About

~ ā€œIā€™m exploring new territory, but the new territory is ancient.ā€ ~Nancy

About the Body of Work in Tapestry:

Nancy Kozikowski

   After 40 years of making tapestries, I feel that the geometric designs which have evolved in my work express a life of their own. Working within and against the limitations of the loom and evolving from vegetable dyes to unlimited chemically dyed colors, these designs have begun to express power, movement and light.


    I have tried to release the pattern from the surface of the tapestry and create a fluid, gentle, shallow and spontaneous space. I want to release the image from the medium--into the imagination of the viewer.

 

Interview questions:

 

When did you start to learn about art? Where did you get your early art training?

My mother and grandmother were artists so I grew up in a studio. I have been drawing as long as I can remember.

When I was about 13 years old, I decided to be an artist. Every culture has artists. So, I feel that being an artist is a relevant commitment. I painted portraits, made mosaics, and batiks. I also got some early private tutoring by the noted sculptor and stained-glass master John Taschtl and I later studied at the University of New Mexico.

Why did you choose weaving as your main art form?

While in high school I saw a Native American Navajo woman weaving a blanket in a trading post. I asked her to teach me to spin. She taught me how to buy, wash, pick, card, and then spin wool on a long spindle. I went to another teacher who gave me a book on natural dyeing. Then, in order to build a loom, I went to the Fred Harvey Indian Room at the Alvarado Hotel where I could see an actual Navajo loom. I did a drawing of the loom. I drew every thread, knot, stick, and beam. I went home and built myself a loom from my drawing. I wove a striped piece, and I entered it in the science fair at school under Chemistry. (Chemistry, because I needed to add alum, as a chemical mordant to the dye process, which made the whole project relate to Chemistry.) I dyed with onion skins. I got a blue ribbon (Recognition). After this I decided NOT to be a weaver. It was too much work. I made hooked rugs. I also painted murals at this time.

About ten years later, after I was married, my husband Janusz and I were living in Oregon. He was teaching at Oregon State University. When his job came to an end, Janusz needed to get a PhD degree to go on teaching. But he and I were both artists, so we decided to stay where we were and figure out how to make a living as artists.

At that time, the art world was dominated by Pop art and Op art, which didn’t interest me. We were living in the forest. We were surrounded by 20 different dye plants, there were sheep down the road, and since we were in the forest, we had all of the materials needed to build a loom. So, we started by teaching Navajo loom building. After a year of card weaving and some research, we bought three looms in one day. One was 8 feet wide and required two weavers and took up our whole living room. We felt we could do bigger pieces than anyone else. I took a class in weaving. I found that Tapestry weaving, the flat weaving technique used by the Navajo, was what I liked most because it was like painting a picture.

Can you explain more about weaving in relation to painting?

I’ve always been drawn to Picasso and his work. One of the things I learned from Picasso and his lifestyle was that as an artist you could study and try anything and everything. I like painting, and all my weavings start with a drawing or a painting. But each medium expresses the design differently. The wool fiber is absorbent. The dye color penetrates inside. Saturated, each fiber catches the light physically, and it has both a light side and a shadow side. All of the fiber’s surfaces are reflecting color in a dynamic way. I believe this medium (i.e., wool) projects the design of the piece farther and more richly than a painted surface. A woven textile has a physical presence, and the soft texture is inflected with the same light that falls on the viewer.

The commitment and labor involved in a woven piece are also obvious, and I think this commands respect. Of course, woven work does demand maintenance; vacuuming periodically, watching out for moths.

As a painter who also makes weavings, can you speak about the difference between “Art” and “Craft”?

The issue between “Art” and “Craft” has to do with function. Fine art is considered to be intellectual and an end in itself. Craft is for practical use. Weavings have been used for carpets, blankets, or clothing from time immemorial. But what about the designs incorporated in the weaving? What about the patterns on a carpet? These patterns communicate something more than the function of the object. These patterns reflect the individual artist and the culture the artist came out of, and this is where art comes in—in the play of imagination, improvisation, and invention that goes beyond function and mere craftsmanship. Same with pottery.  

