51ĀŅĀ×

Ganado Rug

Sadie Curtis

20th c.

Bob: ShimĆ” looks at this weaving from Ganado and says that the center may be the sun and the entire weaving the Universe.  As the triangles radiate out from the center, they become progressively smallerā€”a dilation in geometric terms. ShimĆ”ā€™s words and the idea of dilation remind me of a mental game I used to play as a boy (and even sometimes still). I would either zoom in or out, starting with, say, my bedroom, my house, my neighborhood, then Albuquerque, New Mexico, the United States, North America, Earth, our solar system, the Milky Way, and the Universe. The skies are so big in the westā€”they invite this kind of ā€œdilation thinkingā€ about your place in the universe. Perhaps this weaver, too, was motivated by this kind of thinking as she wove.