Piedmont Craftsmen exhibit--"Inspired Reuse"

My rya piece is being shown currently at the Piedmont Craftsmen website page about the exhibit. Here's the link to that. It's at the lower right--have to scroll down. I think the image will be changing to other works in the exhibit but I found mine there this morning.

I've got more to share about my recent trips to Vermont and to Western North Carolina but that will happen later. A deadline is fast approaching for another exhibit and I'll be working hard at the studio today to finish the last piece. Maybe I'll have time to photograph it for the blog before I wrap and ship... but can't tell yet!

My head is spinning!

I've just arrived home from Vermont after spending the past three days and four nights at the home studio of Bhakti Ziek. I went there to have a tutorial with her with the intent to learn more about what artist/weavers like her are doing with the TC-1 loom, as well as other jacquard looms. And am I ever overwhelmed with information! In these few days I've begun to understand more about the process and complexity of the creation of images through loom controlled means.

For years I've had a curiosity about how involved artist/weavers really are with both the design and excution process when they're using a jacquard loom. And I've made comments in the past that the use of the term "tapestry" by those who are weaving loom controlled fabrics in which images are created is not accurate. But--for an equally long time I've had a suspicion that I've been speaking out of ignorance. I wanted to have a way to learn more about the other side of pictorial fabric weaving, especially through the use of the TC-1 loom.

When I read an article about Bhakti Ziek in a Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot issue a few months back and learned that she offers tutorial sessions at her home studio, including giving students access to her TC-1, I contacted her and asked for details. I've known of her art work for many years and always found it amazing. I felt an opportunity to meet her and have a private introduction to the complex weave approach to imagery couldn't be passed up.

So, over the past three days Bhakti enabled me to take a couple of images from my sketches through the process she and Alice Schlein have described in their book, The Woven Pixel, and prepare those with weave structures to be woven at her TC-1 loom. She is an incredibly patient teacher, taking me step-by-step through the processes. Then, she gave me free rein with her loom to try those images out! Using the loom is amazingly simple and I was sampling away within a few minutes on the first day.




Not only did she spend the days and part of the evenings with instruction, both she and her husband prepared wonderful meals. We spent hours talking about how what we each do is equally valid. We also began to dream about ways that those of us who do tapestry in weft-faced plain weave might begin to have a meaningful dialog with those who create images in fabric through complex means and also call those tapestry. Bhakti has described more about the days I was there at her blog.



Here's Bhakti taking a look at my sample weaving--over 100" long!

So much to think about! BUT now my priority is to think about some shut-eye! We were up at 3:45 this morning at Bhakti's to leave for the Burlington, VT airport by 4:30 a.m. so I could catch my 7 a.m. flight back to Atlanta. Made it all the way home, through various stages... from Randolph to Burlington by car for just over an hour, courtesy of Mark and Bhakti, then through the friendly skies for two and a half hours, via Delta airlines, onto MARTA for the hour-long ride to the end of the line where I jumped in my car waiting in the parking lot, and made the the final hour+ drive on home ... and now I'm about pooped!

This is a quick photo of my final weaving. I'll photograph it again and post after I've had time to cut it off the others and completely finish it.

120 days and counting...

as my tapestry diary for 2009 continues. It's hard to believe that 1/3 of the year has now passed! Last year, it seemed like such a chore to complete a day's section of my month-long tapestry journal. Now, I've completed four months of my year-long one and it seems so easy! Of course, I'm doing much simpler day entries this time around.

It's quite interesting to sit at the loom each day, take a look at what's happened before and select colors and the mode of representation for the day's entry. As the month's days increase, the time I spend contemplating grows also as I figure out how I'll represent the day-date notation. Today it was quite simple... a single horizontal line on a background of yellow. Yesterday the date was challenging... thirty days to mark in someway. Because I was rushed, I chose the simplest thing I could: 30 spots, 6 across X 5 up.

Next week I'll be flying to Vermont for a much anticipated tutorial with Bhakti Ziek. And today I committed myself to purchasing a 16-shaft AVL dobby loom from someone who's selling it. Where in the world will all this lead me? Somewhere combined with my tapestry work, I know. But the path is unmapped for me right now.

One deadline met... next one coming up!

I drove to Winston-Salem on Monday to deliver my piece for the Piedmont Craftsmen exhibit, "Inspired Reuse"--that's a a five + hour trip from here and it was the price I had to pay for not being able to complete the weaving in time to get it shipped! I'm a slow learner--the lesson of how long will it take to finish a piece is one that I have to learn over and over again. Of course, "finishing" doesn't mean just taking the weaving off the loom--if only it did! If I were a potter, I'd open the kiln and take out the glazed pot and it would be done. Ok, I know there's a lot to the process of getting the thing in the kiln in the first place--I'm not implying the potter has it easy. But I thought I'd just whine for a while.

My completed piece was quite different than I'd intended. Once I got it off the loom so I could see the entire thing, 12" x 60" that combined pick and pick with rya, I realized the idea I'd had didn't work. The rya and the pick and pick were too different. It might have been resolved if the colors of the handwoven fabric used for the pick and pick had been more similar to that in the rya. But...




After stewing over that for a day and a night, I took the leap of cutting the two apart. I stitched one line of machine zig-zag stitches into the pick and pick fabric, to give about 6" of warp once I unravelled some of the fabric. That part of the warp that was now the new end of the rya was given a half Damascus edge and then turned back on itself to be hand hemmed as a thin rolled edge. The loom waste was at the opposite end and that I also did half Damascus edge with, and another finish from Collingwood along with thick braids. As it turns out, after trying different hanging ideas I hid those braided ends to the inside.

I began to try different ways to hang the piece so that it would be three-dimensional. My husband suggested that I try a wall mount that had been used for another art work, one that had a metal bracket extending several inches from a wooden hanging device. After padding the bracket and shaping a rounded knob, I placed the rya over it.

Now the piece hangs as a soft cone, rounded at the top and ending with a flattened edge. It's 12" at the bottom edge, about 4" at the top, 36" long and 6" deep. I liked the shaping of the rya and happy to have taken my husband's suggestion in this case (don't always follow his advice but I respect it). The title is "Rethinking the Colors of My World."



So, let's total up the lessons learned with this challenge:

1. DON'T OVERESTIMATE the time available for making, finishing and delivering work for an exhibit.

2. REMEMBER, It takes WAY longer to reuse from yarn bundles of past works than to take directly from the source. Great idea to reuse and why I've been saving all the weft tail ends for twenty years... but, it takes TIME to unwind butterflies, recombine in new color arrangements, match lengths, etc.

3. Designing on the fly ISN'T the best way for me to work, especially when the resulting weaving is being wound onto the cloth beam and out of sight.

4. DON'T hesitate to say the design isn't working and try to adapt once it's off the loom and can be seen!

5. And, after all... it's only time that's being spent. Not time wasted, time spent. I hope to make use of the pick and pick portion I cut off as either a portfolio cover or a bag... certainly will be sturdy enough for that!

Now... next deadline... late May for the SEFEA exhibit at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. Plenty of time....