Weaving in Beauty

Roy Kady will exhibit his work at the University of Denver, April 2-22, 2010. (Photo courtesy of University of Denver)

Denver, CO Navajo master weaver Roy Kady will show his work from April 2nd -22nd in an exhibit titled Na’ashjé’ii Biką’ Biyiin (Chant of the Male Spider). Roy is co-curating the exhibit with Teresa Montoya (Diné), a graduate student in the University of Denver’s Department of Anthropology.  Set within the context of Navajo weaving, Roy will share his personal stories, experiences, creative inspirations and work in an environment where visitors are invited to touch, smell and participate in the experience of weaving.

Roy is a truly engaging and inspirational person to meet and is generous in sharing his culture and work.  In the past, he has been a key participant in the Diné bé Iiná (Sheep is Life) organization and he is now the chapter president in his home community of Teec Nos Pos, Arizona.  The chapter is the basic unit of Navajo tribal government and is roughly analogous to a hybrid of town and county, with each chapter a distinct legal unit with the right to form binding contracts.  As if being the chapter president and an active weaver weren’t enough, Roy also cares for his large flock of sheep and goats.  You can learn more about Roy and his family at his beautiful and informative web site, Dinewoven.com.

The exhibit opens on April 2nd at Sturm Hall on the University of Denver campus and runs through the 22nd of April.  The opening reception on April 2nd, from 5:30-8:00 PM, will feature a weaving demonstration with Roy, a discussion of the religious aspects of the weaving process by Anderson Hoskie, and a sampling of foods based on the traditional Navajo diet prepared by chef Freddie Bitsoie.  Foods will include Churro lamb, blue corn puree, butternut squash tarts and Navajo tea.

Click here for further details on the exhibit from our events calendar.

Roy is looking forward to seeing both new and old friends in Denver and is busy working to finish a Guardians weaving similar to the one that he’s holding in the picture below from last year’s Heard Museum Indian Market.

Roy Kady holds a Guardians weaving at the 2009 Heard Museum Indian Market.

Oh and one more thing!  Happy Birthday, Roy!

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

Marie H. Yazzie (left) and her daughter Marilyn demonstrate weaving and spinning at the Scottsdale ArtWalk

Scottsdale, AZ The busy Heard Museum Indian Market weekend kicked off on Thursday, March 4, with the weekly ArtWalk giving special attention to the many Native American artists and craftsman who were in the Phoenix area for this large annual event.  Both artists and attendees travel thousands of miles to be at the market, so I felt very fortunate that it’s near my home.

Mark Winter, the trader at  Toadlena Trading Post, in Toadlena, New Mexico, had even rented a storefront on Scottsdale’s Main St. for the weekend and I enjoyed chatting with weaver Marie H. Yazzie and her daughter Marilyn, pictured above.  Marie does not speak English conversationally, so I got to practice a bit of Diné bizaad (the Navajo language).  Marie said I did pretty well for a bilagáana (white person).  At least I think that’s what she said.  Marie weaves handspun Two Grey Hills designs and also does round Sandpainting pieces as you can see in the picture below.  The larger rug is a depiction of Mother Earth and Father Sky, which has always been one of my favorite sandpainting images.

Round weavings by Marie H. Yazzie among other Two Grey Hills style work

I asked Mark how he was doing on his much anticipated Master Weavers book, the culmination of over 20 years of work with Two Grey Hills weavers and he told me that he expected to have it done by summer and possibly by May, in time for the opening of an exhibition at the Wheelwright Museum.  I’ll certainly keep you posted on that.   Jackson Clarke II of the Toh-Atin Gallery in Durango, Colorado stopped by as Mark and I were talking and I got a nice picture of both of them, which you’ll see below.

Jackson Clarke (left) and Mark Winter (right)

I also stopped at the Old Territorial Shop and Turkey Mountain Traders during the evening, so we’ll stroll there next, but it might be Saturday or Sunday before we get there!

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

The courtyard at the Bosque Redondo Memorial near Ft. Sumner, NM.

Ft. Sumner, NM I love a road trip and I’ve probably been past the turn off to Ft. Sumner on I-40 two dozen times, even a couple of times wondering how far it was from the interstate (47 miles) and thinking that someday I should go, especially after 2005 when the state of New Mexico established a state monument at the site where 6,000+ Navajos were incarcerated from 1864 to 1868.  Today, I went to the memorial with Jennie Slick.

