Marilou Schultz

Early life and education Marilou Schultz was born in Safford, Arizona, on November 6, 1954. Her mother is the respected weaver Martha Gorman Schultz. She is the aunt of textile artist Melissa Cody. She began learning the craft at the age of seven by watching her mother, and sold her weaved rugs during her childhood and into her college years.

Schultz attended Arizona State University (ASU) and received a bachelor's and master's degree in education, as well as a certificate for teaching mathematics from the Native American Education Leadership Program at ASU.

Teaching career Schultz is a math teacher in the Mesa Public Schools,

In the summers, she teaches weaving workshops. More inspirations for her work are rooted in the Navajo principal of Hózhó, witch emphasizes beauty, harmony, balance and cosmic order.

In 1994, Intel commissioned Schultz to weave her first major work, "Replica of a Chip," which depicted a Pentium microprocessor, a computer circuit board, and referenced the historical workforce of Navajo women assembling circuit boards at an Intel factory located on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

Awards and honors Schultz has won several awards at the Santa Fe Indian Market, including the Special Award for Excellence in Navajo Weaving in 1994, and the Challenge Award in Non-Traditional Weavings in 1997.

Selected exhibitions Schultz exhibited from 2017 to 2018 at documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany. She has also shown internationally in U.S. Embassies. and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg in Florida.

Replica of a Chip was included in a 2024 exhibition, Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction at the National Gallery of Art, which later traveled to the Museum of Modern Art.

In February 2026, the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College announced they would exhibit the first survey of Schultz's work, Replica of a Chip: The Weaving Technology of Marilou Schultz later in the year.