Colorado artist keeps colcha embroidery tradition alive, new exhibit on display at University of Denver

An 88-year-old Westminster woman has been making quite a name for herself through her art in the past five years. In 2019, Josephine Lobato was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship.

"I'm only the second person in Colorado to get the award, so it does mean a lot," Lobato said in 2019.

Since then, Lobato hasn't slowed down much. She exhibited her work in Washington D.C. and across the Front Range.

"I exhibited it once at CU at Colorado Springs, and I did workshops at the Heller House for the art department," Lobato  said.

Lobato is the keeper of a tradition, born in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado that almost died out in our state. It's called colcha, and it's a unique type of embroidery.

"There's a big difference between culture and embroidery. It's called embroidery because you do it the way you do it, but it's still the only one stitch where her embroidery you use 101 stitches or more," Lobato said.

Lobato learned how to do it when she was a curator at the Fort Garland Museum in the 1980s and 1990s. She saw colcha pieces there and decided to learn how to make her own to catalog her life and culture in the San Luis Valley.

"I was researching stories. You know? I would talk to the older people. I would ask, 'What happened? What was it like?' I wanted to know," Lobato  explained.

At the time, she was the only person in Colorado doing colcha, so for years, she created scenes of Hispano life in the valley to preserve them for future generations.

"It was sort of a legacy for my kids," Lobato said.

But her work was noticed by the Colorado art community, and since then, she has been busy sharing her talent.

In October 2024, Lobato  is doing another exhibition -- this time at the University of Denver. Some of her work can be seen now, but the main exhibition will open on Oct. 24 and run through Dec. 4. Josephine says this helps her to not only preserve and share traditions and scenes of the past, but to achieve her ultimate goal -- reviving colcha in Colorado.

A reception will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24 at the Davis Gallery at the Shwayder Art Building on the DU campus.  

"They just had a class at Centennial (High School) in San Luis to teach a kids in the art department to do colcha," Lobato said. "So my dream did come true because it came back to Colorado."