Clockwise from top left: Coral Mosaic #1, 1982, Margaret Wood, mixed media, 50.25" x 46.5"; Migration Triptych, 2001, Ramona Sakiestewa, wool, 45" x 45"; Third Phase Style, D.Y. Begay, 1995, 65" w x 50" h, wool; Migration 17 (detail), 2001. Ramona Sakiestewa, wool, 45" x 45".

Of all the impressive Native American arts, works in cloth and textiles embody a special brilliance, with a history of fiber creativity stretching back to distant prehistoric eras. Join us now for a look at some of today’s most inspiring Native artists working in this realm, threading back and forward through time—from traditionalists to cutting-edge contemporary artisans.

ramona sakiestewa

Images courtesy of LewAllen Gallery, Santa Fe.

by Ann Marshall

Weaver Ramona Sakiestewa calls her tapestries “painterly weavings” because their designs give the illusion of fluid lines laid down by a sudden spontaneous brush stroke. In reality those seemingly effortless lines are the result of her mastery of the tapestry technique and a carefully planned approach that permits her to escape the angular constraints of warps and wefts. A headline of a newspaper review of her current (through Jan. 5) solo show at the Heard Museum North in Scottsdale, Arizona declared, “Weaver’s art ‘impossible.’” That says a lot.

Sakiestewa’s weaving is grounded in a scholar’s respectful acknowledgment of centuries of weavers who have gone before. Of Hopi heritage on her father’s side, she grew up in Albuquerque, a city with a rich confluence of cultural traditions. As a teenager, she taught herself to weave on a vertical loom, the traditional loom of Pueblo and Navajo weavers. She studied fabric design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, returning to New Mexico to work in the 1970s with the Museum of New Mexico and the New Mexico State Arts Agency. Later, as one of the first Lamon scholars at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, she studied Pueblo embroidery and dyes with noted textile scholar Kate Peck Kent. One of her earliest projects involved working with the staff at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico to rediscover the techniques ancestral Pueblo people used to make a turkey feather blanket and using those techniques to produce two such blankets.

In 1981, she began weaving full time, establishing Ramona Sakiestewa, Ltd. in Santa Fe as a textile design firm. By this time she had moved onto a horizontal floor loom, finding it gratifying that a single warping of the loom could be used to produce three or four tapestries. With fellow weavers Candace Chipman and Rebecca Bluestone, she established an atelier that produced her designs for household items such as rugs, pillows and upholstery fabrics, while at the same time continuing her tapestry weaving. Many of her early original tapestries reflect her appreciation for the weavers of historic textiles.

At the heart of Sakiestewa’s fiber art designs are her interpretations of place and the cultural colors of a place: the land, the arts, the light, the architecture. “The majority of my tapestries are a synthesis of the colors, landscapes and cultural icons I have grown up with in the American Southwest,” she explains. “Other tapestries combine the essences of the colors, architecture and design of other cultures. These elements are then abstracted for the final weavings.”

As the speaker for the Third Annual Gloria F. Ross Lecture in 2001, she remarked that every time she travels she is usually inspired to turn out a tapestry series. In 1981 she traveled to Peru for a month to meet with weavers, advising them on plans for creating a weaver’s guild and museum. That trip inspired a series of tapestries called “Kutij,” after the Quechua word meaning “that which returns.” Tapestries produced following a 1996 trip to Xelha near Cancun, Mexico, were inspired by what Sakiestewa saw as a “raw place,” where the jungle was reclaiming ancient Mayan ruins.

Sakiestewa’s projects have balanced work as a weaver with commission design work. She’s designed two series of limited-edition trade blankets, first with Pendleton Woolen Mills in Oregon and then with Scalamandre Mills of New York. For the past several years, her design work has involved museum and cultural center projects for which she works in collaboration with other artists and designers to create “design vocabularies.” Since 1994 she has worked with a team of consultants developing three or four design vocabularies–essentially decorative visual themes–for the new National Museum of the American Indian being built on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Various contractors will use these design vocabularies to create the building interior.

