Stepping up the curb on City Life

Things are going well with the new tapestry. I've been plugging away at the first few inches (sounds like a long time for such a small amount of weaving, doesn't it?). I've got the street laid in and the curb started.

I am moving up to the vertical part of the curb and heading to the top of the step. With school, trips here and there and just general living it takes some time to lay in the foundation. I am also going slow to make sure my edges are good. I am determined to beat that drawing in problem. I found that the Victorian wool I am using is less forgiving than the Paternayan wool is. That means I need to be more careful when setting the edges with the Victorian wool. It pulled in a bit more. However, now that I noticed that I can make adjustments.

In an effort to keep the entire 48" even as I work on the piece I am also doing a row of twining between the colors (I think I will only be able to do it on the long straight pieces like the street and curb) to respace the warp. It should keep me from pulling in there too. As with every piece I am learning new techniques and strategies.

I love my weekly study group but I found that I can get ideas from many different sources. This week I went into the city to see a tapestry show in Chelsea. the following week I took a felting workshop and found that there was a very interesting crossover there. One of the artists who developed a piece for the tapestry show was a very well known artist named Kara Walker. Her favorite medium is actually silhouettes but she was asked to create a design for the medium of tapestry. Here is what she created:


If you look closely you will see that the black figure is felted. Now this might not have made too much of an impression on me except that it made me think of the workshop I was to take the next weekend. I don't know if I will try it for myself but I can see doing this in future piece. I think I will just stick with minimal surface embellishments right now. At this point I am only thinking of things like a ponytail or braids protruding from the surface for a couple of the figures. Perhaps I will try the felting on a smaller piece. I don't like to admit it but sampling has its purpose (mores the pity since I hate to do it).

Anyway, influences and ideas float around us every day if we look for them. So I plan to keep my eyes open to see what I can find. I am off to Philly this week and have plans in place for the new Picasso exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of art in a few weeks. I am sure I will pick up an idea or two from that. I'll let you know soon.

Interesting People

Donald at the Slash ShowI was in the city the other day with a couple of fiber friends to see the Slash show at the Museum of Arts and Design. While we were getting organized to go in I noticed a woman fiddling with some wool so I asked her if she was knitting or Crocheting. She said she was knitting. We struck up a conversation about textiles and as we were taking a man walked up in the most outrageous outfits I've seen in quite some time. He ended up being her husband so she introduced us. I was so taken by his outfit that I had to ask him if I could take a picture. Of course he agreed (who wouldn't when they take that much time to choose their outfit) and posed as if he was used to the request. As you can see he was quite the Beau Brummel in his chenille blazer and pieced shirt. We had quite a wonderful conversation about fibers, fashion and piecework. New York City, you never know what you will see.

The show itself was all about using paper as the media of choice. There were paintings, collages, sculpture and videos all relating to paper. The video was quite amusing. It was a stop action piece relating modernist architecture to Gothic buildings. The artist started with a modern building and turned it into a Gothic masterpiece by "covering" the walls with paper cutouts of crenelation, stained glass windows and towers. As the pieces went into place you heard the sound of heavy objects moving into place as if the paper was, in fact, stone, brick and steel. The juxtaposition of paper and sound gave the piece an ironic edge that was priceless.

We were also lucky to see work by artists like Judy Pfaff and Kara Walker. There were paper topographical maps, cut outs on the windows and walls that made great use of both positive and negative space and some fascinating sculpture like the nude male figure with its magazine cut out body parts. All in all a very fun show.

Later in the day we stopped at the MoMA bookstore (we were too late for the show) an browsed for quite some time. Again I had to take my camera out to capture another wonderful fashion statement, this time a great hat. I don't know about you but I would definitely wear this hat.

Back Again - News From The Missing

I know I know, where have I been? So it has been way too long since I last posted. I changed to a MacBook (boy do I love it) and had to work out how to post since I was using Microsoft Write for my posts in the past. But I am back now.

I have been working on smaller pieces these last few months. Not only was it hard to get enough time to warp my big loom but I was working on refining my idea for this next project. As you recall I want to do a piece called City Life. I had the concept in my mind but I had done a sample of one of the figures (the Statue of Liberty street performer) and got very frustrated with it. I had to put it aside for a while to get my enthusiasm back again.

