Indigo Scape

In her textiles, Navajo weaver Berdine Begay draws upon her family’s signature style of abstracting landscape and place. Here she used wool colored with natural dyes to depict her own cultural landscape within the Navajo Nation. Horizontal bands and stepped rows representing mesas (large flat-topped landforms found throughout the Southwest) are the central design motif, created with various widths and colors of yarn. Complementing the horizontal flow in the upper portion, a field of bold blue indigo at the bottom refers to the importance of indigo dye in Navajo textile history.