The time has come

 

“It’s time to begin to let go.”   

 

I thought I’d never have this conversation with myself about finding new homes for beloved and much used tapestry looms. I’ve had many through the last almost 30 years that I’ve been weaving tapestries, and I’ve been the second (or third) owner for most of them. Each has served me well in its own way and eventually almost all went to new homes because I added another loom to replace it. 

 

Eighteen years ago, a 60” loom came into my life, one that I’ve loved and on which I’ve woven eleven larger tapestries. I remember driving to Virginia to pick up the loom, bringing it home in pieces in the station wagon we had at the time. A friend and I set it up in my studio. Once assembled, I realize there were a few critical hardward parts missing and luckily I was able to get those from another loom company. 

 

I modified the loom one more time a few years ago to add a worm gear to the cloth beam and that made it even easier to use. Since 2008 I've woven large-for-me tapestries on it, the largest being about 60" square. 

 

However, in the past five years I’ve had several health issues, including two surgeries, a broken arm, a minor heart attack, and a few other hospital stays for various reasons. Those challenges have made it difficult to weave on my large loom and it took three years to complete the last tapestry, finished just this summer and mentioned in the previous post. 

 

The large loom has sat empty since then. I've worked daily on my tapestry diary on another loom and also have woven a few things on small pipe looms. But the other day I finally accepted the reality that I should find a new home for the big loom. Sometimes it takes me a while to make decisions but once I do, I act fast. That very day I posted announcements on social media, sent a few emails, and, fortunately, a young tapestry weaver saw it mentioned at Instagram. 

She got in touch and, even though it's a great distance from her home, she’s willing to come dismantle and pick it up. I know she’ll take the loom into its next decades of service and I’m grateful. I’m happy for her and for the loom. And, in a way, for myself because I’ll know the fate of the loom (at least for a few years). Yes, it’s just a piece of furniture; a bit of equipment. But, as weavers know, whether it’s a simple frame or one that has treadles and shafts, the conversation between the weaver and the loom is intimate. By deciding to send this one on its way I’ve taken the first step in letting go of things and not leaving it all to others to do in the (I hope, distant) future when I’m gone!

 

Next week I'll be giving books away and I've already passed on beading supplies to the new textiles instructor at the university. I have lots more supplies and equipment at my studio that I know I won't ever use again in my life. Options for my art making aren't getting more narrow but rather are becoming focused on what I have time and energy to be doing.

 

Some news, or rather catching up on things!

 Well, I guess I have once again neglected to keep up with my blog posts! My last one (and ONLY one) this year was way back in January. Lots of things have happened since then. So I'll have a go at catching up.

One thing is that I completed the big tapestry that had been on the loom for a little over three years! I warped the loom in early June of 2022 and finished it in mid-June of 2025. It's now in Asheville for an upcoming exhibit of Southern Highland Craft Guild members at the Folk Art Center. The show, called big/LITTLE will be hanging from August 2025 to January 30, 2026. Here it is lying on the studio floor just after being cut off:

I'll post a finished photo of it sometime in the future. If I remember to do so!

I have other tapestries in exhibits right now, as well. One is in Chicago at Epiphany Center for the Arts in the American Tapestry Alliance Biennial 15. It's one of my tapestry diaries:

 

Another tapestry is in Elkin, NC in an exhibit by Tapestry Weavers South members. It's a smaller piece, one that's of kudzu. 

I continue to be interested in kudzu, in fact, did a large painting of the plant for painting class last semester.

 

 I might use a portion of the painting to design a future tapestry. But I'm not sure about that yet. I've been photographing the plant quite a lot this summer and adding those to the many I already have in an album. 

 

Another tapestry diary was accepted into the Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild upcoming juried exhibit to be held at the Hudgens Center in Duluth, Georgia. I delivered the piece to the Center earlier this week and I hope to see the exhibit when it's installed later this month.

 

The workshop Dana Wildsmith and I were teaching in Dahlonega in March was quite fun and we're looking forward to the longer version we'll be co-teaching in a few weeks at the Folk School. Dana and I met up at the Hambidge Center earleir this week to discuss our plans. While there I dropped off a tapestry I'm donating for the Hambidge auction. It's one done with natural dyes, primarily using black walnut and henna dyes. The design was based on an earth pigment painting I'd done while on a residency at Lillian E. Smith Center a few years ago.  It's called Earth Echoes:

 

 

 

I taught a workshop at the Folk School earlier this year, one with the theme of "marking time"—it was a full class and each person had great ideas about ways to created their own version of recording time and information. It was wonderful to see four people who had been in the Arrowmont class I taught a couple of years ago, as well as have Roxie as assistant again! 