In 1998, she began exploring the complex and important theme of “migration.” Migration theme tapestries are a current interest, such as a tapestry called “Prairie Migration,” inspired by a visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, where she saw a field of a grass gone to seed. To Sakiestewa, the grass had wonderful, soft colors that resembled rolling ground fog.

Migration 18, 2002, Ramona Sakiestewa,wool,
25" x 25". Courtesy of the Heard Museum.

Discussing migration, Sakiestewa notes the plants, birds, animals and people on the move today, perhaps now more than ever as a result of various pressures, including civil strife. For Native people, migration stories are carried forward from ancient times and continue through the historic forced relocations and the migrations caused by the 1950s U.S. government policy of terminating Indian tribes, which dispersed many people to urban areas.

Continually exploring new ideas, Sakiestewa is presently working with paper that has sewn elements stitched to it. She credits a conversation with Hopi/Tewa artist Dan Namingha for encouraging her to investigate this merger of media. Sakiestewa comments, “After all, fiber and paper are not that removed from each other.” For those who have enjoyed the results of her many and varied artistic migrations, we will look forward to seeing where her art goes next.

Details: Sakiestewa is represented by LewAllen Contemporary in Santa Fe, 505/988-8997.

Ann E. Marshall, Ph.D., is director of collections, education and interpretation at the Heard Museum of Phoenix.

d.y. begay

Landscape #4, 2000, D.Y. Begay, 41" x23", wool.; inset: D.Y. Begay.

by Patty Talahongva (Hopi)

Mother Nature is worrying weaver D.Y. Begay, and that concern is reflected in the rug that hangs on her loom in her workshop in Phoenix. There are no blues, greens or yellows in the rug. Only muted browns show up in the landscape design she’s working on, reflecting the ongoing Arizona drought.

“The colors and the landscape affect the design,” she explains, which reflects the landscape she currently encounters every time she drives from Phoenix to her home on the Navajo reservation in northeastern Arizona.

Begay (Navajo) grew up in a family of weavers near Chinle, Arizona. After receiving her B.A. degree in art education from Arizona State University, she dabbled in teaching for a few years. But weaving was her calling and she returned full time to her loom.

“I’ve always wanted to make it more than just selling it to the trading post or a gallery,” she says. Some 14 years into her calling, she’s reached her goal. “All my weaving is basically commissions,” she notes. And when people commission her, they get a rug that’s made only after hours of special attention. For instance, she loves creating color from just about anything that moves, grows or sits.

“My girlfriend gave me a recipe for black beans,” she explains. The recipe called for the beans to soak overnight. The next day she noticed the water was purple so she tossed in some wool to test the color. “It came out a really nice pale blue,” she recalls. “Now I use all kinds of things—plants, berries, insects—for color. My mother is always fascinated with my dye sources. I can get color from mushrooms or dandelions or onion skins. They [her family weavers] were never exposed to those things. They never knew anything else besides Navajo tea or sagebrush or rabbit brush. I document a lot of my dye processes so I hope that someday, when I get bored, I’ll put together a little book.”

Most of her wool comes from her own small flock of six churro sheep. Other relatives also give her wool. A sister-in-law helps spin the wool and Begay does the dyeing and weaving.

Third Phase Style, D.Y. Begay,
1995, 65" w x 50" h, wool

She is also busy experimenting with form. “Right now I’m exploring my creative side, moving away from the regional styles,” she says. “You know, how many times can I weave Two Grey Hills and how many times can I weave a Ganado style?” she laughs. “They’ve been woven over and over for a century!"

So Begay is making a mark on the weaving world with her own style, but even with numerous exhibits, classes, demonstrations and lectures behind her she is still modest. “It’s very difficult for me to say I’m a well-known weaver or I’m a good weaver....I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning. You’re always learning something about your weaving.”

