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.
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