JICARILLA APACHE MASTER WEAVER Rowena Mora has crafted and sold more than 200 baskets during her 37 years in the art form. That includes a brightly striped storage basket purchased by the Smithsonian American Art Museum for its collection in 2019. But last year’s three-foot-round creation, which garnered Mora a Best of Show ribbon, has a special place in her heart. “I was sad to see it go,” she says, “because I worked so hard on it.” After entering the fair’s basket-weaving competition for 26 years, Mora is taking this year off to focus on other creative pursuits, including beadwork and making moccasins.
In Dulce, right behind my house, there’s a road that takes you down to the river. During the summer months, the sticks are kind of brittle, so you have to go cutting in the late fall and early spring. I gather enough sumac and willow to last me the year.
After that, I do the process of splitting—taking the inside out. We use the outer part for weaving. With sumac, you peel off the bark and then you soak them. Then I shave them down to the size I need before I can start weaving the basket.
I’ve learned a lot to get to where I’m at now—where to cut, what sticks to look for, how to work with them, how to shave it to get it just right. Sometimes I have designs in mind, but the basket has a mind of its own. I just go along with it. Once I complete a basket, it’s like—I don’t know how to explain it—I’m just in awe, like, Wow, this is what it came out to be.
When I’m weaving, I’m thinking about our culture. That’s important. I taught a class at the Heard Museum [in Arizona] to students who were young, 12 to 20. They all completed a basket, and I was proud that they learned and they put their own designs in there. I want to keep it going. There aren’t too many Jicarilla basket weavers anymore, so I’m thinking of the young ones.