DENNISON SMITH

After Toronto and London, where Dennison published two novels and a collection of poetry, completed a PhD, and created an award-winning curatorial team and art gallery, she returned to the high desert, where, in her youth, in exchange for tending the sheep, an old Navajo woman had taught her to weave.

She sees weaving as laying down sentences without the limitation of content, but with all the sensual wonder of texture and color. Instead of spinning words: she is making marks with threads in cotton, silk and wool, and employing the colorful alchemy of native plants, minerals and bugs.

Whether scarves or shawls or throws, the Galisteo Basin and its particular beauties and challenges – this earth, this air, this water, these fires – inspire the colors and patterns in her work. She sings mantras when she warps or weaves, and feels this in keeping with the spirit of the indigenous culture from which she first learned, as well as the Tibetan tradition that taught her to still her mind. She hopes the weavings absorb the songs and carry them into the world.