About the T.Skies Artist Co-Op
Edited by Mateo James — Founder + Editor of the Silversmith Directory
Why we exist
The T.Skies Co-Op was founded in 2019 by the artists of Turquoise Skies Gallery, an established jewelry store in Albuquerque, NM. The founders — silversmiths working at the bench every day — saw three things happening in the Southwest jewelry market that they could no longer accept.
They watched Native American artists get economically exploited. Wholesale buyers underpaying for one-of-a-kind work that had taken weeks to make. Master silversmiths' pieces sold to tourists at five times the price the artist received, with the artist's name stripped from the gallery card. Family lineages with three generations of cultural knowledge inside them treated as interchangeable inventory.
They watched cultural identity get misrepresented. Cheap imports stamped "Native American jewelry" passing through tourist markets. Foreign-made replicas of Diné and Pueblo designs sold without acknowledgment of the cultures they were taken from. Sacred symbols sold as decorative motifs without permission, without context, without respect.
They watched authenticity itself erode. Plated brass advertised as silver. Dyed howlite sold as turquoise. "Hand-crafted" jewelry that had passed through machines and overseas factories. Mine names invented for marketing copy with no relation to where any stone actually came from.
The Co-Op was built as a direct response to all three. Not as a gallery — there was already a gallery. As something else: a working studio, a scholarship program, a learning community, and an authority on what human-made craft actually means in this part of the world.
How the mission widened
What started as a response to the exploitation of Native silversmiths has grown into something larger over the years.
As we did the work — funding scholarships, training interns, documenting hallmarks, fighting misrepresentation in the marketplace — we kept noticing that the forces threatening Native craft were the same forces threatening craft everywhere. Automation absorbing skilled human work. Mass production homogenizing what used to be local and distinct. Dishonesty about materials becoming a market norm. Algorithms generating content that pretends to be human-made. The anxiety isn't unique to Indigenous artists — but Indigenous artists were among the first and hardest hit because they were already operating in markets stacked against them.
So our mission widened. We now work to preserve the human experience itself, expressed through authentic handmade craft. Native American and Southwestern silversmithing remains our flagship — our daily practice, our deepest expertise, the tradition we protect first and most fiercely. But the values we apply to that work — honest materials, transparent processes, named makers, sustained teaching, and a refusal to let anonymous machines replace a person's hands — apply universally.
In a world racing toward automation, some experiences should stay human. That's the bigger cause our Native silversmithing work is part of. And the work begins, as it always has, with the artists at our bench.
What we do
Center Native silversmithing — and protect it.
The Co-Op's flagship work has always been Native American and Southwestern silversmithing. We work alongside Diné (Navajo), Hopi, Kewa Pueblo (Santo Domingo), Zuni, Acoma, San Ildefonso, and Spanish-heritage silversmiths in our shared workshop. We provide them studio space, professional photography, marketing support, and direct connection to collectors who value their work and pay them fairly. Members of the Co-Op set their own prices, sell their own pieces, and keep what they earn.
Fund the next generation through KITA.
The Keeping Indigenous Traditions Alive (KITA) Scholarship — in partnership with CNM's Bench Jewelry program and the Fuse Makerspace — funds Native and Indigenous students learning silversmithing, dance, and the broader traditional arts of the Southwest. KITA covers school tuition, tools, materials, transportation, and lodging — the things scholarships often forget. The 2025 recipient was Karolina Chapo, a Navajo dancer preserving Diné traditions through movement.
Pay students through Internships.
The T.Skies Internship is an opportunity for students at CNM's Bench Jewelry program and at local Albuquerque high schools — particularly students from Indigenous communities — to earn school credit AND a paid wage while learning real-world experience in a working jewelry studio. Most internships shuffle spreadsheets. Ours teaches you to make jewelry that lasts a hundred years.
Open the studio to the public through Craft & Cast.
Through our Craft & Cast workshops, anyone can spend two hours doing something only their own hands can do — carve a piece of jewelry in wax, watch it cast in real silver, bronze, or 14k gold using the ancient lost-wax method, and take home a one-of-a-kind piece.
Document the makers through the Silversmith Directory.
Our Silversmith Directory is the canonical scholarly reference for the Native American and Southwestern silversmiths whose work passes through Albuquerque — their lineages, their hallmarks, their stones, their stories. Edited by Mateo James, the Directory aims to be the most accurate, IACA-clean, culturally-respectful record on the open web.
Educate consumers through Live Shows.
Our Live Shows on Facebook bring Native silversmiths into direct conversation with collectors and the public. The format is deliberately educational: how to identify authentic Native American jewelry, how to recognize quality, how to know what you're actually buying.
What we believe
The Co-Op operates on five values that show up in every piece of work we do.
- Made by human hands. Not algorithms. Not assembly lines. Not anonymous overseas factories. We protect the work that requires a person.
- Honest materials. Real silver, real stones, named mines, disclosed metal alloys. The opposite of the deception that defines so much of the modern jewelry market.
- Transparent processes. Techniques shown. Mentors named. Lineages tracked. The Silversmith Directory is this value made tangible.
- Rooted in cultural traditions. Native American, Southwestern, Spanish, Mexican — not erased, not flattened, not repackaged for mass-production homogeneity. Each tradition kept distinct, each community credited, each artist named.
- Sustained through teaching. Artists train artists. Programs fund the next generation. The studio doors stay open. A craft that doesn't pass forward dies.
Where we are
T.Skies Artist Co-Op
8106 Menaul Boulevard NE, Suite B
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87110
A 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit. Founded 2019.
Our shared studio operates within the T.Skies gallery on Menaul Boulevard. Visitors are welcome during open hours — see jewelry being made, talk to the artists, watch a Live Show in production, ask whatever questions you have.