But over the winter break I got time enough to warp the loom and I worked out how to do the people and I feel much better now. I decided that the figures were too small, that the buildings were going to dwarf the real scene. So I tripled the size of the figures and brought them forward in the picture plane and I think it will work now. I guess I will find out once I get to them.

So I did a continuous warp at 9 epi for a piece that will be 48" X 60". I anticipate it will take about a year to finish this piece. I took the individual pieces of the scene and instead of trying to manipulate them on the computer (I still haven't learned PhotoShop well enough to use it) I simply went to Kinko's blew up the various images and then cut them out. I then drew in the background and pasted the figures and objects where they belonged. The butcher paper is now sandwiched inbetween the warp and I plan to only ink the more complex parts of the scene. The street, curbs, buildings and trees will be pretty straightforward so they don't need to be drawn on. The cartoon will stay in place throughout and I now have the color pictures pinned to the walls around the loom so I can refer to them as I work them out. I am pretty excited and have about 2" of street in place as I write this.

I am taking Betsy's advice and using quite a few more bobbins on this piece than ever before. I am determined to keep my warp correctly spaced and my edges aligned with my guide string. For the 48" I have 10 bobbins going. That is about 4.5' per bobbin. That is what Archie and Susan suggest is the maximum space per bobbin. I guess they should know, they've been doing this for much longer than I have. We shall see.



So what have I been doing in the meantime? Well I made a piece for the upcoming ATA Biennial non-juried show. I chose a non-juried show, no pressure to compete which I am not ready for yet. It was a shack I found at Peter's Valley when I was there for a James Kohler workshop a couple of summers ago. The theme is Enchanted Pathways. I chose to put the shack at nightfall when the fireflies are just beginning to show their magical evening light show. I am quite pleased with it and look forward to seeing it on the wall. Betsy, Rita, Diane and I are all planning to be at the Biennial so I will have lots of company in the show. Betsy's piece is wonderful, so clever and interesting. I won't say what it is but I certainly will be a hit at the show.

So off I go on a new adventure and I plan to be much more forthcoming in my posts in the future. I look forward to sharing my work in the weeks and months ahead. I am glad to be back.

The Cutting Off Ceremony

Well, after 7 months and a lot of weaving, unweaving, weaving and unweaving my tapestry is ready for the big snip. 

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I was able to spend a lot of time on this project for the last couple of weeks and it shows.  I wanted to finish before school started so I pushed through the last week to insure I did.  It was worth it, I can’t be more pleased with the results. 

It could have been finished a couple of days earlier but I was not pleased with the last corner.  After 7 months of work I wanted the last inches to be as well developed as the rest of the piece.  I had filled in the top right hand corner but it was too much wall without any definition. I thought it would be okay when I was weaving it because I thought my initials would fill in the space adequately. I knew once it was finished that I had to do it again.  It was too much gray.  It would have shouted “where are the bricks?” every time I looked at it if I had left it.  So back I went before I did the row of half hitches.  It was the right thing to do. 

It was fun to work out the perspective, it really became apparent as the cars got smaller and especially as I was developing the wall.  That was where I was able to really bring the scene together.  It took some time to figure out the right sequence but after a few tries I think I got it right. 

This has been a great learning experience. I find myself looking at things differently because of this piece.  I was driving down the highway the other week and I noticed that instead of seeing the different colors of the trees I was seeing blocks of color.  I now see a bit of what Cezanne tried to capture.  I can see why he was so influential for so many artists.  I think my trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see their Cezanne show was very helpful in my own visualization. 

In addition, doing it in grayscale was great. Once the color was not an issue I could see so much more detail.  It is quite interesting to see how intensity changes when the hue is not an issue. 

So now my loom is bare and awaiting the next project.  I am still thinking about City Life even though I found myself frustrated as I struggled with the faces of the figures in my test pieces.  I think I have an idea of how to make it a bit easier.  Right now the scene takes up the lower 2/3 of the tapestry with the buildings set to rise above it. I think if I increase the scene to 3/4 or even more I will have more space to work out the faces.  Working in 9 epi will also help as it will give me more warp to work out the details.  So I am back on track with that.