Many of your weavings appear to be three-dimensional with cast shadows and subtle color changes. Please talk about your color and three-dimensional design.

I am a painter. As a painter I like illusion. I remember being struck by an abstract painting from the 1970s by the Native American artist James Havard. The painting was entirely abstract and grew out of the Abstract-Expressionist tradition of exposed brushstrokes. Havard’s painting consisted of many brightly colored brushstrokes and long squiggles of color squeezed directly out of the tube of paint. But under each brushstroke or squiggle, he had airbrushed a faint shadow—as if the abstract mark was floating in space! (Which, of course, it was—that is, it was floating in pictorial space.) This was an important revelation for me, and afterwards I began exploring the possibilities of three-dimensional design in flat weaving.

But to do an illusionistic weaving of a twisted belt or a piece of pottery one needs all of these tints and shades of color to create shadows and the sensation of light and depth.

One can easily mix any color with paint. But for a weaving, I have to dye all of the colors I want, and this has to be done with different batches of wool yarn. I need about 40 shades of every color, including all the gray shades between white and black. It takes almost as much time to dye and prepare all of these colors as it does to do the weaving.

As you note, some of your works might be called a “weaving of weaving,” such as a pictured belt or blanket, and sometimes you make a “weaving of pottery;” does this have any special meaning?

I am a portrait artist. By doing a weaving of a weaving, I am basically making a portrait of a weaving. I am removing it from its original function (blanket, rug, belt, clothes), causing one to look at my piece differently, as a piece of art. The artwork isn’t just a weaving, it’s about weaving, and about history and art. Same with weavings about pottery.

The idea is much like the famous painting of a pipe by Rene Magritte, on which he wrote a caption that reads: “This is not a Pipe.”—Of course it’s not a real pipe, it’s a picture of a pipe!

Your works are concerned with Native American culture, Spanish culture and so on; please talk about the cultural influence and topic in your art.

I grew up in Albuquerque. New Mexico Culture has been defined by the coexistence and interaction of three primary groups: Native Americans, who have been here for millennia (in particular the Puebloan peoples, who flourished between 1100 – 1200 CE at Chaco and Mesa Verde and migrated to the Rio Grande region around 1300 CE; and the Apache and Navajo who arrived in the 1400s); then there were the Spanish settlers, who came 500 years ago bringing European Catholicism, animal husbandry, and metallurgy; and finally there were the “Anglos” (or “White” people) who came from the Eastern U.S. only about 100 years ago, bringing Protestantism and an industrially based market economy. That said, it’s important to note that it was the Spanish who brought sheep and the wool industry to New Mexico. They were the ones who introduced looms and design patterns derived from the Middle East through the Islamic Moors, in particular the diamond shapes that characterize Saltillo serapes of Northern Mexico and the Chimayo weavings of New Mexico.

Which other artists or art forms influence your art?

Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Frank Stella, Ad Reinhart, African Kuba cloth, Ancient Chinese art, Native American art, Spanish American art. 

Many of your works have woven borders, but it seems you always break them in some way. Why?

About Borders: Many years ago, I did a weaving called “Cloudy Kilim,” which was my attempt to do a piece in the spirit of a Persian carpet. I used a flat, Kilim, technique. This piece had many borders, frames within frames. When I completed the piece, I looked at it, and I thought it felt like a self-portrait. It made me sick. The many borders seemed to represent all of the responsibilities of my life, framing and defining my identity, i.e., mother, wife, sister, daughter, Catholic, artist, weaver, and so on. These borders were like chains binding me. I felt constricted. (Even though—or maybe because—I had woven the illusion of an open sky in the space beyond these frames.) It was at this time that I realized I had to come to terms with being a woman artist and what that meant. I still like to weave borders, but now they are not boundaries.

I am reminded of the way that Navajo women would often weave a “spirit line” in the borders of their carpet weavings. It made a gap in the border that allowed the “spirit” of the weaver to escape—to escape from the intense mental and physical engagement and awful constraint of involvement in the weaving process! 

