Excerpts from a conversation between the artist Susan Pavel and the curator on August 30th, 2022

Tell me about this blanket that you’ve titled Mary’s Blanket.

Mary is my husband’s sister; she is the baby of the family though she is older than I am. I had been weaving for four years by the time Mary’s blanket came to me. My first year of weaving was gifted, actually claimed, by my master teacher, Bruce Miller (subiyay) claimed my first weaving. And I only wove one weaving every year; it was all I could do. The second year that weaving was gifted to my husband’s mother, Annie Pavel. The third year that weaving was gifted to my husband, Michael Pavel. The fourth year Mary approached me about buying one, and there was no room in my world, no conception of, “yeah, you can buy it” I didn’t understand what that meant, “buy” it from me. I said, “no, Mary, I’ll just give it to you” that’s when she schooled me. It's a good thing she schooled me. She sat me down, and she said “look, you are becoming a very good weaver; that’s your gift. My gift (Mary’s gift) is making money. That is her wealth power, and Susan, your wealth power is weaving.” In our way of thinking, everybody has a wealth power. Everybody has something that they are gifted at that they are good at. They can hang their hat on, so to speak, every single one of us. At the time, she recognized that that was becoming something I was becoming very good at. She explained to me that she wants to exchange “gifts” because her gift is making money, and my gift is weaving, so we are exchanging our “gifts.”

That fits so well, and it opened my world that—yes, everyone is gifted, and yes, if this is an equal exchange of gifts from the creator, then this is how it works.  It is how it works. No one can do it all, and nor should anyone do it all. We should all be very gifted, and what we do and exchange and that is how community is built how relationships are made. That is how we hold each other up. It's a good thing to trade our “gifts” with each other. 

Tell me about this shawl.

This actually the first weaving that I ever wove for myself after 20 years of weaving. I wove it for myself with myself in mind because I was having that exhibit at Suquamish. I had my own exhibit there, and it was my wanting to celebrate 20 years of weaving. For me, that was a huge accomplishment; I hadn’t done anything consistently for 20 years. I hadn’t been married, had kids, had the same job, nothing but weaving. I claimed that as an accomplishment and something worthy to say, “yes, I did this for 20 years, and here is the culmination of it”. So I approached the Suquamish museum, and it was a yes. I also knew that I needed something to wear. I wove Duck Dance in honor of that event and needing something of my own to weave and wear doing that opening. 

Tell me about this Shawl.

This was my attempt at doing a couple of things that are unique. That is a twined border all the way around. I teach students to fully twill something and fully twine something, but I just about never teach a class on how to do both of these together. The weaver has to be very, very, very good. They have to know their tension because it's a tension thing. If a student wants to know, I feel like I could teach them how to do it one-on-one.  The fringe is also difficult, and it is difficult to make it look like this. 

What was the inspiration to do this piece you’ve titled Of The Earth?

I knew I needed a piece for a show. I don’t remember what show. It started out as a demonstration piece on the loom so people could see the technical difficulty. But as all weavings go, it needs to be finished. That was definitely one of the teachings of this one. You need to finish what you start. You need to finish what you start. 

Tell me about this vest by subiyay.

As I was mentioning in the making of vests before, and we had to really work on, to work on it, when you’re first trying to recreate something, it doesn’t happen like you think it should happen. One of the things we have to keep working on is the neck opening. While we got the neck opening correct, it was massively too big. Uncle was eternally creative and had an eye for art, amongst many other things. So he was just like, well, I’m going to just sew in this patch of leather here. Otherwise, the opening is too huge, and it would keep flopping back and forth, and it wouldn’t work that way, so he sewed this in. Then Uncle being Uncle, people were always gifting him things. He was gifted this badger pelt from the midwest because we don’t really have badgers here. But as you should, you honor the gift, whatever it is, food, materials, and if you can’t use it, you gift it to someone else that can use it. Like we were talking–this exchange of “gifts” thing. One of the important things I’ve learned is the beauty of that exchange. I remember him cutting it out and weaving it in there. He had a beautiful eye for stuff like that. 

We were playing with natural dyes at this time. Some were known dyes to us, and others we were experimenting. It was a fond memory for me where he and I would go driving, and we would see something in the field, and we would just stop, harvest that thing, and try it out and see if it would give us color. Even now, in 2022, I am still trying to figure out, “where did they get that red?” from an Indigenous plant; it's not as easy as you think. I’m still trying to figure it out…even black, a dark brown you can kinda get, but not black. The other pastel colors are obtainable, but yeah, it's a great opportunity for some research on the dyes.