Functioning-sort of.

No name-finished before I left
one of three done on new Mirrix looom

So many things have happened in the last 3 weeks I feel like I am on sensory and emotional overload. So many good things have happened and so many not so good things have happened . I really just want to retreat into weaving and not deal with the rest of the world. There is a novel(Feehan’s Water bound) that I have been reading-one of the ones that I use to relax with-probably more related to the pulp fiction dime novels of the past-nothing else to recommend it-other then it holds my attention and has nothing to do with reality, but it does end the continual mind cycling that I can get into. The heroine is a high functioning Autistic. There are some  beautiful descriptions of her retreating  and what she is retreating into in her own mind.  Being soothed by pattern, patterns and flow of water and her internal world of colour and sensation

Kona Pink

Kona Orange

that I can identify with when I weave. So tempting, soothing, focused, and comforting. On the other hand she also reaches a point where too much external stimuli effects her in extremely negative ways. She retreats back into the patterns and her safety net regime. I think I am ready…My loom and all its promises is warped-unfortunately, it has been warped  for 3 weeks and nothing has had time to happen. The only thing standing in my way of weaving  is finishing this blog as per my promise to myself. Doing  it every 2 weeks that had has slid to 3 weeks this time with just too much and too many events happenings etc. . 

Marge and Chene-a visit both enjoyed for almost 2 years.
Marge helped me train him to be gentle with fragile people.
He always minded her and protected her from all perceived threats
-some times good sometimes not so good. 

Marge and favourite Hagen loom

By now many of you know that my good friend Marge Crueger died while I was in Albuquerque. Next week would have been her birthday. I am so glad I got to see her again and tell her much I cared for her before I left. I am re posting a couple of her pictures and a little of her work. She was so ready. She hated being bed bound and not being able to do something with her hands. She left a small tapestry undone that I will finish weaving for her as promised. She  hated the idea of leaving a tapestry unfinished so it's now for me to complete. .

4 of Marge's pieces including Skunk Cabbage

It amazes me how age effects different people. My Uncle Ray and Aunt Donna are roughly the same age as my father. They are still snow skiing and running all over creation. My father is the same age is house bound and can barely walk and function. He does love the puppy I found for him a couple of months ago. It is so odd watching people talk around and over him like he’s not there by people who are professionals that should know better. It’s like one becomes invisible when one reaches a certain age. it's either that or people lapse into baby talk with the elderly.  It’s no wonder that some of the old retreat into themselves. The bad part is that we do it in love, kindness and duty. I need to keep telling myself this while trying to deal with another family member. It all makes me wonder how Spencer and I’ll approach old age. Does make one think.

So Sought After, First place Small Expressions

All this has been tempered with the really great events of my life. My trip to Albuquerque was definitely beyond imagination. My show at Village Wools looked really good. I don’t usually do one person shows, because it takes so many small pieces to fill up a space. There were 19 pieces. I also had a piece in the ATA small format exhibit. There was some amazing work in the show. The catalogue is fantastic. They were able to photograph Kona Orange well. My colour palette can be difficult to photograph accurately. Who would have thought that the It’s about Time exhibit would still be going on after all these years or who have thought that the fundamental  nature(large format) of popular tapestry would have changed so much to allow small format!!!! It has gone from no venues to many venues-so cool-often in the same shows. Asa’s Rock's was in Bedazzled. In Small Expressions I took a first prize! I have now been in Small Expressions’ 13-14 times (I think) won a first(2?), second, third, and was disqualified for a third prize last year because there was problems with my framing. I saved the letter to use as an example about the wisdom of using good framing and mounting techniques.

Village Wools  Class, Albuquerque, New Mexico

My Village Wools class was so much fun. I really like teaching this class and will offer it again. It was fun working with students that had done some tapestry weaving. We were able to get in to more advanced techniques. The mind does some interesting things. There was this dressed headless mannequin that every time I would walked by her it was like it was a real person. It would startle me every time. It was like having an extra class member-rather spooky.

Favourite Cartoon found on my loom one morning in Albuquerque with Fluffy becoming Chene. In case you can't read the text it says Chene/Fluffy decided to test a long standing rule: Never mess with Grandma while she is weaving.

