Stories in fiber
Award-winning Diné fashion designer turns attention to making masks
Penny Singer paints with thread, wool and cotton to spin designs with the spirit of the Diné. The acclaimed Albuquerque designer of jackets, capes and ribbon shirts has won a flurry of awards at both the Santa Fe Indian Market and the Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market.
But as the pandemic churns across both the country and the Navajo Nation, her fingers have turned to masks.
When the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts announced the cancellation of the Santa Fe Indian Market — the most prestigious of its kind — Singer was in shock. The annual event comprises about 75% of her income. Organizers have since announced it would become a virtual show through the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts.
“It bent me for a bit for a day,” she said. “Thank God I still have clients. I have to live on a tight budget.”
Then a friend asked her to make a mask.
Singer searched through her stash of scraps, found some elastic and stitched up four-ply cotton masks using Southwestern fabrics.
“This is my way I can contribute,” the designer said. “That’s what’s been keeping me busy now.”
When Singer ran out of elastic, she used hair ties. When the masks devoured all of those, she turned to bias tape. She’s been giving the face coverings away to elders, medical workers and friends. She charges $10 to others.
A self-described “urban Indian,” Singer’s rise to fashion designer was equally circuitous. Both her parents are Diné (Navajo); as a military family, they moved every four years. Her grandmother, a weaver who raised both sheep and goats, lived in Teec Nos Pos on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.
Singer says she fell into design “by accident.”
“I’ve always enjoyed art — painting, sculpting,” she said. “My parents just wanted us to get an education.”
A graduate of Highland High School, Singer grew up watching her mother sew, learning the fundamentals. But when the budding designer took home economics, she always altered the patterns.
“I had a problem with reading; I don’t know if it was dyslexia,” she said.
She began teaching herself, improvising along the way. She won a scholarship to Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, where she sewed her first ribbon shirt for a boyfriend who needed one for powwow dancing regalia.
“I liked it because it was like drawing with a needle,” Singer said. “The fabric was my canvas.”
Transferring to Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts in the early ’90s proved a turning point. She sold her work at her first art show in Phoenix, even bringing home a small profit. She made pueblo shirts with Southwestern prints for feast days.
Singer listened to her customers, adding pillows and jewelry bags lined with polishing cloths to her repertoire. She economized by sharing booths and hotel rooms with friends.
Her appliqué grew stronger as she created her own stencils to add to her flannel wool jackets and vests. She made wall hangings with transfers of old photographs of reservation life.
“I like to document,” she said. “I always had a camera.”
Soon she was telling stories in fiber.
“I found my passion,” she said.
Singer calls her current work contemporary wearable art. She matches the boldness of her contrasting colors with nativeinspired geometry and animal motifs.
She dedicated a sheep design to her grandmother, who wove until her death. Singer spent many childhood summers with her.
“We would herd the sheep up the mountains,” she said. “She would ride the horse and we would walk. I think that taught us independence.”
She recently produced a cape in a collaboration with Diné silversmith Jeff DeMent. He created lightning arrow buttons for the design.
The black and grey garment incorporated cloud and step patterns with an upside down mesa.
“I’ve been putting the four sacred mountains around the collar,” Singer said.
It won a judge’s choice, as well as a first place in personal attire, at the Heard. A similar piece took a first at Santa Fe.
Singer made a Navajo ledger vest in 2018. She stitched it using white wool with lines to resemble paper, adding photo transfers of her grandmother’s birthday party.
She sold her work at the Heard market in early March just before the pandemic shut everything down.
Her creativity now swirls with images of quarantined people working in sweatpants.
“I’m thinking now of comfy clothes,” she said, “maybe sleep pants.”