 |
| 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.
