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“Weaving: Native Baskets and Blankets” opens in the Park’s Wells Fargo Foyer Gallery on June 5, 2008. Featuring selections from the Park’s permanent collection together with items loaned by local collectors, the exhibit focuses on the regional Native crafts of basketry and textiles, which are both created using the weaving process. Basket makers and textile weavers use the same basic technique, starting with a stationary fiber, the warp, and then using a running fiber or filler, the weft, to weave between or stitch around the warps, holding them together. As the colorful fibers interlock a beautiful finished product evolves. Created out of necessity and serving utilitarian purposes in ancient times, today’s baskets and textiles have morphed into complex, collectible art forms.
The Navajo, who have long been known for their textiles, first learned to weave rugs and blankets from the neighboring Pueblos. With many recognizable styles and undeniable quality, their designs range from bold geometrics and brightly-colored eyedazzlers to innovative pictorial scenes. While bright colors are often achieved using aniline dyes in pictorial weavings, the natural color of sheep’s wool is used for black, white and brown and variations of tans and grays in Two Gray Hills designs.
The most prolific basket makers are the Tohono O’odham often produce baskets using the natural color of desert fibers. Black from devil’s claw and green and sun-bleached fibers of yucca can be used in variation to weave their coiled designs. Hopi wicker baskets are the most colorful Southwest baskets because of their use of commercial dyes. Like weaving designs, basketry patterns can be pleasing geometrics of contrasting natural color or can incorporate simple pictorial elements like an ear of corn, a kachina or a raincloud. Tohono O’odham basket weaver Anita Antone, who was the first to sign her work, has woven a small basket with a stunning Night Blooming Cereus motif using only naturally pigmented materials. Whether making baskets or textiles, each weaver makes aesthetic choices to determine the finished craft’s visual and marketable appeal. |
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