So many Clouds, taken in the midle of a cloud burst

Sadly the one class didn’t have enough students, but have been invited back to teach another time-date not set. Would love to teach again at Village Wools-so maybe…

Silver Repousse Milagros

In the Craft Museum in Santa Fe I saw some beautiful silver work both modern and several hundred Milagros.

More Silver Milagros

Detail of Irvin Trujillo's Ikat

The Whole Rug-Thanks for allowing me to use these images Irvin!

Chamayo purses woven by Shirley Gallegos

There were so many exhibits to see, but I did manage to see all of the tapestry exhibits. Really enjoyed them. It seemed that every place I looked there was tapestry. Many of the small towns we traveled through at several weaving shops with people weaving. What a trip! I loved seeing Lisa and Irwin Trujillo and Centinela . My husband now owns a T-shirt that he acquired from their shop. I have two beautiful Chimayo style purses for Pat and myself. The craft museum had 6-7 of his weavings of Irvin's. It was so nice seeing old friends at the ATA get together Saturday evening. I also enjoyed the lectures and the digislam. Attended lectures by Lynne Curran and James Kohler all work in such opposite ways. I could never work in either’s style or way. I prefer my contained disciplined  chaos.  The digislam is always a curiosity to me. It's nice to see the different styles of weaving. BUT,  I am with Lynn it’s really kinda of scary seeing small format work magnified so many times. Interestingly a good design will always be a good design no matter how many times it is enlarged. I had some interesting reactions to the majority of modern  South West weaving that  I saw. It has so little detail. It’s big bold, flashy, beautiful, erudite, but it  never seems to feel quite personal and then leaves me wondering. Intellectually I understand it and it's beautiful.  I never seem to feel that way about the more traditional SW weaving as embodied in the Trujillo’s weaving-both Lisa and Irwin’s and the historical work that I saw. I really loved the Ikat designs and was amazed at the skill it takes to get it right.

I acquired a lovely beater that fits my hand nicely and is the right size for my hand from Al Snipes. Thank you- AL- I love it. Your work is so beautiful. Also, the wooden needle that I am going to be sharing. I can hardly wait to receive the 3 other beaters that I am purchasing for my students to try-a left handed, right handed and an ambidextrous in beautiful cherry and walnut. Still love my Shannock and fork beaters. The shaping of All’s beaters may be a little easier on my hand though. I am definitely looking at more hand surgery in the very near future. My thumb decided to finish locking up on this trip.

Storm Clous and Hoodoos

Spencer and I had a lovely evening with Dianne Kennedy and her husband at Zia in Santa Fe. She was so full of historical information and first contact information that I am so interested in. We are going to try and hook up when I teach in Arizona in September and see the dancers in my break between classes. Spencer really enjoyed talking with you all to.

Hopi Embroidery or Brocade

When I was Albuquerque we went to the Pueblo Cultural center and I was finally able to get a closer non- picture oriented look at Hopi Embroidery. It is so related to soumack, but pictures of the finished product have always been really bad. I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right or which side was the right side. Just not enough detail. My picture that a friend gave me what seems like a hundred years ago-Sorry Yella, but you even apologized at the time. I can now say that I was/am doing it correctly. Waht a relief!!!

It’s going to take me weeks to sort all of my information out and get it in a useful fashion. I managed to overload both cards in my cameras-2 gigs each. There were many things I didn’t get a chance to photograph because it rained and thundered the whole time we were there. In Oregon when it rains I can still usually take pictures through the rain drops, but these were mega drops that flowed over everything. Next time I think I’ll borrow Kathy’s underwater camera. It would have been a great help.

Enough for now!! There is just so much more, but it was good to get home to Chene. I really missed my mutt. Ready for a ride in his carseat.
TIME TO WEAVE!!!- Besides-I have totally messed up the program I am working in and It's shifting all over the place.

Cheers,

kathe

One more thing!

