No. 23 1908

This anonymous drawing on paper, titled No. 23, is a Navajo textile design created in 1905. Can you imagine the process of making this? The unknown artist might have been meticulously drafting it with colored pencils. I like to imagine the artist thinking about how it would be woven, maybe thinking about the relationship between the colored lines and geometric motifs. The design has a symmetrical order, with bands of red and brown with diamonds of purple in between, but I think the colors disrupt the order. I wonder if the artist was interested in the way color can disrupt a pattern, or what it can do to rhythm. It makes me think about how we pass on ideas, like a pattern of colored lines on woven thread. I like to think artists are always having a conversation with each other through form, color, and mark-making, even if they don’t realize it. Thinking about the artist today, and thinking about the artist from the past, maybe the artist is one and the same.