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Once in a while something arrives at the trading post that amazes and confuses all of us. The most recent creation from Lorraine Black is one such item. Several years ago Barry and I were attending the Navajo Show at the Museum of Northern Arizona where we noticed a rug with a hole in the center. It was explained to us that the hole represented Spiderwoman, and the emergence of the Navajo people from the prior world into this world. The weaving was extraordinary, and I have always regretted not acquiring it for our collection. A few years later Barry and I convinced two basket weavers to weave ceremonial baskets with emergence holes. Both weavers made one basket each and informed us they could make no more because these were sacred emergence baskets and their elders had cautioned them against repeating the design. Lorraine's latest basket has a similar emergence hole at its center, and a profusion of symbols indicating the evolution of contemporary Navajo people involved in practicing the traditional song and dance. The dancers are surrounded by a fog of gray clouds and are depicted in a Piccaso style, indicating the ongoing changes the people are undergoing and the difficulty associated with the transformation. Barry and I have a running debate over whether this basket is truly inspired or just confusing. I think it is inspired, and Barry is just plain confused.
Lorraine Black's infectious laugh belies the serious magic her hands conjure up when weaving a basket. Unprecedented in her ideas, Lorraine's baskets are innovative and beautiful. Many of them make good use of texture through over-stitching and the addition of objects such as flint arrowheads.
The third daughter of Mary Holiday Black, Lorraine grew up in the family tradition of basket weaving. She began by harvesting young stalks of sumac in the springtime, from where it grows along water ways. She learned how to prepare it for weaving by splitting the willow shoots into three thin strips using teeth and fingers, removing the core, and then rubbing away the bark with buckskin. Her hands soon knew the cuts and sores created by handling the sumac, her cuts stained by the colors of the dyes.
After the intensive work of harvesting and processing is complete, then comes the challenge of beginning a basket. This requires holding together two layers of either three or five rods of unsplit willow, coiling them, and binding them together by interweaving the sumac strips. It is a challenge for the most skillful hands.
Learning to weave ceremonial baskets at about age thirteen, Lorraine continued in the art, quickly transcending traditional designs with new concepts in both design and color.
Now the mother of two young sons, Sebastian and Deon, Lorraine presently makes her home in a small town in Southeastern Utah. Still, her roots extend to Monument Valley, the place of her upbringing. Her art is influenced by her birthplace and her heritage from the Bitterwater and Folded Arm Clans.
Holding one of Lorraine's baskets, with its bright colors and intricate designs, you can almost hear her childlike laughter transcend the coils and spill into the room.