In the meantime I am also starting a smaller piece for the ATA 2010 biennial.  The theme is Enchanted Pathways. I have a photo of a dilapidated building that I took at Peter’s Valley that I think will work well.  I will tell you more about it as I work out the details. 

I still have plenty of work to do on the Philly cars before it is ready to go on the wall so both tapestries will have to wait a week or so.  The hand work is calling me. I need to sew down the warp and add the bias tape for the rod and weights at the bottom to keep it straight.  The weaving may be done but the finish work is where it becomes a professional piece. 

I can’t wait to show it to my study group tomorrow.  How fun that they can finally see it in person.

My Travels with Mom

They call it the Emerald Isle, a good name for the ocean of green that is Ireland.  The view from our motor coach was all verdant, rolling hills tidily outlined by the sturdy rock walls that delineated the countryside.  No tall rocks, no hard angles, this is an old land, one that has been worn down by millennia of wind, rain and the creatures that tread it everyday.  For my mom who was born in Tucson AZ and spent most of her life in So CA it was  a wonder to behold.  She is used to green in January that turns brown by early June and stays that way through Christmas.  She just couldn’t get enough of the scene, she kept exclaiming on the beauty of the flowers, the bright colors of the landscape and the water; that really amazed her, water at every turn. 

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Our adventure started with a red-eye out of Newark with a stop in Heathrow London.  We dropped our stuff in our room as soon as we got to Dublin and rushed downstairs again to do a city tour. Unfortunately we saw little of it since were could not keep our eyes open long enough to look around. 

Disaster struck on the second day when mom tripped on a lip at the entrance of the hotel and pitched head first down two steps. She injured her face, shoulder, arm and leg.  She was more angry than hurt as she kept saying, “I’ve ruined our trip on the very first day.”  A trip to the doctors assured us that she had no broken bones or head injuries. Nonetheless I did not let her fall asleep that night until around midnight and I slept fitfully waking several times throughout the night to check to see if she was still breathing. 

The next day poor mom’s eye was swollen completely shut and the rest of her body was a mass of bruises.  The problem with that was that it was her good eye that was closed.  She was sore, angry and scared but determined to keep going. I did not even think twice about this as it was what I expected from her. I’ve been hearing the same thing over and over again when I tell my friends the story. They all say they are not surprised to hear that.  They now know where my determination comes from and that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”   I agree, she is a trooper, nothing stops her from what she wants to do.

So the vacation continued with Mom slowly changing colors from red to purple to claret to yellowish green.  Her face was a source of fascination for everyone on the bus throughout the rest of the trip.  It did slow her down but only slightly.  The worst part for her was that she wasn’t able to climb the Blarney castle and kiss the blarney stone.  Well who knew it was at that top of the castle?  I just assumed it was on the ground possibly on a hill or cliff after all it is a stone!  No, it was up a long spiraling staircase.  So I climbed it and kissed it twice for the both of us.

Doing things twice became my job for the rest of the trip. I carried both cameras to take pictures for the both of us and went to the places she couldn’t get to.  We did fine.

As I mentioned in the last blog I took along a small loom to practice with on the bus. I was able to do some weaving as we traveled, it worked out well since it was much easier to weave while we traveled than to read.  I was not only rewarded with some practice time but I met another tapestry weaver and piqued the interest of one of our younger travelers.  The weaver, a Canadian named Pat does 3D tapestries.  She told me how she planned the darts before she starts the project so that when it is finished she can mold it into the masks and clothing she creates. I was amazed that she was able to visualize it let alone create such interesting objects. 

One of our stops was a whiskey distillery where they gave us a tour and then allowed us to sample the whiskey.  During the sampling they asked for volunteers to partake in a contest.  Can you guess who volunteered?  Yes, how could I not?  And I won!  The contest was to taste three whiskeys and match them with the bottles they came from. Of course it took the entire sampling to do it (grin) but I correctly identified each.  One tasted of peat from the cooking process and another was sweetened by the caskets it was stored in.  They had originally aged brandy and the wood absorbed the sweet liquor only to release it into the whiskey.  What did I win? Well a sample bottle of whiskey, of course.

