Miscellaneous art day

While I do the tedious finish work, steaming, etc, here’s some art to look at.

‘New World Map by Ghana’s El Anatsui

I had to share this. Read a little below and go here to see a large picture and read more.

El Anatsui has used many different materials over the years, including wood, metal, clay and more recently repurposed materials. ‘New World Map’ is a prime example of his recent work, made from flattened bottle caps woven together into a shimmering tapestry.

The two pictures below are installations by Manal Al Dowayan. It is really hard to appreciate in these small pictures, and even harder without reading about the work itself.

 

“Suspended Together”

“Suspended Together” is an installation that gives the impression of movement and freedom. However, a closer look at the 200 doves allows the viewer to realize that the doves are actually frozen and suspended with no hope of flight. An even closer look shows that each dove carries on its body a permission document that allows a Saudi woman to travel. Notwithstanding their circumstances, all Saudi women are required to have this document, issued by their appointed male guardian.

The artist reached out to a large group of leading women from Saudi Arabia to donate their permission documents for inclusion in this artwork. “Suspended Together” carries the documents of award-winning scientists, educators, journalists, engineers, artists and leaders with groundbreaking achievements that gave back to their society. The youngest contributor is six months old and the oldest is 60 years old. In the artist’s words, “regardless of age and achievement, when it comes to travel, all these women are treated like a flock of suspended doves.”

This art is by Valerie Buess, who makes these wonderful pieces from paper.

Do you Pinterest?

A couple of weeks ago on Facebook, I stated that I just didn’t get Pinterest. Janice Zindel of Shuttle Works Studio Lisa’s work is arranged by color, and maybe that is something that I would want to do also. In the back of my mind is the problem of my portfolio page on my website—it needs to be organized in some way. I have these internal conversations with myself about the best way to do this, but haven’t arrived at a solution yet. Ideas anyone?

Now, when I log on to Pinterest, a very colorful page awaits. I’m not sure if that’s what everyone gets, or just me. But each image is of multicolored objects, ranging from colored Rice Krispies bars to hair to crayons.

You can see how Weaving Southwest organized their boards here. I do have a presence there, although it’s very small.

A problem with Pinterest is that by agreeing to their terms during the registration process, you are giving them the following:

By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.

I don’t like this. It’s a huge hurdle to jump. Maybe my biggest obstacle is what I’ve heard from others about how they’re addicted to Pinterest. What do you think?

Treasure hunting

Indigo vats in garbage cans, kiddie pools ready for rinsing fabric.The organizing is continuing around here. It was pretty exciting last week, relatively speaking. Found in the mounds of stuff in a closet:

• Pictures of an indigo dyeing workshop with John Marshall—do you know how many times I’ve wondered where those were?
• Program from a classical guitar society concert (year unknown) complete with my notes on the weave structure of the jacket on the woman sitting in front of me.
• List of addresses of participants in the Rachel Brown dyeing workshop from around 1983.
• Boarding passes from the family vacation to London, also in the 80s. Boy, was flying a lot different then!

Dyed fabric ready to dry on the line or on the grass

• Booklet on infant care published by the government from 1926—maybe my grandmother’s?
• Boarding passes and hotel receipts (also around ‘84) from a trip to Oaxaca.

Color changes everything

This is a Target ad with lots of color. Cute and cheerful.

Soumak to the rescue!

Since my post on Wednesday, I have experimented with doing this weaving in a couple of ways. I wove with the weft coming from two different directions this time. I still had the issue of not having a “perfect” diagonal line between the two colors. Then I remembered Kathe Todd-Hooker saying that soumak could hide that uneveness. I pulled out my Tapestry 101 just to make sure that I knew what I was doing, and got started. I am still weaving one of the long triangles at a time, then a row of soumak with the the next triangle color. Pretty smooth! In the picture above, the soumak row is the first row of purple at the top of the weaving. Yes, the tapestry is going to have some texture now, but it’s not extremely noticeable. I will also have to decide how to handle the previously woven sections—see the close-up below. Maybe some pseudo soumak after the weaving is finished? Of course, other people outside of the weaving community don’t notice all those imperfections. But that’s a post for another day.

Here’s a tutorial on soumak.

Weaving world two

The picture above is a scan of my drawing for what I’m weaving right now. As you can see, the angle for each section is very shallow—Is that an appropriate word to use when discussing angles? I’ve woven the first two sections with frequent taking out and starting all over. I finally decided to just weave one section at a time, which brings its own set of problems. Since the bottom triangle is already woven, one cannot beat in the second triangle with the overhead beater. It’s much slower to use a hand beater. I’m sure there’s a better way, and I will keep trying until I decide one way or another. In my experience, when a piece becomes a headache to weave, my satisfaction with the piece becomes less. By the way, this piece will have three colors, two shades of orange and purple. We’ll see where this goes…Suggestions welcome!

