works in progress : Spring is all around

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Spring is all around

Although it's rainy and chilly today the past couple of weeks have shown proof that winter's nearly over here in north Georgia. Last week when I walked on campus at NGCSU here's what I saw:

Blossoms lined the edge of the street like snow drifts.

I love this... new blossoms mingling with old leaf litter.

It seems that I've been cold since I left for England at the first of November and am I ever ready for Georgia's steamy hot summer to begin! I'm sitting here in the studio now wondering if I should turn up heat before continuing to work at the loom. Maybe not.

Last week I began a two session class with the four students who're in the advanced weaving class at NGCSU. On Tuesday they warped the four Shannock tabletop looms that are in the weaving studio and they got underway. Next Tuesday I'll go back to the class to see where've they've taken the basic meet and separate, then I'll show them about using a cartoon, introduce pick and pick and soumak. They should have time over the next couple of weeks to complete a sampler that's 6" wide by about 16" to 20" high.

A bit of exercise to squat then stand to put the warps on the looms!

College students have to grab lunch when and where they can!

On Thursday the students had a visit from Erin M. Riley, an artist who works in tapestry. She came to NGCSU on Wednesday night to speak, along with another artist, about artistic freedom and censorship in a talk that was sponsored by the Visual Art Department.

The next day in the weaving class, Erin demonstrated the tapestry process briefly then showed several of her tapestries. She talked about her motivation for choosing the images she does and answered questions posed by the students. There's an article about Erin's work in the latest Fiberarts magazine (Sept. 2011) and here's a link to her website. Erin is twenty-five, two years out of graduate school and is striving to make her way as an artist. So far, she's had several artist residencies and a couple more to come during the year. Since beginning to work in the medium of tapestry only a few years ago she's produced around sixty tapestries, she said. She is one of the up and coming artists to watch and I'm glad we were able to have her visit NGCSU!