Florence Riggs (1962- )

Florence Riggs, Diné - is a weaver of the most complicated and unique Navajo pictorial rugs of the day.  She gets her ideas from her imagination and from magazines such as Southwest Art and New Mexico or others.  “After I get an idea,” she explains, “I ask my brother to draw it out for me in outline.”  He sketches a cartoon-like drawing of the original idea on used corrugated cardboard with a magic marker.  Riggs then transfers the drawing and enlarges it, filling in details from her memory as she goes along.  She draws freehand with black magic marker directly on the warp of the loom.

Riggs keeps a cardboard box filled with skeins of brightly colored wool at the ready near her loom.  She buys the wool at the Navajo cooperative in Tuba City and at various trading posts.  “The colors,” she says, “come to me as I go along.  I use colors that seem right. “

Florence Riggs learned her craft from two generations of fine Navajo weavers.  Her grandmother, Laura Nez, is still working in Tuba City, weaving traditional patterns.  Louise Nez, her mother, lives in Farmington, New Mexico.  Florence and her family live in Tuba City, Arizona. Riggs will weave traditional Navajo patterns if a trader requests her to do so but her preference is to weave pictorial scenes not done by others.

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