I met Laverne Barber about 50 years ago. My father had worked with Lavern’s mother, Anna Mae Barber, a long time before that. Anna Mae was the oldest sister in what would become the family that created the Burnham Weaving Area. Back when Dad knew Anna Mae, the weavers at Burnham made many different kinds of rugs.
They were not far from the Shiprock area, so they wove Yei rugs, and since they were just across Highway 666, where Two Grey Hills was located, they wove that style of rug as well. Anna Mae’s rugs were always beautiful and always different. She ensured that her daughters, Laverne, Bessie, and Lorene, learned the art of weaving. She encouraged them by example.
The modern Burnham weaving began with one of Anna Mae’s sisters. The four sisters have argued about which one it was, Alice or Helen, but whichever sister inspired the others and their cousins to join them in creating something new and different. The modern Burnham weaving is a mix of weaving patterns from across the reservation with pictorial elements woven with hand-spun wool.
Laverne was always on the edge of the Burnham weaving style. Some of her pieces fit the description, but she, like her mother, enjoyed doing different designs.
In the late 1980s, Laverne came into the gallery while I was looking at a Child’s Blanket from the 1860s that the daughter of a family friend had inherited. They were called Child’s Blankets because they were woven like the traditional wearing blankets, but there is no photographic evidence that a child ever wore any of the blankets. They were woven to be sold, many to Union Soldiers who were stationed at Fort Sumner when the Navajo were incarcerated during the Civil War.
Laverne was fascinated by the weaving and asked about the dyes and yarns. I told her the dyes were made from cochineal (small bugs found on cactus) and Indigo plants. She was interested in creating one of these blankets, so I got out a book on Navajo dyes, and we looked up how the dyes were made. Well, as it turned out, the mordant (it causes the dye to stick to the wool) used by early weavers was horse urine.
Laverne gave me a sideways look and said, “I’m not doing that!” After we quit laughing, I called a friend of my mom’s, Beverly Anderson, who was part of a weaving group in Durango, and asked if she had ever worked with cochineal and indigo. She said she had. She told me other mordants would work and came to the gallery to meet Laverne. They hit it off and worked together to dye yarn over the next few months and years.
The Child’s Blanket she wove went to an impressive private collection and is displayed with weavings that are 120 years older. It holds its own.
Then I received a call from the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. They have a quality collection of Navajo weaving and a donor who wanted an American flag rug for the collection. Laverne wove a beautiful flag rug for them using cochineal and Indigo dyes. It was hung briefly in the Museum, and Laverne traveled back to see it.
Then, two years ago, I got a call from Eva Fognell, the curator of Native art at the Fenimore, and she said they were doing an exhibit of their Navajo textiles. She was in Santa Fe and wanted to come to Durango to meet Laverne. She and a friend showed up on a snowy, wet day, and after a night in Durango, I had them follow me down the Crownpoint highway and park their car by the side of the road. Then everyone loaded in my four-wheel drive pickup, and we slipped and slid the several miles to Laverne’s house.
I’ve known several curators who have made an effort to visit and get to know weavers, but it was a pleasure to sit and listen to these two people talk about weaving and life on the reservation. After a few hours, we drove back through the mud, and Eva returned to Santa Fe. She sent us this photo of Laverne’s weaving hanging at the entrance to the exhibit at the Fenimore.
More recently, Laverne has been creating amazing pictorials. Her latest is the one at the top of the page. It is woven with hand-spun wool from her own sheep and colored with aniline and vegetal dyes. The panel with the horses is laid on top of a double saddle blanket-patterned weaving. The gold of the sunset is coming over the top of the mountains, and these horses are heading back to the corral, where they will be fed tonight.
It’s a scene you will sometimes see at Burnham. It’s open range, and horses run freely, scrounging whatever food they can. With all of the rain this year, they are finding good pasture. They will head for home when it reaches sundown, knowing that a bucket of oats awaits.
Laverne Barber is a remarkable woman whose work is always appealing and made with the care of a dedicated artist. I don’t think she has hit her peak yet!