Details: Begay can be contacted at 480/922-9232 or on the web at www.navajo-indian.com.

margaret wood

Coral Mosaic #1, 1982, Margaret Wood, mixed media, 50.25" x 46.5"

by Patty Talahongva (Hopi)

After 25 years of dreaming up patterns, picking out fabric and breathing life into her textile creations, it’s okay if Margaret Wood feels a bit stumped about what’s next. “I’m actually having some problems with quilter’s block, pun intended,” she confides. But not to worry: on her cutting table in her sewing studio is an unfinished quilt that’s part of her dress series. There’s still plenty to do.

Wood (Navajo/Seminole) was born in Parker, Arizona but grew up in northern Arizona in Tuba City, Fort Defiance and Flagstaff, amidst a family where all the women sewed. Even today she can brag about being a good mender, and as a child, she helped sew a few quilts. As an adult, she started her own clothing line based on traditional Native dress designs, and even authored a book—Native American Fashions (Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1981, revised and reissued 1998).

But year after year she watched the same quilter win top honors at the annual juried arts and crafts show at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. “I kept complaining and my husband said, ‘Well don’t complain to me, why don’t you make a quilt?’ So in 1977 I did, and I got an honorable mention for my first quilt,” she recalls proudly.

Dozens of quilts later, she admits being hard to pin down in terms of style. “It’s difficult,” she says, “because I do lots of different kinds of work. I do piece work. I do applique. I do embellishments. I’m all over the map, which isn’t necessarily good, because if you’re trying to establish yourself it kind of helps to have a ‘look,’ but actually I find that boring.”

Her favorite material to work with is cotton, despising chiffon because it’s too slippery. She’s an impatient quilter, preferring machine quilting as opposed to hand stitching. As for favorite quilts Wood says, “I only work on them if I like them. If I’m not excited about the idea or in seeing the end result, I don’t start a project. I’m having a lot of fun with a dress series right now. And I love the mosaics.” Her mosaics are based on Native American jewelry designs, and since the colors represent the polished stones, the fabrics must have a sheen.

Currently Wood—who sells most of her work at museum shops and art fairs—has four contemporary corn quilts hanging in the American Craft Museum in New York City. Each quilt is seven feet tall and features an ear of corn in a different color. “They have them hung in the stairwell, and you can stand way back from them or look down on them or go around the staircase and look up at them, and the lighting is perfect. It’s just great fun for me to see them.”

In December, Wood will travel to Japan with a group from the Riverside Municipal Museum in California. She’s busy working on quilts for that trip. Fabric is stacked in her studio and she jokes, “I have fabric squirreled all over the house, but we don’t talk about that!” Her run as a quilter can’t be over just yet, as she notes, “I still have a lot of fabric left!”

Details: www.margaretwood.net

Patty Talahongva (Hopi) of Phoenix often writes for Native Peoples and is the vice president of the Native American Journalists Association.

morris muskett

Morris Muskett of Church Rock, New Mexico, is a rare example of a male Navajo weaver. He is also distinguished by the fact that while he creates small rugs, pouches and quiver cases, he is best known—at this point—for his exquisite sashes.

He is the only Navajo weaver working on warp-faced sashes composed entirely of wool (though he also creates sashes out of cotton, and wool-cotton blends). The self-taught artist often works with his own natural dyes and respun yarns, creating works that echo traditional Navajo designs but with contemporary flair. “I really push myself and am always breaking new ground,” notes the 27-year-old weaver.

Muskett is the recipient of fellowship awards in 2002 from both the National Museum of the American Indian and the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, as well as the 2002 Santa Fe Indian Market award for best nontraditional textiles, and has work in the prestigious exhibition “Changing Hands” currently at the American Crafts Museum in New York City. Expect novel and exciting work in the years ahead from Muskett.
Details: www.conexus.si.edu/muskett_m/index.htm or moemuskett@yahoo.com