An Ancient Craft's New Age

WEAVES OF GRASS

On a picture-perfect autumn day, my husband, Jerry, and I set out for Monument Valley to meet with a family of innovative weavers who were taking the art to extraordinary new levels.

Our first stop was the home of 61-year-old Mary Holiday Black, a Navajo basket weaver who was born and raised in Monument Valley. She married and raised 11 children there. Her story includes a second generation of artists, cooperation between two cultures, and the blending of ancient art and modern technology.

A NEW AGE DAWNS FOR AN ANCIENT NAVAJO CRAFT

In the morning, we drove with Mary and two of her daughters, Sally Black, 34, and Agnes Gray, 31, to the San Juan River, some 20 miles north of the Arizona-Utah border. There Jerry would record the various tasks performed prior to weaving, includinggathering sumac, the only material besides dyes used in making their baskets.

Once basket weaving almost became a lost art among the Navajos. Ceremonial baskets were the only necessity, and it was much easier to purchase those from Paiute weavers. However, Mary, who had learned to weave at eight years of age, never abandoned her craft.

In the mid-1970s, she began adapting motifs from Pima and Tohono O'Odham basketry. Then in an even bolder move, she started to create designs from nature, her mother's rug patterns, and her father's sand paintings. She says she once included the Holy People on a basket because she saw yeis, sacred beings, rising into the sky from the valley below as she returned home from a ceremony.

patterns, and her father's sand paintings. She says she once included the Holy People on a basket because she saw yeis, sacred beings, rising into the sky from the valley below as she returned home from a ceremony.

Jerry had the camera ready as Mary, Sally, and Agnes made their way through the prickly brush to gather choice sumac sprouts. It seemed a mundane chore for three women who were recent guests at the White House. Mary, accompanied by three of her daughters, a son, and a daughter-in-law, was honored for her artistry and her role as an innovator, teacher, and mentor. The 1995 Arts Heritage Award she received from the National Endowment for the Arts included a $10,000 fellowship.

"They kept wanting to know how we felt about the award and everything," Agnes said, "but we couldn't really express our feelings. Some tourists who come to Monument Valley say they are so overwhelmed [by it] that they don't know what to say. Now I know how they feel. That's the way it was for us in Washington. We visited the monuments and the Capitol and went to the White House to meet Hillary Clinton. It was exciting, but we've never left our families for that long before. We just kept thinking about them."

Mary made it clear to us she was not impressed by the crowded eastern cities and continental cuisine. Her first request upon returning to the Southwest was to go to a J.B.'s restaurant where she "could get some real food."

We sat under the trees munching Peanut M & Ms (which do qualify as real food) as Sally recounted her first experience with weaving. "I started 'playing' with basket making when I was about nine," she said. "My mother would say, 'Leave it alone; you'll get everything all messed up.' But I'd sneak around and try it. One day when she was gone, I made my first basket. Ít was very crooked, and my brothers all laughed at me. The next time my mother left me to care for the kids and livestock, I started another one.

I kept working on it the whole four days she was gone. It was about this big, she said, indicating a circle about 25 inches in diameter. "When she got home, I told my mother, 'I don't know how to stop this thing.' She showed me how to fin-ish it. I was scared to take it to the store, but they gave my mother $300 for it."

Sally's brothers no longer laughed. In fact, five of the seven are now weavers, as well as all three of her sisters, several aunts, and numerous in-laws.

Twenty-five-year-old Lorraine Black, another of Mary's daughters, traveled from her Colorado home to demon-strate her craft for us at the family hogan in the heart of Monument Valley. Using only an awl and her husband's hunting knife as tools, she deftly wrapped the moistened strips of sumac tightly around the three rods used as a foundation. The bark was left on the branch-es used for the rods to give added strength and stability to the basket.

The branches woven around the rods had been stripped of their bark and split into narrow strips. Different colors are achieved with aniline dyes. According to brothers Steve and Barry Simpson, the trad-ers to whom the Blacks sell most of their baskets, Lorraine is a most imag-inative weaver and very prolific.Mary and her daughters piled into our Suburban with us, and we headed for Bluff, Utah, to visit the Simpsons. Relaxing in the sun in front of their Twin Rocks Trading Post, we discussed the most recent innovations in Navajo basketry and the contribution made by Mary Black and her extended family.

"The turning point was when Mary brought in the Fire Dance basket," Steve said. "Representing the Mountain Chant of the Navajo, the design included six Fire Dancers, fires burning between each, and green crosses to symbolize the brush arbors erected for ceremonies. Mary and Sally were the first to really start stretching their wings."

"As they began introducing figures from Navajo lore and legend, everything flowed together as though it was meant to be," Barry Simpson added. "I was just getting into Navajo mythology, and the new designs intrigued me. I would ask other weavers about them; that would lead to a discussion of other legends. If the younger weavers were not familiar with a story, they would go home and discuss it with their elders. Before long one of them would return with a new design on a basket. This not only drew us into their culture, it helped them learn more about it themselves. I think these baskets will become historically valuable as they are documentaries of Navajo culture."

However, some traditional Navajos believe yeis and other sacred images derived from Navajo lore should be represented only in sand paintings, which are used and destroyed before sundown, and not in permanent form in basketry.

"At first, there was a lot of resistance," Steve Simpson said. "Now the older people say maybe it's not such a bad thing. The new designs havebrought about a renaissance among young weavers. Money is important, but creativity and design are even more so. Using mythological images brings added appreciation of their own heritage.

WEAVES OF GRASS

"Some of the people say that we're not supposed to make those designs," Agnes Gray said. "But we're not just fooling around with them. We have a Beauty Way Ceremony about once a year. Our prayers keep us going. We don't have to be afraid. Some people still criticize, but they are now starting to copy our work."

That is one reason Mary was chosen for the NEA award. As others followed her lead, Navajo basketry changed direction. In fact, due to recent events, one might even say Navajo basketry is moving into the space age. To check out the latest development, we traveled on to Blanding, Utah, the next morning.

At the Simpsons' Blue Mountain Trading Post, we met Damian Jim, a 22-year-old Navajo artist who recently began working with Navajo weavers using computers. As a youth, Jim attended a number of schools, which gave him the opportunity to study under various art teachers.

"Each had their own style and used different teaching methods," Jim said. "The variety was good for me. At Monticello, Utah, there were no art classes, so I got into computers. Then I attended a graphic design school in Phoenix for a year."

In the summer of 1995, Jim left Phoenix to live with his grandmother in Bluff. There he met the Simpsons, who invested in a new MacIntosh computer with a scanner and laser printer.

Now Jim and one of the Simpsons, most often Barry, research a particular Navajo legend and discuss it. Then Jim sketches a symbolic design. Once it is perfected, he scans the color image into the computer. Both collaborate on fine-tuning the design; then it's time for the weaver's input.

"I may ask Damian to change several things," Sally Black said. "Then he prints out the design and gives me a copy. I draw the design to size on graph paper and to see just how I can work it into a basket. That isn't easy. We each do our own interpretation of his designs."

"I'm always anxious to see the completed basket," Damian Jim said. "This is all so exciting to me. I'm learning a lot, and I'm finding out just how rich my own culture is." When it was time for us to ride off into the ever-changing drama of Monument Valley, storm clouds hung on the horizon, and blowing winds whipped the sand into a mounting frenzy. The setting sun, dimmed by haze and swirling dust, created an eerie twilight. For just a moment, I could swear I saw Mary Black's yeis rising into the stormy sky."