 

Your art journey could be divided into several stages, what do you think about the changes and characteristics of your different stages?

Looking back over the years it seems like the biggest influence on my work was what studio I was working in and my age and experience at the time. When you look at my body of work chronologically, you can see style shifts as I changed studios. It started in my mother’s studio, then the work I did in college, and after I was married, my studios in San Francisco and Oregon. Then there was the studio in Medanales in northern New Mexico, where we lived and raised our 4 kids for 12 years. It was a big influence because of its remote lifestyle and tradition of weaving among the Hispanic women of the village. We used mainly vegetable dyes there. Then moving back to Albuquerque, doing some big commissions, and ultimately going to China, where I was privileged to work with Professor Lin at the Tsinghua University studios, and afterwards established my own studio in Song Zhuang. I loved my Song Zhuang studio because of the skylights and easy access to art supplies and services, plus the richness of the surrounding culture. Although a suburb of Beijing, Song Zhuang was full of artists and retained the feeling of a small village. John and I loved our experiences and the educational opportunities that living in China provided.

 

You’ve developed a number of community art projects, some of which involved public participation, why do you think it`s important to invite the public to take part in these projects?

Watching someone weave is still a mystery. The intricate finger movements, the pattern or imagery only known in the weaver’s mind, and yet gradually evolving row by row as the weaver moves back and forth across the web. If you do it yourself you see and feel the process. Watching someone ride a bike or swim is different than doing it yourself.

So, in order to provide the public with a taste of the experience of weaving, I conceived a special project for the Albuquerque arts festival called “Magnifico” in 1992. I set up a traditional Spanish two-harness loom and invited the public to weave a one-inch stripe (for a donation of $10 to the festival). I hoped that, by weaving a stripe, each participant would not only learn how a loom works, but that they might gain some appreciation for the importance of weaving and the wool industry in the history of New Mexico and its economy, and for our many cultural traditions, from the native Pueblo and Navajo to the Spanish and Mexican contributions. I based the design of the weaving on a traditional Rio Grande blanket stripe pattern introduced by the Spanish, and I invited outstanding weavers from diverse backgrounds—Hopi, Navajo, Spanish, French, Anglo—to weave characteristic patterns at intervals in the piece. One hundred and ninety-four people participated in the project, including New Mexico Governor Bruce King and his First Lady Alice, Albuquerque Mayor Louis Saavedra, author Tony Hillerman, many artists, a couple of fifth-grade school classes, and even Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton.

Called the “Thread of New Mexico,” the weaving measures 18 and ½ feet long and now hangs in the city/county building on Albuquerque’s Civic Plaza.

Later, in China, when I came to Song Zhuang to participate in the 2007Art Festival, we wove the “Thread of Song Zhuang” in which 184 people participated.

Among the works installed in public places, can you give some background on your art project in the Bernalillo County Courthouse?

In the 1970s Janusz and I wove an 8-by-30-foot tapestry as a special commission for a new Hyatt Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. At the request of the architect, the design we did was a contemporary variation of a traditional Native American Chief Blanket. The scale and bright red color made the design very dynamic.

After 20 years the Hyatt was sold and remodeled. They called to see if I was interested in buying back the tapestry, which I did. I figured I could find a home for it somewhere.

We heard about the project for the new Bernalillo County Courthouse, which was still on the drawing board. We met with the architects, and they loved the tapestry and wanted to incorporate it. One wall of the Atrium in the building was all windows. They removed a row of windows to create a space for the tapestry, so that it can be viewed from multiple floors in the building. The architects also took design elements from the tapestry and used them in the designs for the stair railings and signage. I love the way the tapestry’s designs were woven into the architecture of the building.

Please talk about your piece at the Albuquerque International Airport, which, because of its placement, is likely your most publicly experienced artwork.

It came about in 1990 as a part of the “1% for Art” program that is managed by a department of the City of Albuquerque. Mandated by law, the program requires the city to spend 1% of the building cost for any of the city’s development projects on art as an enhancement. As a result, Albuquerque has built a significant public collection of art of which I am honored to be a part.

