Parked car part 2

Well, the more I looked at my first car the less I liked it.  It just had too much wrong with it to let it stay.  So, with a big huff I took it apart and rebuilt it.  It seems that that was my lot this week as my real car had to be rebuilt as well.  Take a look, it is much better now, don’t you think?

Tapestry, at least for me right now, is all about weaving, unweaving and weaving.  I learn something each time I weave a new shape or object.  I find I don’t really see it when it is in front of me.  The only way I really saw the tire and the total shape was when I took a picture of it and then examined the photo.  A real lesson in how to assess the days work. 

My City life sample is going well.  That was a lesson in itself.  I put it on backwards and upside down the first time and didn’t see what I had done until I was almost done inking it.  Luckily I am not working on a continuous warp on this one so I could turn the loom around and reink it the right way.  I used a different color so I could see which lines I wanted to work with.  Much better.  I like the colorful umbrella and I am working for the first time on letters. These are simple letters on a vertical so they are going well for now.  I will let you see it soon.  

The first car is parked

This week I was off on spring break so I had a lot of time to work on my tapestry.  I needed the time too since that first car was a bitch.  I must have wove and unwove it about a dozen times before it looked close to the way I wanted it to look.  See for yourself.I used wool for the body and DMC for the windows.

I think there are still some improvements to be made but am hoping with practice the next one will look better. 

Funny but I can see all the errors when I look at it here but they don’t seem to show up quite so glaringly when I look at the tapestry itself.  This is a good way to check my progress.

In the meantime I am sampling my next tapestry.  I am planning on calling it City life and it will be a street fair in NYC.  I am working on things like the people, a hot dog stand, a street performer and kiosks for hats, tchocke’s and the like.  It gives me something else to work on when I get frustrated with this one.  One is all about mixing colors and shapes and the other is about grayscale and shading.  I like moving back and forth between each.

But, alas classes are back in session tomorrow so my time will be greatly reduced.  It will just make me more enthusiastic when I do get time to work on them again.  So, I move from artist to art historian.  Ah well, it pays the bills and is much better than a real 9-5 job.

So, here I go

I started weaving about a year and a half ago and am still as much in love with it as I was when I built my first Archie Brennan pipe loom.  I am lucky enough to have two very talented teachers and mentors, Betsey Snope and Rita Landau.  They are both long time members of the Wednesday Group and have quite a body of work to use as teaching tools.  I am so lucky.

I am not the kind of person who takes things slowly so when I announced I was going to do a Yei figure tapestry as my first project they were dubious.  However I persevered and my finished product came out okay for a first try.  

Working in a limited pallet made me long for color so my next attempt was the rose you see in my profile.  I chose to take a Georgia O’Keeffe approach and concentrated on the interplay of colors on the petals.  It allowed me to explore shading, hatching and mixing colors.  Again, not too shabby.

Being the ambitious person I am I then decided that a simple portable pipe loom was just not enough.  I wanted to do something big, a real tapestry.  Something to hang on the wall and really make a statement.  Back to Archie I went, this time it was to get instructions for a 7’ by 4’ black pipe loom. I set it up in my spare room turned studio.  I love it. 

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Warping Wanda  was not easy.  I damaged walls moving it around, I spent days struggling over crossed warp and shed sticks but eventually it was ready to go.  I am happily weaving away now on my inaugural image, a Philly parking lot in grayscale. 

  This week I was off on spring break which allowed me to get some quality time into my tapestry.  I will put up the fruits of my efforts soon. In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy reading about my journey as much as I am enjoying the process.  See you soon.