So Mom continued to improve, our trip brought us to the Waterford crystal factory, several castles, a folk park and the Cliffs of Mohar.  I enjoyed traveling with my Mom and we got along remarkably well.  Who knew we were so compatible?  Perhaps that means that there is hope for me and Sarah eventually.  We returned to NJ, took a short jaunt to Washington DC for a fine meal at a wonderful restaurant and I put Mom back on the plane home on Thursday of last week.  We’ve talked since then and Mom tells me that her doctor has given her a clean bill of health from the fall.  We both heaved a sigh of relief and then got down to discussing where we will go next year.  We are talking about Italy.  I am easy, I am ready to travel at any time. Just tell me where to go and when to be there and I will be ready, passport in hand.  I love an adventure and we certainly had one in Ireland. 

Oh, so close.

It is exciting when you see the finish line on a project.  It is also hard to keep from being impatient to be done. This is the time when it is easy to get sloppy, to say, “oh, that’s good enough.”  But now it the time to be even more careful.  Now is the time to make sure it is finished well. 

I am about 5” from the end of this long, long project.  I anticipate that I will finish it before classes start so I can switch my concentration to other thing.  This has been a good, creative summer, one that I have enjoyed.  Yes, I am still teaching both online and face to face but it doesn’t seem as onerous as last summer.  Perhaps I am getting the hang of using my time well and enjoying the slow pace of the season. It is not necessary to have whole swaths of time to myself, it is enough that I know I will have time almost every day to weave.  Sometimes it is a few hours, sometimes I am lucky to get one hour.  But whatever time I have I take it for what it is, time. 

As I work on my samples for City Life I see that I have set a whole new group of challenges.  I am sooo not satisfied with my first attempt at faces but I have a plan to help me improve.  I will be on holiday with my mother for the next couple of weeks and in anticipation of a lot of time on a bus I put together a small (10” X 14”) loom that I am warping to the specs of the large tapestry.  I plan to use it to practice faces, necks and hair.  I think I can work on quite a few small faces while we are traveling from one place to another.  It will be small enough to put in my backpack and work on in the tight space of the bus.  It certainly is better than reading, that’s for sure.

Summertime and the weaving in easy

There is nothing better than having time to do some real weaving and the summertime is the best time for that.  Being in academia I am lucky to have three months to kick back and really concentrate on my tapestry.  Which is just what I have been doing. 

It is really starting to look like a parking lot as you can see.  I am starting to work on the linear perspective of the wall and trying to get those bricks integrated.  It is not really visible in this image but I am using the flying shuttle approach on the vertical lines of the individual bricks while working out the diagonals between the rows.  Hopefully they will be more visible in the next go round. 

As you can see the dark element of the asphalt has lightened up quite a bit and is trailing off into the lighter surroundings.  I think I will continue the line all the way up the piece wandering back and forth just to give it a visual continuity.  I think it makes more sense than just letting it disappear. 

What I am pleased with is the shadowing between and below the cars, especially on the left hand side.  In this image they scan quite nicely.  The cars themselves are starting to come together and the whiter windows (although hard to see here) are showing up well using the highly polished DMC. 

In the meantime I am trying to work out how to do figures for the City Life tapestry that is next up.  I expect to get to it by the fall so I am continuing to sample.   

I am working on this image of my nephew Shawn posing with a street performer and boy is it difficult!  Not only is is very small but it has a lot of detail, especially in the performers costume (I am losing the flag, I don’t like it).  But the hardest parts have got to be the faces which are proving to be quite a challenge.  I had the performers face and chest done but the weft was too thick and it was way too ribby.  So I spent my Tuesday study group time ripping it back out.  Right now I have an arm and chest back in place and I think it looks better.  I want to get a bit farther before I publish it so stay tuned…

So I am working hard weaving, unweaving, weaving, unweaving etc, etc.  By the time I am ready to do the real tapestry I will be much more confident about the different elements. I think if I had not done the sampling I might have given it up as too difficult. But now I think I will be ready for it when the time comes.  So until the next update don’t let work get in the way of life.  Find time to do what you love.  For me is weaving, what is it for you?