Sophia Villalobos with her art installation. Image by Melanie Escalante.
By: Melanie Escalante / The Hub@TTU
The first time I saw vibrancy in West Texas was on the first Friday of March, when feminism was celebrated at the start of Women’s History Month.
I walked into the Texas Tech School of Art Satellite Gallery around 11 a.m. for a discussion titled Community, Women and the Arts, where I saw a sneak peak of a the show titled Hide and Seek: Neighborhood Space.
Interactive art stations. Image by Melanie Escalante.
The room was full of women who had an air of sophistication, colorfulness and intrigue. With tea cups in hand, we sat in a circle, panelist style, around a brown coffee table complemented by orange throw pillows. I listened to them speak of their challenges and ambitions as artists. The sound of cicadas from one of the art installations in the space played on a loop softly in the background; an afterthought to the words spoken. With their kind smiles and eyes that seemed to understand one another in the way women do, all seated with one leg crossed over the other, they embodied community.
We sat together under an entanglement of various hues and fabrics that hung delicately from the high ceiling. Pink masking tape carved its own path on the cement floor in swirls. Every wall and corner of the studio meant something to each artist. A wall with gelli print portraits of influential women, quilts passed down from the women who birthed the artists who created the exhibit, a window display decorated by their daughters, a pile of dirt for children to place their handmade cicadas, a pot for people to ex-spell their troubles into, a wall with square mirrors covered in pink letters and a clothesline, where words for sexual assault survivors were written on pieces of clothing. More salvaged drapes and more hues emerged the longer I looked.
To my left was a corner enclosure that resembled a sewing nook. In the crease of the corner was a seat draped with a striped crochet throw blanket, next to a surface covered with a sewn quilt that held knickknacks and a pin cushion. Beneath everything was a small rectangular bamboo floor mat, and above it was a canopy of materials: netting and scraps of fabric that were blue, black, purple, denim, yellow, red, embroidered patterns.
The artist: Sophia Villalobos.
When I met her for the first time that afternoon, she was wearing all black, from her hair to her combat boots, with the exception of a chunky stone necklace strung with earthy tones.
The space she recreated through fiber art was her nest that nurtured remembrances and reflections of her mother’s passing of COVID-19 in November 2020, the Milky Way, the West Texas landscape, flowers, birds, pieces of art she created for her 6-year-old grandson, a card she made for her mother as a young girl and various other mementos.
Her nest, she said, is “like this place of happiness — not that it’s always that way but you really have to make it.” As Miley Cyrus sings in Flowers, yes, we can buy ourselves flowers, but we can also make them. “We are so powerful and sometimes we think it’s about like buying those things, but we can do it, you know, as females we’re so strong.”
In 2020, what Villalobos described as “the winds of change” blew through and shook her world. She fell overboard and art pulled her out of the whirlwind. Art saved her life.
Four days after the art exhibit’s opening, I met Villalobos at Leftwich Park, and we sat under a tree on one of the green picnic tables surrounding the pond, the birds chirping as she told me her story. Her parents ran a successful upholstery business in Lubbock for 40 years, and the childhood home they raised her in was only a few blocks away.
A nook for children to play in. Taken by Melanie Escalate.
I squint as she points to a charcoal grill about 600 feet away to repaint the memory of her grandma wearing a muumuu and grilling hot dog weenies that she carried in her pocket. She continues to tell me how much her parents helped her raise her kids — two girls and two boys — more than anybody in the world.
Working in an emergency room and intensive care unit for 18 years, she had a rough time emotionally: “I will just say that I am no longer a healthcare professional, and it’s again, one of those things that you don’t know why they happen.” She thought her life was over after losing the education and career she fought so hard for. As the darkness loomed, Villalobos moved back home with her parents.