I am going to be out of sync again. I can’t post my new pieces. They are already in Albuquerque at Village Wools.   I was in such a hurry to get my show off that I forgot to photograph two of the pieces I had just just taken off the loom and finished. So I guess I won’t be able to post them until they return home. Once again hoisted on my own petard-Something I tell all of my students not to do.  Pat has me convinced that something always happens to those pieces not photographed. My only excuse is that it was way to warm in the studio-103 and I was 6 hours late for leaving to the Puget Sound Bead Festival. I was literally melting. Hopefully nothing will happen to them. It’s been very interesting to see the red sunset and Momento Mori again. Thank you Christine and Tommye.Red Sunset

Well, I am leaving in 5 days for Albuquerque. I am really looking forward to the trip and seeing old friends and meeting more tapestry weavers. . It should be a nice vacation. Well, teaching and traveling to the location are my idea of a vacation. Even if it has pointed out to me that it is in reality a business trip. Some people are such killjoys. There are so many things that I want to see, experience and do along the way.
Momento Morii

My Mirrix is warped for the next pieces. I love the new texsolv heddles. I discovered I really didn’t like the way I had warped the loom the first time. For those of us who are directionally challenged and prone to having numerous interruptions while working it was too time consuming and easy to mix up directions of the turns. SO-This time I put a circular warp on the Mirrix. It was so much easier!!! . I also have the bottom spring attached to the loom, which helps keeps the warps so much more orderly when warping. I am wove the silver bar that was with the loom into the warp so that I can use it to turn the piece around the beams as I weave the tapestry up. When I am ready to turn the piece I’ll loosen the loom and remove the bottom spring. The woven area will keep the warps in order and the tapestry from pulling in on the sides as I move the tapestry around.

Best of all I can begin my new piece on part of the Mirrix. I have already found the hazard mat symbols I want to use in the tapestry. I’ll finish the cartoon in my spare time on the trip.

With this particular warp on the mirrix I am experimenting with the use of neutral coloured warps. The dual duty craft thread that I use comes in 5 or 6 different colours. Most are less bright then the glaring white I have been using as warp. I am hoping that will make the pieces photograph better. The warps no matter how well covered have a tendency at different angles to be picked up by the camera because of the close up digital photographs. There is not enough distance to produce the necessary optical blending that occurs from standing a few feet away from the tapestry.

I have also warped one of my copper looms for my shaped samples for my other class at Española Valley Fiber Arts Center, which could stand a few more students. It’s on weaving pulled warp shaped tapestry bags and using Soumack. I’ll even be teaching a little kumihimo and knotting for the bag straps and demonstrating beaded bag straps. It’s been fun getting ready for the class-a little bit of this and a little bit of that. ..

As for Silversmithing. I learned so much in the 4 classes that I took that it still feels rather unreal. I loved the new polishing techniques that are so much less dirty and hazardous. I made a silver bead. I learned to set stones into a tube bezel. I love the repousse work that I learned how to do. I will be doing a lot more of that, but in Silver. I am still not fond of copper. I still prefer working with silver. One of the more interesting things that I discovered is that Soumack lends itself really well to silver work. The little pods I learned to make are all soumack. The exact same technique that I use in tapestry. Line and Dot soumack. Talk about synergistic.

Anyway, time to finish!

kathe

busy! Busy! Busy

Busy! Busy! Busy! Running in circles. I cannot believe how much time I have spent in front of the computer in the last couple of weeks. The good news is I have been weaving and weaving  a lot.   I should finish my new or next piece by tomorrow evening.

Bedazzled -Asa's Rocks

So sought after-Small Expressions

I'll get my Bedazzled and Small Expression pieces off tomorrow to Convergeance. then all I need to do is decide if I am going to try and do another piece before my Small Things at Village Wools. The next piece is thought and drawn out. It's a simple background of mixed blacks and dark colours with hazmat symbols and a broken Nautilus shell-the future. I am working on prehistory right now. Sego Lilies and earthstars. The oldest of things.

Received the new ATB8 catalogue  today. The Catalogues seem to just keep getting better and better. Of course,  I am probably going to be the only one who notices I left off my MAIS in Craft Design, History, CTRA and economics degree. My fault not theirs.

                                

So Sought After                               So Many Chances  

Lucked out and found   an Oaxaca rug a few days ago. It's background colour is a lovely turquoise. I really like this detail of the band in over shot and floats.

