Abstract White with Central Band of Multi-Color Crosses

Untitled (10" x 16.25" - approx. 60 wefts per inch)
Photo by: Kevin Whitney Russell

I only wanted to do a couple of things when I started weaving this textile. I wanted to weave something abstract and fluid-looking on a light background. Like paintbrush strokes on a clean piece of paper. But that couldn't continue, obviously. So, in the center band, I threw in some hard-edged crosses.

My favorite parts of this piece are where the ends of yarn taper off into the white. They do so at the tops of the crosses, but also at the ends of some of the organic elements. Also, I love the colors in this piece, and I don't have a favorite. I am just as enamoured with the strong dark green, red, and yellow as I am the more subdued purple and light grey.

I think every one of my other textiles has very clear symbolism or story attached with the design. Pictorial elements are allowed in only after I can justify to myself how it is they move the story or support the theme, because I was a writer before I was a weaver.

Untitled (10" x 16.25" - approx. 60 wefts per inch)

With this textile, though, I only thought about the beauty of the colors I was weaving with. I didn't even think about shapes until I got to the crosses. Or at least I didn't let myself build the organic shapes from an outline, but built each form from the inside--what I felt it should be.

I thought a lot about what the inside of a dye pot is. Water and contents bubbling, awaiting a skein of wool to be dropped in. Then, the smell of wet wool, some stirring, and when the chemist-dye artist-color creator was satisfied the fibers were saturated enough, the wool being fished out of its bath with tongs, and drips of color across the sand to where the wool will be hung. I wove to this scene in my mind on loop. This scene in my mind on loop.

Colors Riot Along Lightning Bolt Rift

Colors Riot Along Lightning Bolt Rift (15 1/4" x 10" - approx. 62 wefts per inch)

I've had the wonderful pleasure of being a co-curator of a Navajo textile exhibition titled, Color Riot! How Color Changed Navajo Textiles. It's on view through September at the Heard Museum, so if you're in the Phoenix area, go see it. See it many times, even!

As part of the process of choosing textiles, we got to visit and spend time with textiles from private collections. Some of these textiles, woven between the late 1800s and early 1900s, could have been woven today. I found one beautiful striped textile about 8 feet tall by 5 feet wide in the collection of Carol Ann Mackay and thought I'd weave my own miniature version of it.

This was a fun project that I wove quickly because I didn't want it to sit stagnant on the loom waiting to be finished. I imagine the original textile moved the weaver to weave it in the same way. We may never know the weavers who wove such beautiful, exact, and contemporary-looking pieces of art, but their creations continue to inspire and to instigate.