When the Airport did a major renovation, I was invited to submit a design for a tapestry. I had just completed a large corporate commission, a 4-by-24-foot tapestry for the Delaware Group in Philadelphia. For the Airport tapestry, I revisited the design concept and scaled and simplified it, creating a new and visually dynamic contemporary image that could be seen the length of the airport, about 900 feet. It has some narrow stripes at either end, inspired by traditional Spanish Rio Grande weaving, and a tight zigzag patterned border inspired by Navajo carpets. Laced through the zigzag band design is a silvery ribbon, by which I wanted to convey a sense of modernity and a kind of effortless movement. So, I hope it gives travelers a feeling of having arrived by modern aerodynamic technology into the heart of the traditional Southwest. The tapestry is called “Runways,” and I am especially pleased that it greets us whenever we return home.

Can you tell us more about the corporate commission for the Delaware Group?

In 1989 I received a commission from the Delaware Group to create a tapestry decoration for their new corporate headquarters in Philadelphia, a building designed by the noted Chinese architect I.M. Pei. Its design grew out of explorations I was making at the time, based on broad bands that zigzagged and intertwined at regular intervals. I began to try to portray these broad bands as if they existed in three-dimensional space, delicately highlighting and shading them as they stretched out and intertwined. They occupied a central panel surrounded by a border with a repeated geometric pattern, and here and there, a stairstep motif (based on a Pueblo ‘mountain’ or ‘cloud’ design) intruded.  Inside each of the diamond-shaped spaces created by the entwined zigzag bands, I instinctively placed a small cruciform device.

As it happened, after the piece was installed in Philadelphia, I came across a photograph of an ancient Native American petroglyph depicting a zigzag pair of entwined serpents. I was astonished at the similarity—even down to the tiny cross-shapes inside each diamond space made by the entwined zigzags. Anthropologists have identified the zigzag serpent as the Avanyu, a horned water serpent that is still honored by Pueblo people. Perhaps related to Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent of ancient Mexico, the interlaced pair of snakes is associated with the interaction of rain and lightning.

But perhaps what was even more astonishing for me was to realize how truly ancient certain human design patterns can be. Shortly after encountering the petroglyph image of zigzag entwined serpents, which was etched on a rock surface some 500 years ago near Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, I learned of a discovery made in Blombos Cave in Southern Africa that dates back some 65,000 years! It is on a small block of ochre (a mineral that early ancestral people were utilizing to grind into pigment, apparently for face and body painting). But this small block contains the earliest known example of human symbolic expression. It consists of two sets of parallel lines that have been scratched onto the rock in counter directions, so they crisscross each other in a deliberate pattern—the same zigzag and repeated diamond pattern seen in the petroglyph (and in my tapestry).

This discovery set me to thinking about the strange continuity of human design patterns. Where does this inclination come from? I began to wonder: Could these patterns be somehow embedded or encoded in our DNA? Could they have been transmitted down through the generations in the same way as our physical characteristics?

Tell us about your art project in the Mt. Sinai Medical Center, New York City, “Blue Tallit.”

I was on the plane returning from installing the tapestry for the Delaware Group in Philadelphia, and I was sitting next to a gentleman named Nels Berg. Nels was the project manager for the renovation of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, where he was again working with architect I.M. Pei, the designer of the headquarters for the Delaware Group. Nels introduced me to Mr. Pei, who loved the colors in my tapestries. The design I did is called “Blue Tallit,” which means Prayer Shawl. It refers to the fold of fabric at the top, which also suggests a kind of sheltering tent. The piece also invokes the flames of the Menorah (Jewish candelabra) and the ceremonial rhythms and cadences of prayers for peace, atonement, and healing.

I often like to do tapestries of weavings, weaving the history of weaving into contemporary designs. This tapestry is 14 feet square. It was woven in two sections fitted together. It was an honor to have worked with Mr. Pei and Mr. Berg to bring my design to life.

You’ve also done a project for the Congregation Albert in Albuquerque.

