Connecting with art: Camp gives students taste of traditional native art

By Andi Murphy

FARMINGTON — A dozen Native American high school students sat in a room, concentrating hard on the beginning of a small loom in front of them.

Dozens of seemingly tangled strings loosely connected two wooden poles that would be the basis for a rug they will weave later. Native music played softly in the background as Lorraine Begay Manavi paced the room, assisting the students with the net of yarn before them.

Rug weaving was the first form of art introduced to the students on Monday's schedule for the second annual Native Youth Art Camp at San Juan College. Techniques and rug designs were taught by Manavi, San Juan's Navajo language and rug weaving instructor.

"I like it," Fernando Charley, 16, a Piedra Vista High School student, said about the course. Although, rug weaving is not his main art form, he enjoyed the session.

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