Weaving in Beauty

Melissa Cody with her colorful contemporary Germantown design	Marilou Schultz spins under the watchful eye of her mother, Martha Schultz
From left, the tapestry weaving family of Michael Ornelas, Barbara Teller Ornelas and Sierra Ornelas
Click on any picture for a closer view

Phoenix, AZ The Phoenix Chamber of Commerce cranked up some of the best weather in memory for the 52nd Heard Museum Indian Market, which concluded yesterday.   It was warm, but not too warm, there were breezes but it was not windy and it was blessedly free of rain.  As you might expect, by afternoon the crowds were getting thick.  By arriving when the gates opened, I was able to get time to chat with many of the weavers there before other shoppers arrived.

The Market tends to put artists in similar locations each year, which helps to locate people without depending too much on the brochure.  Morris Muskett’s booth was my first stop and he had a selection of jewelry and small weavings that were very, very tempting.  Photographs of Morris work are shown exclusively on his web site, so be sure to visit him to see what he’s been working on.  Just don’t get too fond of that red spiny oyster pendant because I have my eye on it.

D.Y. Begay shared a booth with her twin sisters, Berdine Begay and Berdina Charley.  Each has a distinctive style that is eye catching and contemporary.  D.Y. uses her own vegetally dyed yarns for her work.  Her dye materials range from plants native to the Southwest to black beans from WalMart.  D.Y. has been traveling extensively in Central and South America and is trying to get the time to organize her pictures and other materials from her journeys.  You can see Berdine, Berdina, D.Y. and their work in the gallery below.

Marilou Schultz and her mother Martha were in the booth next to D.Y. and her sisters, so that was an easy stroll.  Marilou is not one to sit in a booth without doing something and she was busy spinning as her mom looked on (center picture above).  Marilou had a great assortment of handspun rugs and her variegated yarns.  You can also see more of Marilou’s work at her website and in the picture gallery below.

Last year, rain prevented me from getting a clear picture of Melissa Cody’s contemporary version of the Germantown Eyedazzler.  This year, she graciously posed with one of her smaller pieces as you’ll see at the upper left.  Melissa does a kind of blocking of the somewhat fluffy Germantown yarns that she uses by winding them into tight balls that she keeps under tension for up to a year before she uses them.   She had sold a larger piece that was more complex than the one that she is posing with.  Melissa is part of the growing group of younger weavers who pursue their weaving as fine artists while maintaining a full time career in other fields, in Melissa’s case in the allied field of museum curation.

Sierra Ornelas, Barbara Teller Ornelas‘ daughter is also part of this two career trend, living in Los Angeles and working as a writer for a television show.  Brother Michael, however,  is weaving full time and doing detailed framed small pieces.  Almost every weaver that I stopped to talk with had small “recession rugs” that reflect the effect of the economy and the determination of the weavers to adapt to it.  The Ornelas’ reported that they’d had a very good market and had very few pieces left on Sunday morning.

Leaving the Ornelas family, I stopped by Linda Taylor’s booth and she had some time to chat about her detailed tapestry work as well as her work as an illustrator.  Linda did the drawings for the book Wisdom Weaver by Jann Johnson.  The story details the process of weaving a Navajo rug and the love between a young girl and her grandmother.  The tale is told both in English and Navajo and is published by Salina Bookshelf, which specializes in books for the Navajo market.  You can see Linda with the book in the gallery below.

I went on to visit with Geneva Shabi, Brenda Spencer, TahNiibaa Naataanii, Phil Singer, Gilbert Begay, and Jason Harvey and I’ll write more about my visits with them on Wednesday.  I’ll leave you with the full gallery of the weavers and their work and we’ll have more of an in depth visit with each of them in  part two of this article.

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Happy Birthday, Sue!

Tempe, AZ Back in the days when Weaving in Beauty was just starting, Sue Dalton contacted me about taking a class in Navajo techniques.  She ended up coming out to Arizona for several classes and put up with me taking her pretty much all over the Navajo Nation.  As we were driving through the muddy road construction on Route 12, she said “You know, you could do this as a class and people would come”, and you know, she was right.  If you’ve been to our Weaving in Beauty class in Window Rock, it’s at least partly because of Sue!   Thank you so much, Sue and have a great day!

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

Tempe, AZ Joe Newman, who sent us the information on Alice Thompson’s weavings last week, has also sent us a beautiful image of the work of another weaver who is now selling her work directly to collectors.  Above, you can see Caroline Dick, who lives in the Tuba City area of Arizona,  with one of her signature works, an elegantly designed version of the Tree of Life.   The intricate band designs made even more graphically striking because of the painstaking outlining of the design elements.  Caroline also vegetally dyed most of the yarn with native plants.

