Navajo
Basket by Mary Holiday Black
Ceremonial Turtle
19"
Diameter
Considered primarily responsible
for the preservation and renaissance of the art of Navajo basketry,
Mary Holiday Black is a legend in her own time. Mary received
the Utah Governor's 1995 Folk Art Award, and in September of
1996 a $10,000 National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National
Endowment for the Arts, which was presented to her in Washington
D.C. by First Lady Hillary Clinton.
The matriarch of a large and
talented family of basket weavers, Mary Holiday Black has not
only done much to preserve the tradition of Navajo basketry,
she has revolutionized it with her daring creativity. Recognized
by experts as the nation's preeminent Navajo basket weaver, Mary's
pieces are highly valued collector's items, selling for as much
as eight thousand dollars.
Mary's story has been written
and rewritten, but it is a story worth the telling, for she has
kept a centuries old art form from extinction. In 1960 it is
estimated that there were only a dozen active basket makers on
the Navajo reservation, most women having turned to the more
profitable art of rug weaving. One of the basket weavers was
Mary Black.
Taught to weave by her grandmother's
relative when she was 11, Mary has spent over half a century
creating baskets for sacred ceremonial purposes as well as the
art world, sharing her knowledge with anyone willing to learn.
Nine of Mary's eleven children have followed in her footsteps,
becoming world class weavers in their own right.
"One of the reasons we
want to keep basketmaking going among our people," Mary
says, "is because they are important when a person gets
healed, to bring rain, for weddings, the Fire Dance, the Seven-Day
Ceremony."
Each ceremonial basket has
a story. "There are many basket stories," Mary says.
"If we stop making the baskets, we lose the stories."
Each ceremonial basket also
has an accompanying song. Mary knows the songs and other tribal
lore because of her parents, Teddy and Betty Holiday, who were
medicine people. Strict tribal taboos dictating how and when
ceremonial baskets can be woven contribute to their scarcity.
Mary has successfully challenged some of the taboos, arguing
in favor of preserving cultural history through basketry.
Mary was also one of the first
to consider weaving baskets with imaginative designs targeted
toward the Indian art collector's market. Many of her baskets
depict traditional beliefs, stories or legends; some inspired
by Navajo sandpaintings.
Working daily, a basket may
take up to four months to complete. Mary's hands often ache from
the tedious strain of weaving as she keeps constant pressure
on a basket's sides so they will curve upward when it's finished.
'These days my hands get tired, and I have to light a fire and
pray for energy," she has said, 'They are not as quick as
when I was a child."
