Nava's engagement in tapestry began in 1999 when he was commissioned to create 3 cycles of tapestries for the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in LA. Tapestry was initially chosen for acoustic reasons, but once the project got rolling Nava found other advantages. With a tight 3 years timeline he could paint figure studies, have them composed and compiled in Photoshop and then email the images to Belgium, where digital technology facilitated rapid production of the actual tapestries. Nava had also discovered a medium that was both sensuous and at the same time able to render subtle detail.

His USC tapestry features a procession of figures that emulates the relief's of the Roman Ara Pacis of 80 AD, but at the same time features an image of a young man distractedly talking on his cellphone.

Each of the tapestry's 21 figures is an individual portrait of a member of the USC campus community; USC President Emeritus Steven Sample, alumni donor Ron Tutor, swimmer Rebecca Soni and football player David Buehler, and 17 others. Each is beautifully individualized, but also a flow that joins them together in time.


Woven near Bruges (Wielsbeke), Belgium - using cotton, wool and silk fibers; the tapestry also features a rich ground that Nava calls a 'mosaic of texts'. Among included texts -- all taken from USC library holdings -- are a 13th century Koran, a Mayan codice, an 1807 Japanese manuscript on the life of fisherman and a page from the Nuremberg Chronicles. All of those texts float in a field of binary code.

Interview with John Nave can be read : Huffington Post