The weaving is 25″x45 or 7.8 square feet.  It is priced at $2500, or about $320 per square foot.  You can contact Caroline for more information or pictures.   We hope to see more of Caroline’s exquisite work in the future!

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

A Moki Variant weaving available directly from Alice Van Winkle Thompson

Tempe, AZ One of the great challenges in the marketing of Navajo textiles is finding exposure for them in the broad market for fine crafts.  The Navajo Nation is about the size of West Virginia, which means that it is larger than nine of the fifty states, but there are fewer than 20 places that are actually on the Navajo Nation where a weaver can sell work.  This leads to a large supply of textiles and other artwork in being offered to trading posts in “border towns” like Flagstaff, AZ and Gallup, NM.  You don’t have to be an economist to see that it’s a system that tends to minimize the price paid to the weaver.   In saying this, I’m not trying to criticize traders.  Many of the traders I know do their best to give weavers and other artists the best possible price and I know that some of them occasionally wonder where the money for the next rug, basket or piece of jewelry is going to come from.  On the other side of the counter from the trader there is often a weaver who is desperate to sell a rug to raise cash and doesn’t see any alternative to accepting the best price obtainable from a trader.   It’s no wonder that weavers are seeking other marketing venues and are selling directly to collectors where possible.

Alice Van Winkle Thompson is one of the weavers who is taking this route and the weaving above is available directly from Alice.  It’s 16.5″x19″ of pure Navajo weaving excellence.  Alice’s work is immaculately executed with razor straight sides and perfectly straight joins that are as flat as western Kansas.  She uses Brown Sheep sport weight yarn that is re-spun to provide exactly the design definition and canvas-like hand that her work is noted for.  Alice’s price on this weaving is $500 ($233 per square foot).  You can contact Alice by phone at (505) 567-8308.  In case you can’t reach Alice, you can contact her husband,  Donald, at   (505)  713-1156.  Donald’s email is alten96@hotmail.com.   I don’t have any financial interest in this transaction at all, and Alice isn’t paying me anything for this article.  I just think that she’s a great weaver with a wonderful rug and (unless I win the Powerball) I can’t buy them all.  If you buy the weaving, please let me know about your experience.  This type of sale is very much on the cutting edge of marketing in Navajo weaving.

Alice has just started on a new piece, a complex Teec Nos Pos design.  There’s a picture of it below and I’m sure she would be pleased to discuss it with you.  Alice also does commission work.

A complex Teec Nos Pos design by Alice Van Winkle Thompson on the loom.

Thanks to weaving aficionado Joe Newman for forwarding the information on Alice’s new weavings and for providing the great pictures!

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

Rena Robertson's Summer Ceremonial Faces rug.

Tempe, AZ September’s Crownpoint Rug Auction was relatively small  (130 rugs) and was attended by about 45 buyers.   There are quite a few auctions at this time of year and they continue up to December with one of the major events being held at Hubbell Trading Post this coming weekend on September 18th.   Many of the weavers who did bring their work to Crownpoint in this month are doing very high quality weaving and some of it is very unique.  I am a real fan of Rena Robertson’s asymmetric pictorials and I was lucky enough to get two of her pieces.  One of them was a stunning Blue Canyon that is already sold, but the other is pictured above.  It’s one of her Faces series and is a montage of the summer nights in Diné Bikeyah (the Navajo homeland).  I also purchased two of Nellie Glasses’ pieces, a handspun small Two Grey Hills by Gilbert Begay and an immaculate and finely woven striped piece by Gloria Begay.   Gilbert and Gloria live in Crownpoint, but Rena and Nellie had each driven over 200 miles to the auction and were planning to return home that night.

I had a great time acquainting travel writer Neala Schwartzberg with the auction.  Neala covers offbeat travel destinations for New Mexico magazine and Examiner.com and she really gets into what she’s covering, or at least she did with the rug auction.  She talked with several of the weavers, some of the buyers and she even quoted me accurately! Maybe I can get her over to the Sheep is Life Celebration in Tsaile for another article (they do an auction too, Neala).  Neala’s got some great advice on previewing before you bid and she’s included some excellent pictures in the article that she wrote about the auction for Examiner.com .  It’s one of their features on things to do that are off the beaten path or in this case, 25 miles north of I-40.

A couple of detail sections of Rena’s rug appear below.  The rug is woven with both Brown Sheep and Burnham’s Trading Post yarns and measures 19.25″ x 27″.

One of the Mittens in Rena's weaving

A detail of the Face motif in Rena Robertson's rug

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker