Cloth (tzute) 1940

This cloth, or tzute, was woven by Maya artists, and is now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It's got these striking red stripes, broken up by a panel of dark green. I can just picture the artist at the loom, working those threads, going back and forth, building it up bit by bit. It's like a painting, really, but instead of laying down strokes of color, they're interlacing threads to make this vibrant, textured surface. The rhythm of the stripes, that alternating red and green, feels almost musical. You know, like a visual beat that just keeps going, expanding to cover the whole cloth. And then there's that band at the bottom, with the little chevrons. I bet that was tricky to weave! When you look at art, even something like this, you realize how much artists are in conversation with each other, across time and place.