______Art Masterpiece:

Keywords: , weaving, Grade: Fourth Activity: Weaving

Meet the Artist: • The Navajo or Dineh (din – ay) are a tribe of Native Americans who live in and Utah, Colorado and . • They are the largest single tribe in the . • Originally they were hunters and gatherers. After coming into contact with the Spanish explorers, they adopted farming and herding of sheep and goats. • They spun and wove the sheared into clothing and blankets for personal use and for trading.

About the Art Style: • Navajo women have been weaving for hundreds of years. Early Navajo weavers used wool, dyed with native, natural , as well as a rewoven from Bayeta (bright red wool of consistency from ). They unraveled other blankets and clothing and, by adding these materials to their own homespun wool, developed a beautiful variety of colors and styles. • Navajo were originally utilitarian blankets for use as cloaks, dresses, saddle blankets, and similar purposes. In 1680, Navajo weaving now included designs from baskets, stepped triangles and diamonds, serrated patterns, and colorful stripes. By the beginning of the 19th century, Navajo weaving was in demand, mostly by other Indians — Navajo, as well as Utes and Cheyennes. • Toward the end of the 19th century, weavers began to make rugs for tourism and export. Typical Navajo textiles have strong geometric patterns. They are a flat -woven textile produced in a fashion similar to of and Western Asia. • Traditional Navajo weaving used upright with no moving parts. Support poles were traditionally constructed of wood; steel pipe is more common today. The artisan sits on the floor during weaving and wraps the finished portion of fabric underneath the loom as it grows. The average weaver takes anywhere from two months to several years to finish a single rug. The size greatly determines the amount of time spent weaving a rug. • So how long does it take to make a Navajo rug? Quoting from Gilbert S. Maxwell, author of Navajo Rugs, Past, Present and Future: “A dealer friend of mine once placed an expert Navajo weaver on his payroll for $1 an hour. For her, he bought handspun vegetable . He told the woman to do two pieces of weaving: a better than average, weave, double saddle blanket (30 x 60 inches), and a 3 x 5 foot quality rug. The saddle blanket was completed in 140 hours and the rug in 238 hours! And this I would remind you was straight weaving time — not spare time.” • Use of traditional motifs sometimes leads to the mistaken notion that these textiles serve a purpose in Navajo religion. Actually these items have no use as prayer rugs or any other ceremonial function, and controversy has existed among the Navajo about the appropriateness of including religious symbolism in items designed for commercial sale. The financial success of purported ceremonial rugs led to their continued production. • There are fewer weavers today, as a percentage of the Navajo population, than 90 years ago; tomorrow there will be even fewer than today. The reason, of course, is economics. Although the prices of rugs have increased enormously, the amount of time involved in weaving one still makes the art much less than cost-effective. This is not true for the well known, award winning, weavers that dot the reservation. For them, the art is rewarding and, for those aspiring to greatness, these rewards are very attainable. For this reason, Navajo weaving is not a dying art; rather, it is becoming a very selective, highly competitive one.

Definitions

Weaving: Weaving is a textile craft in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced to form a fabric or cloth. Textile: A textile or cloth is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial often referred to as thread or . Textiles are formed by weaving, , crocheting, knotting, or pressing fibers together (). Warp and Weft: In any sort of loom weaving, the threads which run lengthways (vertically) are called the warp and the threads which run across from side to side (horizontally) are the weft or filling.

Design: Design as a noun informally refers to a plan for the construction of an object (as in architectural blueprints, circuit diagrams and patterns) while “to design” (verb) refers to making this plan. Geometric shapes: In geometry, two subsets of a Euclidean space have the same shape if one can be transformed to the other by a combination of translations, rotations (together also called rigid transformations), and uniform scaling. In other words, the shape of a set of points is all the geometrical information that is invariant to translations, rotations, and size changes. Ha ha! Just kidding. Explain that a geometric shape is generally a two-dimensional shape, like a square (not a cube) or a circle (not a sphere.)

Activity Loom Weaving

Supplies • Small loom per child. • Variety of yarns, pre-cut into 3’ lengths. You can use any “weight” of yarn, but thick yarns make for a faster weaving project. • Scissors

Troubleshooting The weaving process itself can take almost the full hour. Pass out the looms and yarns and scissors first, start them weaving, and then teach your lesson while they work. Pre-stringing the looms will save you time. The warp yarn can be strung only on the front of the loom or around the whole body of the loom. The first way saves yarn. To start the warp yarn, tie it to one corner of the loom. End the warp yarn by tying it on the loom as well.

Directions 1. Explain that since we are all beginning weavers, we are going to do some things differently from traditional Navajo weavers. The “geometric shapes” of our weaving will be simple rectangles of different colored yarns. Also, we will be tying knots often, and while traditional weavers also use knots, they are careful to weave or sew the tail ends of the knots into the textile. We won’t do that since we are mostly focusing on the process itself, rather than a neatly finished product. 2. If you are having the students up their warp yarns, explain that they can be strung only on the front of the loom or around the whole body of the loom. The first way saves yarn. To start the warp yarn, tie it to one corner of the loom. End the warp yarn by tying it on the loom as well. 3. Have the children select at least two different colors of the pre-cut yarn, or as many as five.