 

Later in the summer I took a writing class at the Folk School. It was an opportunity explore different writing genre throughout the week as Rosemary Royston led us through creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry for our writing. My two terms as a board member have now ended so I'll be spending less time in Brasstown but I'll be back to the Folk School as an instructor or as a student many time in the future!

 

In late September/early October I'll be teaching a workshop for American Tapestry Alliance, to be held at Arrowmont in Gatlinburg. It will be another version of the theme of marking time and recording data through tapestry.

 

During this year I've had the opportunity to select works for the Handweavers Guild of America "Small Expressions" exhibit. It opened in Blue Ridge, Georgia at the Blue Ridge Arts Association and the opening reception was a few weeks ago. I'll be giving an online juror's talk about the exhibit in January so having a chance to see the work in person several times is great.

 

Earlier this summer I learned that my book Marking Time with Fabric and Thread: Calendars, Diaries, and Journals is now a Kindle option. And yesterday, the first book published by Schiffer became available as a Kindle version. The hard copy of both continues to sell well and now there's an additional option.

 

And one last thing to mention is that I've gotten to see one of the first tapestries I did! It's from 1989. It is in the UNG art collection and hanging in one of the offices in Price Memorial Hall in Dahlonega. I volunteered to clean it and have it framed. So yesterday I gave it a good bath and it's lying in my studio floor on blankets to dry now. I'd dyed the yarn used for the weft and so I thought it would wash just fine—and it did. So nice to see it again and get to refresh it for the next decades to come. Here it is in it's bath and then laid out on some towels. I hope to get a good photo of it once it's framed.

 

 

 

 

 

A Book, a Workshop, and a New Year

 

Happy New Year! Even though it's now not quite as new. 

But so far, it's a good start to the year for me. The antibiotic suppression therapy I mentioned in the last post seems to be helping with the ongoing pain resulting from infection and inflammation from the hip replacement surgery in 2023. Driving for 45 minutes each way, daily for four weeks to have antibiotic infusions became easier when I started thinking of it as "commuting to work"—after all, I'd commuted for about the same distance for six years when I first began teaching at North Georgia back at the dawn of time. My job this time for the commute was to make myself better. I have good doctors now and I'm hopeful that their care will keep me out of another surgery to replace this hip replacement in the future. So far, so good as I'm about four months into the daily oral antibiotics now.

Since the last post my new book, Marking Time with Fabric and Thread, was released and I've had several good reviews of it. In fact, I've spoken about it a couple of times in Zoom meetings and it will be the topic of the virtual book club sponsored by the Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance on Tuesday night, the 21st. The book's available from Schiffer Craft and through other book sellers.

I'll be doing a workshop at John C. Campbell Folk School in May to focus on ways to mark one's time with tapestry. But that's not the workshop I want to write about today! Instead I want to mention an upcoming workshop in March here in Dahlonega that Dana Wildsmith and I will be co-teaching. It's a short version of the Folk School session we'll be doing in August that I mentioned in the last post.

Here is information about the March workshop:

Weaving Your Words

A workshop in writing and weaving

March 14-16, 2025

Instructors Dana Wildsmith & Tommye Scanlin

All skill levels are welcome

Join a writer and a weaver to explore interwoven words in a three-day workshop. Engage in writing exercises and select excerpts to turn into paper weavings. Use different methods of designing the paper you fill with your words, including gel plate printing and other printing and painting methods. Additionally, share portions of your writing with your fellow students to create collaborative works. No experience necessary in either writing or weaving!

Location: Georgia Appalachian Studies Center, University of North Georgia, Vickery House, 24 Vickery Drive (just off Main Street), Dahlonega, Georgia

https://ung.edu/appalachian-studies-center/historic-vickery-house.php

·      Dates: March 14-16, 2025

·   Times: 9 am to 4:30 pm each day

·      Cost: $150 per person for the three days

·      Workshop is limited to 8 people

·      Materials fee: $10 for shared materials to be paid at the workshop

·      Suggested supply list will be sent with registration

·      Lodging & food on your own, available a few blocks from campus. Visit https://www.dahlonega.org/places-to-stay/ for options.

·      Apply through Well Made Dahlonega, by February 28, 2025.

Contact Megan Smith Noble at wellmadedahlonega at gmail dot com or at instagram.com/wellmadedahlonega and she will send an invoice.

