Color-full days

Yes, it's that time again.  Class preparation time.  Well, it's been that for some weeks now but other events of life are occurring as well, including lovely visits from family and friends who we don't see often enough.

The class that's coming up soon (June 28-July 11) is at Arrowmont.  I've written about it before so won't say more than the title:  "For the Love of Color--And More!"  I do indeed love color--even through my husband asked me a couple of years ago, "Why have you abandoned color?" I didn't know what he was talking about!  I hadn't abandoned color (in my mind)... just because I'd been working for months on two tapestries with black, white and gray as the color choices.  Those grays were quite colorful, I thought.  Cool grays, warm grays.  Grays leaning toward violet or toward ochre.  Anyway--it's all perception, isn't it?

Here's one of those "colorless" tapestries.

Perception of color is what I work with all the time as does any artist in any medium.  I'm constantly challenged to perceive color effects in selecting yarn for tapestries.  I almost always use more than one strand of weft yarn of different hues, sometimes very closely related in hue and/or value.  The effect I get with a bundle of weft containing more than one color is similar to what I achieve when using colored pencils or oil pastels together.  Lots of visual activity and, to my eye, this is is what I want to happen in my tapestries.

Here's a bit of what I'm sampling this week:

Yes, the chair seat is a spectrum range of cloth tapes... the chair is by Lyle Wheeler, a Southern Highland Craft Guild member.  I've had it for many years and love it. In fact, it was featured in a tapestry of our cat, Raymond, woven in 2003:

Here's the progression of the color study as I left the studio yesterday.  I have one more color transition to make to finish this off.

The yarn is Mora, a wool from Sweden that I've recently ordered through Glimakra USA.  It's a smaller worsted wool than I've used before and I'm interested to see how I can combine it to make blends of color.  First, I'm using it as single colors, moving from one to the next with hatching to have spectrum range from violet to yellow.  These colors aren't "true" color wheel primary, secondary and intermediate but as close as I could come with these yarns.  This is a similar study as I did last year using two other wools and different setts (link here to last year's post about those studies).  So far these colors seem to be more subdued, toned down a bit.  It will be interesting to compare to the others once this is finished, off the loom and place side-by-side with the other two.

I'm also reading about color and making notes.  I've got lots of color references and have made lots of samples through the years.  Last summer when I was the Peters Valley class one of the students, Cathie, mentioned the Munsell book for students.  I've gotten it and quite enjoying the read.  I haven't started with the color exercises using the color chips included with the volume yet but will do that soon.

There are several tapestry artist/teachers who offer workshops about color and other aspects of design.  Rebecca Mezoff, for instance.  Her work with color is amazing.  She dyes beautiful colors both for her own work and to share in her workshops.  She's teaches in person and online... here's a link to her workshop listing.

Elizabeth Buckley also has courses to offer about color and design for tapestry.  Here's a link to Elizabeth's workshop offerings.

Kathe Todd-Hooker has an article in the American Tapestry Alliance Educational site at this link.  And Kathe is working on a book about color in tapestry.

There are several tapestry artists' thoughts about their use of color in another ATA article, found at this link.

Teaching and learning...a pair, always together, forever joined in a delicate dance.  

May Marches On

Yes, May* is almost done.  And so is my tapestry diary for the month.  I've almost completed the last of the ginkgo leaves, my May month theme.  Here's where I got to today:

Here's the way the back of my year looks, so far:

Lots of loose ends.  Kind of like life, isn't it?  Well, I guess that's not really an accurate way to say it since none of these ends are really loose.  All are hitched into place along with the rest of the tapestry.  So how does this apply to life now?  Loose ends may really be connected to the whole of one's life.  Just maybe needing to be tidied up occasionally.

Some of the loose ends in my life right now are finishing preparations for my upcoming class at Arrowmont (less than a month away!) and continuing weaving on the bloodroot tapestry (not yet at the half-way point!)

I had a bit of good news the other day when I got an email to say that one of my submissions for Materialities: Contemporary Textile Arts has been accepted for the catalog.  There will be an exhibit from some of the works from the catalog.  I haven't yet heard if my tapestry will be among those.

It's a beautiful day here in north Georgia, at least this morning.  Farmers Market today in town and I'm off to see what's there!


*May was the month when I first began this daily journey.  May of 2008.  I tried it for a month and wasn't sure I'd have the stamina to complete it!  I did and began my first full year effort in 2009.  Now here I am, almost half-way into the seventh year of this daily adventure.  A habit of making.  A loose end of my life that I feel compelled to tie up every day.

Tapestries in upcoming exhibits

This last couple of years have been busy ones for several of my tapestries.  I've been fortunate to have had my work in seven exhibits in 2014 and 2015... a record number of shows within a year for my tapestries to be included within, I do believe.  I mentioned three of those in a previous post.

Three more that will be showing throughout the summer are:

Velocity of Textiles, 2015 Biennial of Textiles juried exhibit sponsored by Chattahoochee Handweaver's Guild, Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA.  May 14-July 31, 2015.
http://artdesign.gsu.edu/velocity-of-textiles-and-flight-patterns/

Continuous Threads:  200 Years of Georgia Textiles, Gwinnette Environmental & Heritage Center, Buford, GA.  June 15-August 30, 2015.
https://gwinnettehc.org/continuous-threads-200-years-of-georgia-textiles/

Arrowmont School of Crafts 2015 Instructors Exhibit, Gatlinburg, TN.  May 18-August 22, 2015.
http://arrowmontgalleries.org/2015-instructor-exhibition/

A fourth exhibit is one that the Southern Highland Craft Guild puts together annually for the offices of the Appalachian Regional Commission in Washington, DC. 

I'm looking forward to seeing all of the works in the exhibits (except I won't make it to the ARC in DC, most likely!).  And quite pleased that my tapestries will be among those of other artists being shown.

I'm still around, just very busy...

... and part of what's keeping me busy is working on the bloodroot tapestry.  It's going very slowly but here's where it stands when I left it on Wednesday:

I'm weaving it turned 90˚ to the direction if will hang. Here's the first flower in the final orientation:

I'm about 1/4 of the way into the piece and hope I can finish it in a month or so.  The class I'll be teaching at Arrowmont starts on June 28 and I'll need to stop everything else and begin final prep work for the class shortly.  Next week holds the potential for jury duty and if I'm seated on a jury, I'm sure I won't be working on this tapestry.

That's all I have time to post right now.  I have lots of thoughts about many things that are going on, including a couple of potential exhibits of my work next year and I want to spend time with the blog soon to fill in the details.

Happy weaving and life to one and all!