The piece is called “Covenant.” I loved designing this piece for a synagogue. Every week people sit in this space, and I wanted this piece to be simple enough and interesting enough to be an integral part of their experience.

At the center is a Rainbow, which represents God’s Covenant with the world, a blessing of peace and a promise to not destroy the world by flood again. The black and white below the rainbow represents God’s first act of Creation, the separation of light from darkness, the creation of night and day. Below is the Hebrew word for Jerusalem. Below that is a harp to represent David, as an artist who composed the Psalms in the Bible (he was King David, the David who slew Goliath). Stretching behind is a prayer shawl, designated by the stripes at each end. Elements overlapping the prayer shawl refer to the Torah, the foundational writings of Judaism. The red patterns on the right represent the chaos and the trials of life and the blue patterns on the left represent peace and eternity.

Can you talk about “Pot Shards,” your art project for the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT)?

The American Society of Radiologic Technologists is a national organization that built their association headquarters in the foothills of the Sandia mountains of Albuquerque. When excavating the site for the building, Native American bones were discovered. A few miles away are the ruins of Tijeras Pueblo, which was abandoned 400 years ago and is almost completely buried. Pottery fragments were unearthed there, one of which had a design signifying water and friendship—a double spiral, like two hands cupped together. The pottery fragments reminded me of the 5,000-year-old painted pottery I had seen in China. My design for the tapestry included Native American and ancient Chinese pot shards. I put the Chinese character for bone on one of the shards as part of the design to honor the Indian bones found there, and as a nod to X-ray technology and its visible exposure of bones.

Could you talk about your multi-part project for the Sandia Resort & Casino?

There are 6 huge pieces, each 8 feet by 12 feet, installed within the casino’s hotel lobby. It is my largest project to date. It took a year to complete. The casino is on the property of the Sandia Pueblo and I was the only non-Native American to be approved for its decoration. But there were some unforeseen pitfalls with my proposal to produce a series of weavings. Because of a longstanding hostility toward the Navajo, who historically raided and preyed upon the sedentary Pueblos, the Tribal Council forbid any reference to popular Navajo weaving. They insisted instead that all decorative motifs in the tapestries should be specific to the Pueblo of Sandia. This actually proved to be delightful, and I chose to utilize abstract imagery from Sandia Pueblo pottery (including a wonderful dragonfly motif) and designs referencing the Pueblo tradition of weaving kilts and belts. 

What can you tell us about “Silver,” your commission at UCLA in Los Angeles?

I wondered if I could weave wool to look like silver. At the time that I was planning this piece, Frank Geary had just completed the Disney Center in downtown Los Angeles. This concert building’s spectacular exterior walls are covered with Stainless steel, a rippling metallic finish that looks like a combination of silver and pewter. There is a subtle, fan shaped section in my tapestry that represents my attempt to weave a surface from the Geary building. I wanted my piece to evoke the color of the ocean and a suggestion of waves.

Since you have so many art works in different public places, what are your thoughts about the relationship between the art piece and the public space?

I feel very blessed to be a part of so many people’s lives. Large public artworks become landmarks. People often tell me that the “Runways” piece welcomes them home to Albuquerque. I feel that my large tapestries reflect their environment and the local culture, and my expression and love. When a piece of art is part of the environment it becomes a subconscious presence, you don’t have to think about it, but if it’s gone you miss it. I want my work to become a part of people’s lives.

Any thoughts about the future of fiber art in public spaces?

I think fiber art has a strong future in public places for many of the same reasons that I have been attracted to it all these years. Fiber is what weaves communities and cultures together. Throughout space and time, fiber art has been a vehicle to express traditional design motifs and symbols to diverse audiences, lending decorative enhancement and cultural nuance to the environment.

On a practical note, fiber art in public spaces provides a particularly strong visual component relative to cost—and besides, it can even have an acoustic softening effect within a busy public space. There’s much to recommend it. Our communal lives deserve to be decorated, and fiber art can fulfill our craving for beauty and pleasure. Sumptuously.