About

I picked up where I left off thirty years previous: I returned to the desert and the loom.

After the glamor of Toronto and London, where I published two novels and a collection of poetry, completed a PhD, and created an award-winning curatorial team and art gallery, I moved to the high desert of New Mexico. It had been an urban life for long enough, and I wanted to feel my feet on the dusty ground and my hands on the shuttle.

My third novel complete, instead of spinning words, I am laying down lines with threads in cotton, silk and wool, and employing the colourful alchemy of native plants, minerals and bugs – like the cochineal who infest the prickly pear cactus and produce a red so coveted by colonial Spain that its enemies sent spies to America to ascertain the source of the colour.

In my youth, in exchange for tending the sheep, an old Navajo woman taught me to weave. Outside a mud and juniper hut, she turned a bed frame on its end, and warped the makeshift loom. Today, I use a Schacht four harness and a Macomber Ad-A-Harness, both of which offer a full-body experience, kind of like playing an organ.

The view from the loom reminds me of the view from my teacher’s hogan, except now I have a picture window to protect from the fierce spring winds. Beyond the glass is wilderness, the unmarked Ortiz Mountains, ancient pueblo ruins hidden on a mesa, and the Galisteo River, which, due to years of draught, is often called a creek.

This land informs the colours and patterns in my weaving. Whether they become scarves or shawls or throws, they are conceived from the changeful hours in the Galisteo Basin, a prehistoric sea that became a juniper studded desert, roughly 6000 feet above sea level. My work occasionally harkens back to the glamorous urban years, but most often I lay down abstract lines as I witness them from my window, or while hiking the land with my collies.

I sing mantras when I warp or weave. I feel this in keeping with the spirit of the indigenous culture from which I first learned, as well as the Tibetan tradition that graciously taught me to still my mind. I hope the weavings absorb the songs and carry them into the world.

Work is available by commission, and I can be contacted at:

contact: [email protected]

Instagram: @dennisonbsmith