Weaving in Beauty

Laramie Blake wears a traditional biil dress and leggings for her graduation portrait. The dress is woven in two pieces and sewn together.

Tempe, AZ You can find Spider Rock Girl Laramie Blake’s graduation album on her page at the Spider Rock Girls web site.  There are 29 pictures in the album.

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

Spider Rock Girl Laramie Blake will graduate from Chinle High School on May 22nd.

Chinle, AZ Spider Rock Girl Laramie Blake will be graduating from Chinle High School on May 22nd and I was honored to be asked to take her graduation pictures.  We spent about two hours at the Spider Rock overlook at Canyon de Chelly today, taking about 125 pictures that we browsed through over dinner at the Thunderbird Lodge cafeteria with Laramie’s mother, Emily Malone and her little sister Alyssa.  One of Laramie’s favorite portrait shots, above, appears with her permission, and more will be posted in the next couple of days at the Spider Rock Girls web site.    A second picture that we both like appears below.  Laramie is wearing a traditional bííl dress, a Zuni needlepoint squash blossom necklace, bracelets and earrings and traditional moccasins with deerskin leggings.  Laramie has paid her educational expenses with her weaving since she was in middle school.

Laramie plans to major in business at Diné College in Tsaile starting in the fall.

Laramie Blake, Chinle High School Class of 2010

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

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