Weaving in Beauty

Phil Singer Shows his Fancy Manta I	Brenda Spencer's Burntwater design has a Teec Nos Pos like geometry
Jason Harvey at the Heard Indian Market. The weavings in the background are by Jason. Click on any picture to enlarge it.

Phoenix, AZ Let’s visit with a few more weavers at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Market!  Heading toward the east side of the show, I stopped and talked with Geneva Scott Shabi and her sister Brenda Spencer.  Geneva’s large Ganado Red Wide Ruins rug was sporting a large and well deserved ribbon. Click here to see Geneva with the rug. Usually a weaver in the Wide Ruins style, Geneva’s sister, Brenda Spencer had chosen a bordered Burntwater design evocative of Teec Nos Pos patterns, but with a very contemporary feel.  You can see Brenda with the rug at the top right. I was surprised to see it without a ribbon, but that doesn’t mean I’m volunteering to judge rugs!  I’d still be over at the Heard trying to make a decision!

On my way to see TahNiibaa Naataanii, I saw Phil Singer (pictured at top left). Phil is a thoughtful and innovative weaver who dyes many of his own yarns. This always lends extra dimension to the work, although I can attest to the extra time involved! Phil has started a new series of Fancy Manta weavings and he’s holding the first one in the picture above. He’s about to move back to Kayenta to help care for his elderly parents, but promises to stay in touch. The Heard show is the largest one that he participates in each year, but also expects to be at the Museum of Northern Arizona Navajo Festival of Arts and Culture on August 6th and 7th in Flagstaff.

TahNiibaa Naataanii with her prize-winning Second Phase Chief Blanket

TahNiibaa’s booth was what you might call mobbed with I got there.  TahNiibaa is doing wet felting on silk and decorated silk scarves that are very popular.  You can see some of them in the background of the picture at left.  These smaller pieces give her a lower priced and desirable item to sell while still allowing her the time to concentrate on a large weaving.  Her prize winning and classic Second Phase Chief design was done with commercial Brown Sheep wool and was expertly executed.  If you’re a weaver, you know that Brown Sheep can be very fuzzy and this piece showed none of that.  TahNiibaa hopes for the day when Navajo woven textiles will be more commonly used as wearable art, and I’m a real proponent of that as well.  In addition to her weaving, TahNiibaa is working as the Project Director  for Dibé Bé Iiná, and is working organize their Sheep is Life Celebration June 20th through 25th in Tsaile, AZ.

The Market was getting really crowded when I began to make my way back to the front gate.  I had heard a rumor that Gilbert Begay had arrived and I wanted to see if he had any of his woven bags.  It was getting difficult to navigate the aisles in the tent where Gilbert had his booth, but I don’t think that I seriously injured anyone trying to get there.  Gilbert was busy spinning and I selected a Ganado Red bag for the Mercantile.   It’s done with commercial Brown Sheep and is probably about 7″ x 9″ (somewhat larger than Gilbert’s other bags).  It will sell for $196.00 and you can contact me if you’re interested.  Click here to see a picture of Gilbert with the bag.

The dark browns in this Jason Harvery Burnwater are from black walnuts. Move your mouse over the picture for a closer view.

As I was leaving, I had a nice talk with Jason Harvey, who is pictured at the lower center in the photos at the top of this article. Jason does a lot of work with contemporary representations of traditional patterns, but he also had a terrific small Burntwater that he said he’d done to get back to his roots. You’ll see it at the right and be sure to mouse over the picture to see some of the detail. Jason said that the dark brown was dyed with walnuts, which give one of the richest versions of the color under the right conditions. Jason wasn’t sure of some of the other dye sources, a problem that I have because I seldom label my results. D.Y. Begay has my admiration for the careful labeling and recordkeeping that she does.

As I was driving home, I realized that I had not had a chance to stop to see Sallie Parker or Sylvia Begaye.  I have some pictures of their work that I’ll share with you in my next article.  I also could not get anywhere near top weaving prize winner Charlene Laughing’s booth.  I’ll have to make up for that at Indian Market!

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

I’m trying out a new picture processing plug-in called PicLens. Once I have things working correctly, you’ll be able to see a full screen slide show of any post with pictures. Since I have some great ones from the Heard Museum Indian Market, I thought that this would be a good time to try it. You’ll need to install a free plug-in for your browser to fully use PicLens. Please let me know if you like this functionality or whether it’s just not worth the trouble.

I usually have to teach on Saturday, so I didn’t get to the show until Sunday morning. There was a line to get in, but it went quickly. I visited with Marilou and Martha Schultz first. Marilou reports that she’s not teaching as many classes this year so that she can finish some projects. She is doing quite a few of what she calls her computer rugs, which have patterning that resembles a circuit board, a very very complex circuit board. Here’s a picture of Marilou with her mother at left. They were both spinning and I wanted to sit down and join in, but if I had, I wouldn’t have gotten to see as many people as I did.

I visited with Roy Kady next and both his mother and niece Tyra were also in the booth. Roy had woven a full set of tack for a horse including a felted saddle pad, saddle cinch, bridle and saddle blanket. We both agreed that any horse blessed with this ensemble would look really good. I will add a better picture in the morning, but you can click on this one, or use the PicLens arrow to launch a full screen image or see a slide show. If you do, you’ll see Tyra, Martha and Marilou and Sallie Parker. I’ll be writing more tomorrow! In the meantime please try the PicLens slide show if you have a chance.