In Navajo, the site is referred to as Hweeldi, meaning a place of suffering.   The history leading up to the forced march of the Navajo to a place 350 miles from their homes is a complex series of failures to understand the culture and governance of the Navajo played against the backdrop of a growing nation convinced of a Manifest Destiny that endowed it with the right to modify, move or destroy anything in it’s path.   It is to the immense credit of the Navajo people that their leaders, notably Barboncito and Manuelito, were able to befriend and negotiate with the government agents and convince them that the best thing for all concerned was to return the Navajos to the homeland where they had been self-sufficient.

Even under the conditions at Hweeldi, the Navajos still wove as a means of survival.  Here, the Navajos learned to use the brilliantly colored plied yarns from Germantown, Pennsylvania, producing some of the finest and most beautiful weaving that is part of the art form.    In a strange place, trying to adapt to unfamiliar foods and enduring atrocious treatment, they did not dwell on the injustice but instead they carried on their traditions as best they could and they found a way to come home.

Looking northwest from Bosque Redondo at sunset.

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

The 2009 Gathering of Weavers attracted a large group of weaving enthusiasts. The 86 degree ideal weather didn't hurt either.

Phoenix, AZ The Heard Museum held their second annual Gathering of Weavers yesterday.  It’s a one day event dedicated to weaving and weavers held on the first Saturday in November.   The event is held outdoors in the museum’s courtyard and allows buyers to purchase rugs directly from the weaver.  The museum handles the sales through their shop, allowing the weavers to take credit cards, something that most of them do not do.   I can’t remember exactly what percentage the weaver receives, but I believe it is 80% or more and there was no charge for table space, a big help for the weavers.   Weavers at the event included well known names like Brenda Spencer, Lola Cody, D.Y. Begay and Barbara Jean Teller Ornelas, but newer and weavers who have not had as much public exposure like Monica Glasses, Nathan Harry and Loretta Tahe were also there.   I’ve culled a few pictures from my embarrassingly large assortment so that you can get an idea of the artists and their work.

Loretta Tahe shows her feather rug design.

Loretta Tahe of Hardrock, AZ weaves this distinctive pattern that she calls a Feather Rug.  Each feather has a different design.  Loretta usually sells her work at the Crownpoint Rug Auction and generally weaves one rug each month.   A detail of the expertly woven center feather area is below.

Here's a detail of ther center five feathers in Loretta's rug.

Gilbert Begay wears his handwoven vest.

Gilbert Begay of Crownpoint, NM is a familiar person to many of you who have visited the site before.  Gilbert is a prolific and creative weaver who often stops by when Jennie Slick and I are doing classes in Window Rock.  Although he works full time for Safeway in Farmington, NM, Gilbert spends a lot of his spare time weaving small format rugs and specialty bags like the one seen below.  The wool used in the bag is some that Gilbert and I dyed during our annual Cochineal Cookoff  in Window Rock this August.  Gilbert had used the yarn for the bag below and a small mat.  I purchased one of Gilbert’s bags at a recent auction and will be putting it in the Mercantile later today or in the morning.

One of Gilbert Begay's small bags. The wool in this weaving is dyed with cochineal.

Brenda Spencer shows her latest Wide Ruins design

Brenda Spencer of Dallas, TX and her sister Geneva Shabi of Sanders, AZ were just across the aisle from Gilbert.  Brenda has incorporated a unique wave pattern that is occasionally seen in very old textiles and that we’ve been working on duplicating for the last four years or so.   Brenda has incorporated this element masterfully into the Wide Ruins design that you see above and in a detail below.  The technique is an optical illusion of a curvilinear pattern created by careful manipulation of diagonal lines and weft counts.

Here's a detal of the wave design in Brenda Spencer's Wide Ruins rug.

Geneva Shabi with one of her prize-winning Wide Ruins rugs.

Geneva Shabi, Brenda’s sister also had rugs displaying her dazzling mastery of the Wide Ruins design idiom.  Geneva works for as a relief postmaster when she’s not weaving.  Although you can see that Brenda and Geneva share some influences in their work, Geneva’s take on the Wide Ruins design is very much her own.  You can see a detail from the striped section of her smaller weaving in the picture below.   Look at the immaculately clean lines, the virtuosity of the color choices and the arrangement of the lines to form an absolute symphony of elegance and beauty.  And these are the stripes.

A detail of a striped area in a Geneva Shabi Wide Ruins rug.

Let’s stop here for today, and wander further down the courtyard tomorrow.  I think I can see D.Y.  Begay, Barbara Jean Teller Ornelas and Lola Cody down there.

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

The 2010 calendar is ready for your inspection!  By collaging the pictures in several of the months, I’ve included many more photographs than I’ve been able to show in previous versions, which is a darn good thing since I was only down to 78 pictures when I got done selecting the ones I wanted. The calendar is available immediately from lulu.com if you can’t wait, but I you can also pre-order directly from Weaving in Beauty.  Pre-ordered calendars will be shipped after October 15.