My weaving world

In my weaving world, the last piece has been cut off the loom, and I’m not sure it’s ever going to be my favorite. I was going to dye yarns for the next piece, but it turned cold, and I just couldn’t make myself dye when it’s 27 degrees with no protection from the north wind. And I know that for those who live farther north, 27 degrees is nothing. I’m a wuss! So, I came up with a couple of other projects, one of which does not mean I have to dye. My concern aabout that one is that it has a very small angle across 40 inches. I’m not sure I can stretch out an angle that long, but I guess I’ll find out! The picture above is my Matisse print and yarn colors based on the colors in the print. You can see a larger better image of L’Asie here.

I want to stay here…

For those of us who love color….wouldn’t you love to stay here? This was an old Holiday Inn, which has been remodeled to become the Saguaro Hotel in Palm Springs. Wow! What a great place to return to after a busy touristy day. More pictures can be seen here.

And speaking of color, I am experimenting with choosing colors for the next piece. I usually go with my gut, but I am going to try using guidance in the form of this tool. Then, if something doesn’t seem right, I’ll go back to my gut.

I’ve mentioned Joen Wolfrom and her quilts before, or maybe it was just that beautiful color wheel poster, which hasn’t yet been moved to a more accessible spot. So, I’m going with this tool. Joen mentioned Laura Nownes who is writing about using the Color Tool on her blog. It’s written in three parts. Here’s a link to the first part. By the way, the Color Tool may be available locally, but if not, it’s Amazon has it. Don’t they have everything?

How do you choose color? Do you ever finish something and realize that one of the colors just doesn’t work?

Rachel Brown

Many of us own this book. For many of us, me included, it was the first weaving book we ever owned. I still pull this book out and look things up. I turned to this book the first time I wove a weft-faced anything, a saddle blanket for my father. I flipped through its pages, wanting to try everything, to know everything. 

Later I took my first dye class from Rachel Brown at what is now called Southwest School of Art. I knew nothing about dyeing, but that class sparked a desire to know more. Now that I actually do my own dyeing, I realize that Rachel taught us a rather unconventional method that she used to obtain her beautiful, multicolored skeins. We took a skein of yarn, twisted it up tight, tight, tight, and then stuck it back into itself like you always do with a skein. The tight twisting essentially caused an ikat effect. After the tightly twisted skein obtained the desired color, it was removed from the dyepot, untwisted, and twisted again to expose a different region. Then it was dyed in a second color, which was added to the same dyepot. This process was repeated until the skein suited your fancy.

In her book Rachel explains a very efficient method of dyeing that conserves water, starting with the lighter colors and moving towards the darker colors, all in the same water. It takes planning, but it’s well worth it.During Convergence a couple of years ago, I took this picture of Rachel and her granddaughter Teresa. Beside Teresa is the Rio Grande wheel, which Rachel is responsible for developing, along with the Rio Grande walking loom.

I didn’t really know Rachel, but from what I understand, Rachel was a huge advocate for fiber artists in New Mexico. I know of weavers who saw their first loom at Weaving Southwest, and knew they had to become weavers. It’s amazing how much influence this one woman has had in our weaving world. She will be missed.

Pretty boring around here

Well, when you weave four or five hours a day, there’s really not much to write about. The biggest excitement I have is the audio books I’m listening to. They have ranged from Sue Grafton to Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth. I’m told that Pillars has weaving in it, but I haven’t reached that part yet. It is a good tale and easy to listen to while weaving.

I posted a pic of the weaving, but the colors may be too analogous to show up good in a picture while it’s on the loom. However, since I now own an iPhone, I wanted to try a picture from it. Have to admit, it takes a pretty good picture! Of course, I had to fiddle with it to make it a size that would load well here. Now it’s time to go back and needle weave all those weft ends in. I’m also thinking about what to weave next as I weave.

Stuff

My head seems to be full of stuff lately. I’m weaving from three to five hours a day, and frankly, I’m tired afterwards. Of course it’s really productive to weave for these long periods. Finishing that first piece in only two weeks—well, I’m compelled now.

First up, I saw this picture on Facebook. What would you call it? Sculpture? At any rate, it seems to be stacked books. Amazing!

I mentioned that we have lots of cowboys in town right now for the Stock Show and rodeo. Yes, the rodeo is important, but so is the stock show part. Lots of kids bring their animals to show and some get auctioned off for big bucks. The picture below was in the newspaper. I always like to see the Clydesdales, but this gypsy horse is a first for me.

Erika Sapp shows her Gypsy Horse Half Moon during the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo Friday January 27, 2012. Sapp, from Kerrville imported Half Moon from France. Half Moon will compete Saturday in Section B over 5. Section B refers to the horses height and 5 is an age reference. (Special to the Star-Telegram Bob Booth)

The pictures below are more what we think about when we hear the word rodeo.

Heath Thompson was timed at 4.5 seconds during steer wrestling. Fort Worth Stock Show Rodeo, Friday evening performance. Photographed 1/27/12, Fort Worth, TX. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Paul Moseley)

Justin Browning hits the dirt with "Mary Jane" during his saddle bronc ride, he got a re-ride for the fall. Fort Worth Stock Show Rodeo, Friday evening performance. Photographed 1/27/12, Fort Worth, TX. (Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Paul Moseley)