Getting Yarn Ready for Weaving

This mural by Navajo painter
Gerald Nailor titled Getting Yarn Ready
for Weaving shows three women preparing yarn and weaving a rug on a loom
with a “Rain Cloud Symbol” painted in the upper right corner. Each woman holds
a part of the yarn-making process, including (from right to left) a pair of
hand carders, a spindle and whorl, and a completed ball of yarn. The artist
first proposed a mural titled Eastern
Tourist Admiring an Unfinished Rug. In the original design, Nailor included
a tourist’s humorous attempt to buy an unfinished rug. As described by the
artist, “it is quite comical sometimes to see [a] tourist trying to buy from
the Indian themselves.” However, this amusing concept was not appreciated by
officials from the Section of Fine Arts, who rejected the original proposal and
asked Nailor to remove the tourist from the final design of the mural.

Gerald Nailor, also known as Toh Yah, which
translates to “Walking by the River,” was commissioned in 1939 to create a
series of murals at the new Department of the Interior building in Washington,
D.C. He was one of four Native American artists who painted 2,200 feet of
murals for the penthouse, which served as the employee lounge. Zia Pueblo
artist Velino Herrera painted the north corridor, and Potawatomi artist Woody
Crumbo covered the south corridor. In the main room, the walls were divided
between Nailor and Chiricahua Apache painter Allan Houser. The Secretary of the
Interior, Harold Ickes, insisted on commissioning artwork by Native American
artists. Because of this mandate, the Section of Fine Arts invited Herrera,
Crumbo, Houser, and Nailor to participate in the penthouse project and
contacted two Kiowa artists, James Auchiah and Stephen Mopope, to paint murals for the cafeteria.