Sublime Light: Tapestry Art of Dy Begay

The first book dedicated to the contemporary Diné artist, featuring 80 stunning tapestries and essays exploring her life and legacy.

Discover the unique weaving traditions of the Navajo Nation in this joyous celebration of Indigenous art and history.

A fifth-generation weaver, DY Begay’s transformative tapestries reflect her family tradition, her Diné identity, and the natural beauty of the Navajo Nation reservation where she grew up. The first book devoted to Begay's career, Sublime Light reveals the evolution of her work with 80 gorgeous tapestries created between 1965 and 2022.

To fully reveal her life and influences, the book draws on Begay’s journals, family photographs, and imagery from the Tselani, Arizona landscape that inspires her work. Begay first learned to weave watching her mother and grandmother process wool from the family sheep herd using tools made by male relatives and working at their looms. Over the years, she pushed her creativity and began combining her ancestral weaving techniques with modern design, as well as blending colors historically used in Navajo weaving with unconventional dyes made from fungi, food, and non-native flowers.

Much of Begay’s deeply personal work pays homage to Navajo land— its red-streaked cliffs, indigo sunrises, dreamy desert tones—as well as her extraordinary lineage. On every page, Sublime Light enchants.

DY BEGAY is a fifth-generation Diné weaver born into the Tótsohnii (Big Water) clan and the Táchii’nii (Red Running into the Water/Earth) clan. CÉCILE R. GANTEAUME is a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. JENNIFER MCLERRAN is the author of A New Deal for Navajo Weaving and A New Deal for Native Art. JENNIFER NEZ DENETDALE (Diné) is the author of Reclaiming Diné History. AMERICA MEREDITH (Cherokee Nation) is the publishing editor of First American Art Magazine.