Many thanks go to the weavers, traders and students whose work and places of business are featured.   Weavers Lynda Teller Pete, Jennie Slick, Shirley Brown, Rose Dedman, Kathy Strathearn and the Spider Rock Girls (Emily and Alyssa Malone, Rose Yazzie and Lavera, Laramie and Lariisa Blake) are featured.  Work by Gloria Begay of Crownpoint, NM and Pauline Glasses of Pinon, AZ was photographed at Richardson Trading in Gallup, NM.  Multiple photographs were taken at Toadlena Trading Post.   The Ye’i rugs were photographed at auctions run by R.B. Burnham and Co. Thanks also to Two Grey Hills Trading Post for the beautiful background seen in Shirley Brown’s picture.

Sales of the calendar help to support the operating costs for the reporting and reference aspects of Weaving in Beauty.  I really love putting the calendar together, and although it’s difficult to select the pictures from the several thousand that I take each year, as I’m doing it I realize how very privileged I am to be a part of this community of hózhó dóó nizhóní (harmony and beauty).

A preview of the calendar appears below.  You can click on any picture for a more detailed view.

2010 Calendar Cover
January (Weavings by Gloria Begay/Richardson Trading, Gallup)	February (Lynda Teller Pete/Southwest Indian Fair)	March (Weavings by Kathy Strathearn)
April: (Weaving by Daisy Taugelchee and family/Toadlena Trading Post)	May (The Spider Rock Girls and Friends)	June (Ye'i Collage/R.B. Burnham and Co. Native Auctions)
July (The sheep of Navajoland)	August (Natural dyes with Rose Dedman and her family)	September (Shirley Brown with her handcarded, handspun rug/Two Grey Hills Trading Post)
October (Ye'i Bi Chei pictorial by Pauline Glasses/Richardson Trading)	November (A collage of pictures from the Toadlena Trading Post)	December (Jennie Slick at home with her loom)

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

Lavera Blake's Double Diamond Burntwater is currently listed on Ebay.

Tempe, AZ The Spider Rock Girls are raising money for their back to school expenses and auctions and sales to traders are slow for them right now.  They have two items on Ebay at the moment.   Under normal circumstances, the only way to get one of their weavings is through competitive bidding or by being first in line when a rug is finished, but right now you have an opportunity to own their work at wholesale prices.   Lavera, age 25, is just completing work on a certification as a nursing assistant and will return to college  this semester to continue studies toward a business degree in addition to her weaving and work at a nursing facility.   She has completed a double diamond Burntwater rug (pictured at right) that is listed on Ebay for $1000.  The rug is 2.5′ x 4′ and is very tightly woven with Brown Sheep yarn.  Lavera is willing to consider offers at lower prices and she  accepts Paypal.   You can contact Lavera for more information on the rug or to make an offer.

Larissa Blake, 22, with her Spider Rock rug.

Lavera’s younger sister Larissa, 22,  has graduated from high school and is a full time weaver.  She is helping seven year old baby sister Alyssa with her back to school expenses.  Alyssa will be in second grade in Chinle Elementary school this year.  Larissa has woven one of her family’s signature Spider Rock rugs (see picture at left) and it is also currently listed on Ebay.  This rug is also 2.5′x4′ and is woven with Burnham’s Trading Post yarns in a multitude of vegetally dyed colors.

The pattern has been developed and refined by the girls since its inception about 10 years ago.  The story is that one summer, Lavera and her cousin Harriet Whitney were staying with their grandmother in Canyon de Chelly at the base of Spider Rock.  The girls wanted to learn to weave, and their grandmother, Rose Yazzie, was glad to set up looms for them.  She told the girls that they could have her leftover vegetally dyed yarns to use, but there wasn’t enough of any one color to do a pattern.  Since Rose told the girls that they could have all of the black yarn that they wanted, they hit on the idea of using the vegetal yarns in small bars for the background and using the black for the pattern.  When trader Bruce Burnham saw the results, he loved the visual impact and a pattern was born.  Harriet doesn’t weave the Spider Rock pattern much any more but Lavera, Larissa and younger sister Laramie are still doing them.

The Ebay price for Larissa’s Spider Rock rug is $800, but Larissa is also willing to consider offers at a lower price and does accept Paypal.  You can contact Larissa’s mother, Emily Malone,  if you are interested in the rug.

The girls will be adding more pictures of their work over at their web site, but I wanted to let you know about their Back to School Special as soon as possible!

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker