After ONLY 5 weeks …

Well, it took a lot of ripping out and needle weaving back in but the damage has been repaired. I made a few changes to Henry--took him to the hairdresser to give him a new color but I think he looks bright and cheery again.

I do have to admit that the whole experience took a bit of the wind out of my sails. Perhaps it is because I am working on another diamond and I am just bored but I don’t seem to have quite the same enthusiasm as I did this summer. I think that will change when I get to another element of the piece, I am fast coming out of the park and up onto the front stoops of the buildings. Maybe then I will be excited about it again.

In the meantime, I am starting on a new piece, a whimsical one called “You MUST sing their names… Hollyhocks.” Let me tell you a bit about how it came about.

I’ve always liked hollyhocks. Not only because they are so tall and colorful but also because the name always sounded so musical. I can never pass one by without singing their name… hOLLYhocks. It is said with a rise in the middle like riding over a hilly road on a bike.

While we were in Taos New Mexico this summer I noticed these wonderful flowers all over town. I would sing hollyhocks and Betsy Snope would respond with cellar door, a phrase she found just as musical (yea, I know, who’d ‘a guessed?). I decided I just had to create a piece with the musical flower to remind me of our trip.

As most of you know, I was in New Mexico to go to the ATA biennial and take a workshop with Lynne Curran. When I saw her fun and amusing pieces I determined that I wanted to incorporate that whimsy into my piece. Here is the cartoon, what do you think? Does it look whimsical to you?

Disaster!!!

I came home from my very enjoyable trip to Europe to find my cats had gotten under the cover I had on my tapestry and used it for a scratching post. Just look at what those little B******ds did.



Yes, they continue to exist. Luckily for them my mom was still visiting so they got off with being banished for the day. Every time Tucker came out to see if I had gotten over my inexplicable rage I sent him packing again. I know they haven’t the faintest idea of why I was angry but I just couldn’t stand to see them without going into orbit again. It was best that they stay away.

I guess I will have to cut out the damage and needle weave it in again. It will certainly take some time to repair. I guess it will give me another chance to work on faces and make Henry’s head a bit bigger. It is also good practice on repair and conservation. I hadn’t wanted to learn these tools right now but there you are.

Anyone who might have an idea of another way to repair the damage can leave me a note. I would be eternally grateful at any thoughts on this disaster.

Shawn, the Statue of Liberty, and the New York Yankees

Shawn is a huge baseball fan. So huge that he had talked his dad into taking a trip across the US to go to the very last game to be played in Yankee Stadium before it was torn down. It didn’t take too much arm twisting to get his dad, Robert to agree. They arrived and on a hot June day we were running around the city seeing the sights.

I love taking people to the city it makes me see it again through their eyes. Robert had visited the year before but this was Shawn’s first time. It was all too exciting for him and he was determined to see everything.

The trip to the shrine of baseball was to be the following day. Today we were just going to be tourists, eat New York food, and see the sights. We took the train into the city arriving at Penn station. Shawn was already agog at the amount of people in the station itself. Being a California kid he could not believe the amount of people actually walking around. They just didn’t do that in CA. they drove; sidewalks were nothing more than quaint, decorative devices that finished out the front yard there. Now here were hundreds of people walking around, bustling around, all with things to do and people to see.


Of course, we hit all the stops - the Empire State building, Times Square, St Patrick’s Cathedral and now we were at Central Park. We had decided that with their tight schedule we weren’t going to have time to do the Statue of Liberty. Shawn was disappointed but he was okay with it. Now as we walked up to the park we saw the street performer. “Oh, Shawn,” I said, “here is your chance. Go pose with that guy and I will take your picture. It will be perfect, a real New York moment.”

At first he was a bit shy but with Robert and I encouraging him he stepped up. We made a contribution to the performers fund and he posed with Shawn. I thought the peace sign and the sun-glasses were just perfect. How could you miss with a picture like that? I snapped it and got another just in case and we thanked him. Only in New York could you walk down the street and experience moments like this. It was not the highlight of his week (After all, Yankee Stadium…) but it was a fun thing to do. And it makes me smile every time I look at the picture. I could not think of doing a city street scene without this image being a part of it.

Millie comes to the Big Apple

This was their first trip to the Big Apple, heck it is their first trip outside of Missouri in the last 10 years. Not since they went to Kansas City for their honeymoon had they taken a trip for the sheer fun of it Millie thought. But the kids are with my mom and dad and we are footloose and fancy-free.

We arrived yesterday so this is our first day walking around. I have never seen so many tall buildings in my life I just can’t stop gawking at everything and everyone. People walk so fast here, always in a hurry! Where are they going? And so many of them, too.

Of course Henry is taking pictures of everything he comes across. That camera is going to become a part of his face if he doesn’t stop snapping pictures. Here I am posing again right at the entrance of Central Park. Imagine such a big park right in the middle of all this concrete. It really is amazing.

Millie shook her head one more time at the way Henry dressed. I tried to get him to change his shirt but you know him… “What?” He had asked when he saw me looking at him in the hotel room. As for me, New York fashion scares the heck out of me. No way I am going to look like a rube here. The problem is I'm not quite sure what a non-rube wears here. I decided on a simple white blouse and dark pants. Can’t go too far wrong with that. I hope...

She looked around again after Henry took about the thousandth picture of her. I can see him eyeing that Statue of Liberty guy... not a chance honey. Oh, what a cute hot dog stand, so New York. I wonder if it is safe to eat something you bought right off the street. But other people are doing it and after all, it is New York. Why not? “Come on, Henry. Take a picture of me buying a hot dog at that stand. No one will believe it.”

To be continued.

Expressionism at its finest - Fritz Lang's Metropolis

I went into NYC the other day to view the newly found copy of Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis. The one released to the American Public in 1922 had been cut and, most feel, simply massacred. It seems that the distributor felt the need to deleted about one-fifth of the film because he felt the original movie would confuse the American public, so out they went. Unfortunately not only were they cut from the distributed piece but they were thrown away.

I think there are two kinds of people, those that save everything and those that see no point in the clutter. I am of the second variety, it seems so was the American distributor. As a result we lost a great deal more than just part of the film.

In the summer of 2008 a curator of the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine discovered a 16mm dupe negative of the movie. It included about 25 minutes of lost footage not seen since its Berlin debut. You can read more about the discovery and restoration at this website

As I watched the film on the big screen my art historical sensibilities took over. Not only was the story line fascinating (a commentary on the rise of capitalism and technology, its inherent dangers and the class struggle going on in Germany’s Weimar Republic) but I also found the imagery to be expressionistically brilliant. I just loved the way Lang differentiated the upper city and the lower city, the way he dehumanized the workers as they marched into the elevators that brought them to the heart of the city and how they became a part of the machine. Take a look and see for yourself how brilliantly he captures the melding of human and technology in this scene. ">

Today we have computers and huge programs to develop special effects. Lang had none of these tools yet he was able to give us this transformation.
Side note: These two scenes come from YouTube and do not have the original soundtrack. If you want to see the real thing these are both on the website noted above.

I often feel that we’ve lost our imagination. Yes, there are standout movies like Avatar but they reside in a morass of dreck. So little is worth watching these days, what with all the reality shows on TV and the regurgitation of TV shows made into movies. Even the titles show a lack of imagination. In the 1950s we had Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend. Today we have Father of the Bride and Father of the Bride II. What happened?

Well thank goodness we have many of the older movies to remind us of what can be done if we just take the time to let our imagination take over. How exciting that we can still see true innovation and brilliant social commentary in older films such as this one.

The Story of Henry and Millie - Henry

Woo-ee! New Yawk, the big city. I can’t believe we are actually here. I always dreamed of coming here ever since I saw The Big Sleep. Mom hated that I always had my nose in a pulp fiction comic book, Oh, sorry, graphic novel as a kid. “Read a real book, will ya?” she’d say. But I dreamed of being the hard-bitten detective roaming the streets of gritty New York. Maybe that’s why I became a cop, just like the idea of solving crimes.

So here we are, Millie and me. This is our first day walking around and already I think I’ve taken about 500 pictures. People on the street, Millie, all the tall buildings... and that Naked Cowboy guy, wait till the guys at the station see all the crazies, they all said I was nuts to willing go into New York City. Actually asked me if was taking my gun with me.

Millie is so excited to be here. I had to lay down the law though. No calls to the kids every 5 minutes. After all we are here to get some adult time for once. We haven’t ever taken a trip alone since our honeymoon. Our 10th anniversary seemed a good time to do it. She was so surprised.

So tonight we get to see the world famous Rockettes. Being a leg man, I know I will enjoy that. And tomorrow we are going to the Statue of Liberty. Hey, maybe I should take a picture of this one just in case I can’t get a good one of the real thing. I wonder if I can talk Millie into posing with her like that kid? That would be a laugh, wouldn’t it? But first a hot dog from an honest-to-god street vendor. I feel like I’m in the middle of a Law and Order episode.

The Zen of tapestry

If you want to be a tapestry artist you need to be willing to unweave as much as you weave. That became crystal clear to me these last few weeks. I spent about 3 weeks laying the foundation of my piece, City Life. I decided to border the scene with the street and curb, putting the viewer at the corner looking along both sides of the sidewalk. I looked at photos of curbs and decided that mine would be a three-part curb with a horizontal apron, a vertical step and a horizontal element that met the sidewalk. I had put in all the elements and was starting on the sidewalk when I took a rough rendering of the scene to my study group. Immediately my mentor and another member of the group saw a glaring error. I had carefully measured the different pieces of the street and curb and wove them taking care to keep each element straight. The problem was that I forgot about perspective. Yes, shame on me, an art history teacher to forget about linear perspective, I even test my students on the concept in their midterm.




So what to do. Well there were several suggestion. I could make it a frame but it would only be on 2 sides. I could ignore it and say I meant to do it, or (and this hurt) I could take it out and start again. Well after a bit of pouting and scheming (I even missed my exit on the way home, I was concentrating so hard on how to resolve the problem) I decided to take the hard road and take it out. But that was not before I tried to push up what I wanted to save and needle weave the offending elements back in. Of course that didn't work, I created pulls and messed up the spacing on the part I was pushing around. "Ah, hell," I thought, "just do it and get it done with. You know you won't be happy with it until you make it right." So for 2 1/2 days I unwove three weeks worth of work. It is amazing how much easier it is to take things out than it is to put it in. Luckily I had plenty of bobbins to wind with the yarn. I was the recipient of about 100 quite nice bobbins from a friend in my weavers guild and even after I took a passel to the study group for use by newbies I still had enough to keep everything in order. I guess I won't have to wind a bobbin for quite some time (there is a silver lining for every cloud).

So two weeks later I am back where I started. The curb is now two parts with the vertical element dwindling away as the sidewalk moves away from the viewer. The longer element, the part that is right now going up the side of the tapestry will reverse this trend with the top of the curb eventually disappearing as the vertical part become more visible. It is hard to see how that will look right now but I think it is a better resolution.

I guess it is all about subordinating your own ego to the image. I may have been pleased with how straight my lines were, how good my selvages were but I would not have been pleased with the effect they had on the overall scene. So instead of worrying about the time spent doing and undoing it I decided to get into the zen of weaving. I weave for enjoyment and for creativity.

When I was doing research for my master's thesis I visited an embroidery guild in London. The women I talked to told me that they were not as interested in getting the stitch right, as they were in pushing the envelope. They said that this was the difference between them and American artists. They suggested that we are too caught up in the process to be willing to take creative risks. I was impressed with this and try to live by the same creed. So now I think about what works for the overall image. I am still trying to keep my edges straight and my spacing correct but if I have to take measures to fix it that are not exactly technically correct then I am fine with that. These measures will become design elements rather than crappeaux (not sure that is the way it is spelled but I know you tapestry artists all know what I mean). Twining to help realign spacing will be incorporated into the piece where needed. I like the dimensionality it adds to the piece. A little dip here and there will be preserved as part of the perspective of the piece.

So the project continues on, sometimes forward sometimes backward. I am sure this will not the be last time I will have to take something out so I will just get into the zen of weaving and not worry about it. Ah, life is like Persephone's cloth woven and unwoven each and every day. How deep is that?