Her sister, Susan, is a surgical tech and can understand how Sophia might’ve felt working in healthcare for those 18 years. You want to give the best possible care to your patients, but sometimes, there are roadblocks. She told me about how stressful it can be to work in the healthcare sector, especially after the pandemic and how, “being in any kind of job, sometimes isn’t what you see it to be once you’re in there.” She added: “Maybe that’s why she (Sophia) changed. I don’t know.”
She saw her sister’s light diminish and was happy when she made the decision to move on.
Villalobos went back to school at Texas Tech University to pursue interior design but realized it did not fit her the way she thought it would. Rather, the glass slipper was the drawing class she took. It ignited a spark.
Shortly after, the country went into lockdown.
A few days before her mother’s passing in November, Villalobos picked up the hoop and thread, and began sewing.
Looking down at the picnic table, she tells me in between sobs why she did it. “Because I wanted to — I wanted to make her better, and I used to always make stuff for my mom when I was a kid, just drawings and things.”
Because of COVID-19, her mother’s funeral was delayed. Three weeks later, the flowers from the viewing had wilted after all the time spent in stillness. “It made it even more depressing, I guess, and so I was really affected by that,” she says, pausing. “So I made a lot of black flowers.” Mourning Roses, is what she called them.
I ask her how she thinks her dad must have felt when she took up her mother’s craft. Did he notice? If so, did he say anything? Did it remind him of his late wife?
She says he really loves to see the fiber works. She sits on the couch and creates, he sits on his chair and watches the colors interweave.
“My dad was more of the texture guy. My mom was more of a color girl.”
Leslie Sotomayor, a friend to Villalobos and collaborator, said she met Villalobos’s father at the First Friday Art trail in January where Villalobos had a solo show. She described him as a sweetheart.
Together, Villalobos and her father created a piece showcased at the gallery, and Sotomayor learned about his process and background. She said, “it’s so beautiful, I mean, to have that experience with someone who’s so close to you, when you have this history and, I just think it’s a beautiful sentiment and memory to create together.”
Sewing has been instrumental to Villalobos’s growth as a person for the past two years.
Looking back, she realizes her passion for art has always been inside of her. She recalls the way she always created an environment for herself full of color and texture, hanging from the ceiling. She describes herself as nostalgic, which she links to growing up in the 80s.
“I’m lucky enough to have ridden my bike down the street,” she says, pointing, “all up that hill around the you know, the tennis courts and stuff like that like in my long, colorful shorts and my Converse, like a little goofball with my ponytails.” As she speaks, she tugs at the pigtails styled underneath her tweed hat.
Her sister Susan is more than a sister. She was 17 when she gave birth to Sophia. Her parents adopted Sophia, and the two were raised like sisters. Because of that, Susan thinks Sophia took on their parents’ crafty nature.
When Sophia was younger, Susan says, “she would always like doing different things. She’s made a lot of jewelry, and she’s made other crafts from vintage jewels. I was like, how did she get that idea? That’s cool.”
Image by Melanie Escalate.
For at least 15 years Susan has watched Sophia create art in little ways that make her happy. “And it made her happy to give it to you,” Susan adds. “I think that means more to me that someone actually took the time to think about something and make it, and (think about) how they’re going to make it.”
Living in New Mexico in a house near the Pecos River, Sophia spent a lot of time outdoors with her children. “We’d go camping, you know, like, camping as best as one single mom could go camping,” she says, laughing. “They all think it’s quite funny now to talk about some of those things that I tried really hard to do, and I thought I was really doing good on.”
The house was blue with white trim. She recalls being the parent “that would be making a snowman with the kids.” Then she adds, before erupting into more laughter: “And next thing you know, all the kids are inside drinking hot cocoa and I’m out there finishing up.”
The driveway was long, and she let her kids use it as a canvas. Catching herself in the story she says, “This is again before I was doing art, you see what I mean? It was always kind of in the background.”
As she pieces the puzzle of her story as a third-generation Mexican, whose dad was a migrant worker, she thinks of Richard Cabral’s quote: “We are the gatekeepers of our ancestors’ stories.”
