Diné (Navajo) textile artist Melissa Cody was invited to Loyola Marymount University to give an art talk in commemoration of Native American Heritage Month. Sponsored by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Department of History, the Laband Art Gallery, and Phi Beta Kappa, Omega of California, the event was held Thursday, Nov. 30, in the McIntosh Center in University Hall. As an institution, LMU recognizes Indigenous history and Native American heritage through its land acknowledgement.
At a time when younger generations were abandoning weaving because they thought it was for old women and grandmothers, Cody learned to weave from her mother Lola Cody, her grandmother Martha Schultz, and other family members. She was encouraged to challenge and explore her own talents on the loom at a young age. “Since I’ve been weaving since I’ve been 5 years old, I’ve developed a really fine hand-eye coordination,” Cody said, which is needed for the intricate designs.
Recurring themes in Cody’s work are a white cross and the hourglass shape — both references to the powerful and wise spirit Spider Woman. “Spiders, the numbers four and eight are very sacred to us. Spider Woman gifted the skill of weaving to the Navajo people, and her husband, Spider Man, constructed the first loom made of wooden beams and all the weaving tools. The number four symbolizes the four seasons, the four directions, and the four sacred mountains of the Navajo homeland — Blanca Peak, Mount Taylor, the San Francisco Peaks, and the La Plata Mountains,” Cody told the audience.
From the 1600s through the 1800s, the Navajo handspun their wool from the Churro sheep they raised, however traditional weavings were limited to natural wool colors and local vegetable dyes. The colors were primarily black, white, brown, gray, and occasionally red as not much vegetation grew on the reservation. Women in the tribe would spin and weave wool into blankets and clothing that were personalized items of artistic expression and considered highly prized tokens of trade.
The introduction of railroads and trading posts ushered in access to commercially spun and dyed wool yarns — specifically Germantown wool yarns, which were produced at mills in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and shipped via the newly constructed railroad to early trading posts on the reservation. This 1870s introduction of manufactured, vibrant and colorful yarns, added to Navajo traditional patterns.
Through her work, Cody maintains traditional Navajo aspects in her art but also incorporates personal elements from her life and pop culture references. She uses modern and contemporary loom materials but her processes are still very manual and traditional. “It’s high-tech in terms of what the loom does, but everything is manually manipulated by myself,” she said. “I have to be very precise with every string that I’m pulling through because if I’m one string off it will throw the whole pattern off as I work in a series of numbers,” she said. “I work in a lot of geometrics, and I mentally graph things out in my head so I don’t work off any photos, pictures, or drawings. It’s all done when I’m sitting at the loom counting each string.”
Navajo rugs are still being made today. Even with all the new varieties of wool and synthetics, the Navajo-Churro wool is still the most desired for traditional Navajo weavings. Many of those who weave raise their own Navajo-Churro sheep flocks and process their wool for traditional weavings, including Cody’s mother. “What’s special about the Churro wool is, it has long fibers,” Cody said. “The long fibers help the texture to be a lot more silky and creates a thread that is very soft. It’s a lot easier to work with because of the longer [churro] hairs.”
Today, Navajo blankets are valuable today for three reasons: rarity, scarcity, and artistry.
Cody earned her bachelor’s degree in studio arts and museum studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and is currently living in Long Beach, California. While she is proud to share her ancestral traditions, she also hopes to create new traditions with her art. Her work has been featured in many museums and galleries and is currently on display at Garth Greenan Gallery in New York City.
