Tuesday, August 7, 2012

It's off the loom!


Now the rest of the work begins--finishing it off for hanging.  Several days will be involved with that and I'll start tomorrow.  For the rest of today I'll be putting away yarns, unwinding bobbins, and sitting down to look at the piece.  I'm never quite sure what I think about completed tapestries when they're first off the loom.  Because some of my tapestries are woven on a loom with a cloth beam previously woven areas are wound up and hidden as I move through the piece.  Unrolling a tapestry always holds surprises.  So... here it is for now, warp ends hanging down and all.  Those will be turned back with half-Damascus warp finishing and won't be visible in the finished piece.


I'm quite excited to say that I'm leaving a week from today for a three week residency at Lillian Smith Center near Clayton, Georgia.  I'm going to take a small tapestry loom to the Center, do some writing, and also work with linoleum block printing.  I did a bit of printmaking earlier this year and I'm eager to do more.  In fact, several more of the fiddlehead designs will be images I hope to work with in reduction prints.  My husband thinks I've "abandoned color" but not so.  I'll be back to color sometime.  But right now I'm enjoying the challenges of developing works with the emphasis on the quality of the value, or light/dark differences.

6 comments:

  1. I love this - it has such depth, maybe more so than the colored tapestries. Wonderful the way some of the tendrils escape off the side, too. I'm wondering what is happening off on the upper left, but then I get drawn back in again. It's monumental.
    I think you will like it even better after it sits for a few days to cool off. It's smoking!

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  2. Wow, it's gorgeous! I love the varying shades of grey ;)

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  3. Simply beautiful Tommye. It inspires me to see your progress and your disciplined approach for getting large pieces finished. The initials turned out so well! That is something I am trying to improve on.

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  4. This is so wonderful Tommye. I also am never sure what to think about a tapestry when it first comes off the loom. Often I don't look at it for a few days and then it is usually okay.

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