of them, instead of just keeping them in boxes or plastic tubs,” Singer said.

She used some of them to make a cape, which is now on view at the Smithsonian.

“With the award ribbon cape, I wanted it to be like a canvas, front and back. And I wanted to place the ribbons in a geometric design. That’s the style I do with all my garments. I design in very bold geometric patterns,” Singer said. “So, with the cape, you’ll see a step pattern and then a tall mesa.”

Singer also stitched photographs into the garment, a practice that predates her fashion work.

“I’ve been taking photos since I was 7 or 8,” Singer said.

Years later, she attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, hoping to become a documentary filmmaker.

“But then I met a friend when I was at a powwow in Kansas and just decided to make him a shirt. Nobody knew I could sew,” she said. “That was my first time doing appliqué.”

Singer said her creative life took a big U-turn after that, setting her on the course to become a fashion designer. But her interest in photography and filmmaking did not entirely disappear.

“In my early days, I did wall hangings, and I incorporated photography into some of them. That was my version of documentary film,” Singer said. “I still use my old photos and incorporate them into my garments sometimes.”

The photographs in Singer’s ribbon cape tell the story of her early development as a designer.

“These are photos of when I first started. So, that’s me in the booth, and me with a garment,” Singer said. “I have a photo of my mom and dad. They were a big inspiration, just like on my work ethic, and my dad was artsy himself. And my mom sewed, so I kind of learned the fundamentals from her.”

“Then there’s other photos of my grandmother. With my grandmother, I learned a lot just by literally watching what she would do, because I don’t speak Navajo fluently, although I know some,” Singer said. “I actually live in her home now on the reservation, on the state line of New Mexico and Arizona.”

The deeply personal works by Singer and Johnson, both created from their ribbons, strike a similar chord.

“I love the parallel between Penny Singer and Carol Johnson, because they are both using these ribbons as a way to express themselves, but also these ribbons become records of the development of their craft,” Savig said. “And what’s especially fun about the ribbons is that you can actually track all of their successes that resulted in the work that we see on view.”

Histories and handcraft

While the overall tone of “State Fairs” is largely celebratory, Savig did not shy away from exploring the more painful aspects of the history.

“The connections that we’re trying to draw between craft and agrarian life, these deeply rooted connections, also come with the consequences of land removal from Indigenous people to make room for homesteaders, or the plantation system,” Savig said. “We wanted to be able to illuminate the full history as best as we could for this project.”

Bear Robe said she appreciated Savig’s desire to present as complete and inclusive a narrative as possible.

“I’m grateful for every platform I can have to help broaden the conversation and bring light into areas that Americans have not known, not been exposed to, not understood, or just, for many different reasons, are unaware of,” Bear Robe said. “And I just want to clarify, it’s not about shaming or shutting people down. I’m really about having conversations and engaging with, quote, the other side, or people who may have feel like they’ve been the oppressor and maybe are wanting to make amends. By looking at some of these cringeworthy moments in time, we can talk about them and move forward, rather than sweeping things under the rug.”

Savig said craft is uniquely suited for opening people up to these kinds of conversations.

“The power of craft, I think, is that it is deeply resonant and emotional. A lot of people who are walking by can see something about how it was made, and we can learn something about the maker. That appeals to many people,” Savig said. “So, craft offers this accessibility, that even if it’s not something you’re familiar with, or it’s telling an unknown story, or maybe even a story that is not as joyful as you might expect, the objects themselves open people up to that.”

“I mean, even the butter cow (a cow sculpted out of butter), which is really a joyful, charming piece, allows us to talk about the history of how women often ran the dairy operations on farms, and then with industrialization, they were excluded from that process,” Savig said. “Through craft, we are able to uncover these more social aspects of American culture.”

In her catalogue essay for the exhibit, Bear Robe writes about the importance of Indian markets, which functioned as state fairs for Indigenous communities.

“I look at the history of how state fairs, historically, were not inclusive of Indigenous people, other than looking at them as ethographic objects,” Bear Robe said. “But then I look at gatherings that were not always started by Native people but became embraced and then run by Native people. SWAIA Indian Market is one of them. These kind of side gatherings became essential hubs for Indigenous fashion.”

Many of the Indigenous artists from New Mexico in the “State Fairs” exhibition were featured in the New Mexico State Fair.

Land of Enchantment crafters take center stage at the Smithsonian's' 'State Fairs: Growing American Craft' exhibit