·      For more information contact Tommye Scanlin  tmscanlin at gmail dot com

Instructor bios:

Dana Wildsmith is a frequent instructor at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. Dana’s most recent collection of poems is “With Access to Tools.” Her environmental memoir, Back to Abnormal: Surviving with an Old Farm in the New South, was finalist for Georgia Author of the Year. She is also the author of five additional collections of poetry. Dana has served as artist-in-residence for Grand Canyon National Park and Everglades National Park; as writer-in-residence for the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska; and she is a fellow of the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. Dana teaches English literacy through Lanier Technical College.

Tommye Scanlin, Professor Emerita, University of North Georgia, Dahlonega, GA, has been weaving for over 30 years and has explored many different techniques of creating images with woven structures. She is a frequent instructor at John C. Campbell Folk School. Scanlin is a Fellow of the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and of the Lillian E. Smith Center and is a juried member of Southern Highland Craft Guild and Piedmont Craftsmen. Her latest book is Marking Time with Fabric and Thread: Calendars, Diaries, and Journals.

 

In early November I was able to go to the Hambidge Center for a two week residency. I explored lots of ideas for the workshop, including doing many variations of gel plate printing. Here are a few photos from those weeks:

Maybe you'll join Dana and me in Dahlonega in March! Or at the Folk School in August!

Oh... and although it's not finished-finished, as in ready to hang, here's my 2024 tapestry diary just after I'd cut it from the loom on December 31. A year of kudzu, from dormant vines of January and into March, to full leaf of summer and the blooms of late July and early August, and to withered leaves by the end of the year. It was quite interesting to watch the changes.

A Long Time Coming

 

It's been six months or so since my last post. Why? I've asked myself that often throughout the spring and summer. Not much to write about I'd like to remember later, I guess.

I was able to make it to Convergence in Wichita, Kansas earlier in the summer. I had a seminar first session on the first day of the event. I only stayed a couple of days because of the pain I'll describe next.

 Mostly I'd like to forget some of the months of the past year as I've continued to work through problems resulting from hip replacement surgery I had last year. Since then I've had ongoing pain that the orthopedic surgeon could not (or would not) address. Seeking relief from the pain, my primary care physician referred me to a rheumatologist who gave me tests for RA and lupus, among other things. After multiple blood work showed high inflammation markers, she sent me for an MRI that showed inflammation in the hip and thigh. Finally, some clues—after weeks of PT last summer following the surgery, and months of visits and assurances from the man who did my hip replacement surgery that it "just takes time in some cases" for the pain to go away, I found another surgeon. And it turns out I have (and probably have had) an ongoing infection in the joint, the source of the inflammation and ongoing pain. 

I've started suppressive antibiotic therapy with an infectious disease specialist recommended by the new orthopedic surgeon. This is in hopes it will keep infection at bay and allow me to avoid a revision surgery (something that sounds ghastly since it involves not one but two surgeries, including removing the existing replacement joint, putting in a temporary one for a few months with antibiotic spacer, then removing it and inserting a new prosthesis—all with no guarantee that I wouldn't develop yet another infection!)

Creative thoughts and actions have definitely taken back seats in my life during this past year. But, thankfully, I was able to finish work on my new book from Schiffer Craft, Marking Time with Fabric and Thread: Calendars, Diaries, and Journals, that will be out in October. I've also written an article about plain weave inlay for Little Looms magazine that will be published next year. 

Slowly I've continued to work on the large tapestry that's been on the loom for over two years now, although that's on hold again since I've been told not to weave while I have the peripheral IV line in my arm for daily antibiotic infusion for the next four weeks. But I am continuing my tapestry diary work on a daily basis. But that's about it.

Here's the tapestry as it stands now, a little over half-way up the 72" height. It's 45" wide.

The monthly images in this year's tapestry diary is about the seasonal changes of kudzu. I'm working on seed pods for September, getting a little of it done each day and not straining my arm much.

Before the antibiotic infusions were started last week I was able to get to the Lillian Smith Center for several days. I worked more with gel prints, doing many leaf stencils and layering each print a number of times. I cut up several of those to weave with and then others I turned into small booklets. Those are samples for ideas to use in a class Dana Wildsmith and I will be teaching at John Campbell Folk School next August. I'm looking forward to working with Dana and seeing what we can come up with that might inspire students with both written words and weaving. The course description will be listed sat the JCCFS website later.

So, here's hoping for success with the antibiotic suppressive therapy and that I'll be back to creative fighting form soon. And maybe even writing blog posts more often!

Happy Fall Season!