She came across a book, only a few pages long, that her mom had started writing about her life. Now, Villalobos wants to help her late mother tell that story. She says sewing has helped her channel her ancestors and feel their strength behind her.
“That’s the one thing I like about stitchwork is that, it’s like you’re building and building,” she says. “It’s just like the people you surround yourself with. You surround yourself with good people that you love and that you have connections with — it’s the same process and you get stronger.”
On the opening night of the co-curated art show Hide and Seek: Neighborhood Space, I saw the result of the connection Villalobos described. There were people filing in and out of the space. I could hardly walk through because everyone was so immersed in the messages and stories these women told through their art. Parents scurried behind their children as they rushed to place their paper cicadas in the dirt. Wide-eyed, couples and friends pointed to the walls: “Look at that.”
Excited but careful, everyone nurtured the exhibits just as much as the artists did.
I waited for traffic to clear before approaching Villalobos to congratulate her. She was smiling alongside Sotomayor; together, they had facilitated the sexual assault awareness station. They both embraced me with open arms.
Sotomayor had invited me to attend both events and introduced me to Villalobos that afternoon during the panel discussion. She says she met Villalobos at a mutual friend’s gathering, when she was still pretty new to Lubbock.
It was fall, and there were about 30-40 people at the gathering. A few sat around a fire. Two people from her left included her new friend, whom she would later describe to me as a wildflower bouquet, a forest with a waterfall running through it — fireworks.
Villalobos was wearing a denim jacket and jeans embroidered with what seemed like every color of the rainbow. The floral embellishments reminded Sotomayor of Mexican tapestries.
She stood up to get something when Sotomayor, who had been eying her outfit, said, “Where did you get that? That’s gorgeous.”
Villalobos told her she had made it.
Their friendship bloomed and eventually reached a more intimate level of connection, as they collaborated on the exhibit. Sotomayor says Villalobos came over to her house on a chilly morning. She started a fire and they drank cafécito, sharing their experiences as single mothers, women of color and artists. That’s when the materials and spray paint came out, and they played, as Villalobos would call it.
The play extended into their gallery space.
They knew they wanted the art show to echo the conversations they had about those lived testimonios that shaped their lives. “I feel very honored and grateful when someone shares that part of themselves with me, and especially through an art process,” Sotomayor says.
Interactive art station. Taken by Melanie Escalante.
When she was starting to fall into a pit of doubt, Villalobos says Sotomayor lifted her up by having faith in her.
She is aware that sometimes we sell ourselves short. “In most societies, women were equal, women were leaders, women were warriors and things, and we have those spirits inside of us, and so those are the ones that I believe help me on those days when it’s rough,” she says. “Because my mom was that person. My mom was the one who sat there with me through all those things and would never turn her back on me.”
She had no clue what self-love was. Growing up, her parents were so good at loving and taking care of their little girl. Discovering self-love was her biggest growing experience, as she was able to forgive herself for her mistakes.
Her mission now is to tell the story of her survival. “That’s why I like to wear a lot of camo,” she says, pointing to her camouflage jacket, “It’s like every day that we get up and show up — that is a lot of the battle.”
The birds are still chirping. It is a Tuesday afternoon and the park is empty. Peaceful. We’ve been sitting on top of the green picnic table and talking for over an hour. Sotomayor shoots her a text. They’re meeting soon.
Also happening soon, Villalobos is moving out of her parents’ house.
“The house is perfect, obviously, it’s where I grew up. But it’s hard because my mom is always there. It’s hard — just a lot of memories and things,” she says, taking a deep breath. “When I was 2, we moved there, and so there’s a lot, there’s a lot of joyful moments and my own silly moments. But it’ll be nice to come and visit that home.”
There is no direct answer as to why she became an artist. It wasn’t a clear path, and the passion didn’t come from a broken home.
What she can tell me is that art is intuitive. It comes from inside.
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