Sometime in the future I want to weave a design that is poly chronic and related to Einsteins theory of relativity mixed in with  or related to the philosophy of  non  backgrounds of the truly horrific cutsey-ly designed tea towels  each with a crocheted border that both of my Grandmother's had me embroider endlessly.  Were they truly about the love for home  and of decorating ones home and making it a home  or were they really about killing time-literally?  I always wondered if that tiny dinky needle could be pegged through the art of the vampiric designer of those cutesy thingies that seemed to be so necessary to ones survival as a  "good homemaker".  Or maybe the act of creating was like having bound feet.  A show of not needing to do anything-a show of wealth and upper class ism. Even though "it" was needful to always keep ones hands busy at all times. I always wondered why since both Grandmother's encouraged me to run a muck-but always tastefully and with mindfulness.  This stuff or statements of my skill at embroidering mindless things without backgrounds were  always meant for my hope chest. In real life with 3 males in the house it was always a battle to keep them pristine and not turned in clean up rags. I keep thinking that there has to be a relationship to the non backgrounds that  my native American Grandmother was so fond of  and one sees in Native American art and tea towel art and  or fribbles.  Which in  some ways  has influenced me not to think that back grounds are terribly important to a design. AND, I have a sneaking suspicion that it might have something to do with my horii vacuii that often invades my designs. Perhaps in protest of voids.  True paradoxes.

It is no wonder that I that artistic statements  are anything but a creator of confusing  and disbelief for me. I wonder about there worth unless they  are very very long-too long for the average person to wade through. They always feel like such an invasion of privacy to me. Why can't the work stand on its own.  How does one write about the lunacy and all of the elements that influence us to do a medium as slow as tapestry. I always seem to end up humming excerpts from West Side Story such as Officer Krupke. Yet, on the other hand I can spend days and weeks writing in my journal about why, how and what a tapestry is all about. It's not that I don't like to write. I think-maybe- it's about putting something so personal out there for everyone else to see and read. Perhaps giving up a piece of myself.

 

Black Hawk Lakota ledger Art-definitely not a fribble, but  the style was  influential to my Grandmother- This was on Wikipedia and for this particular piece copyright has run out.

It is amazingly warm in the top part of the studio today-around 92 degrees and barely 70 in the bottom floor of the studio and around 80 out of doors. My garden is finally starting to look like it might survive-about time. A lot of the plants are really rather battered looking. Do bad it brings out the sticky bind weed. Chene' tried to chase and attack a pit bull the length of the fence and became so entangled that by the time I tried to retrieve him he couldn't move. Served him right and me hours of picking burrs out of all that fur.

Had lunch with Kathy on Friday and attended the "drunken barbecue"   for a few hours.  Yes, it was at the Off Center one of my favourite places in Salem. On Saturday we attended the "Drunken Barbecue." Perhaps the other stuff happened after we left. It was really fun see Arjay, Scott, Star and the rest of the crowd.  I so miss not having them all closer. It was all rather mellow-not quite like the past and many more children. What is it they say nothing like reformed...So tamed now. Guess that's what happens when the children begin to out number the adults or supposed adults.

Haven't done much  actual silver work for a while. Unless one calls chasing down and purchasing tools for my upcoming classes silver work. Did clean and polish one of my garage sale finds. It was an opal and gold ring that I bought for 10 cents at a garage sale. It had these funny  dark little balls on each side of the opal. While I was cleaning the ring with a pick I discovered that the two small balls on each side were incredibly dirty. When I finished I discovered at the center of the balls two small diamonds. Talk about magical when I picked at the ball and tried to shine it. So suprising.

Couple of days ago we had a lunar eclipse I was all jazzed  to wake up and take pictures. But,  decided when the cloak bellowed while trying to wake  me up up and get at it  that I would rather sleep through it so I did.  So much for adding those photo's to my weaving.  Funny what working 12 hours a day on paper work and weaving will do ones goals and good indentations. Meant to say good intentions.

Okay it's time to weave.

Cheers,

kathe

Waiting for rain to go away!

It’s been an interesting 2 weeks. Filled with highs and lows-frustration, depression, happiness and accomplishment. 42 years of marriage to the same man is a pretty big accomplishment.         The weather hasn’t been very cooperative on the days I can work in the yard it rains. Plants are drowning in the ground because there isn’t enough heat to compensate for the over abundance of liquid. My laissez faire style of gardening isn’t doing well. Cuke plants are collapsing and rotting. My tomatoes and peppers are still in the nursery sleeves. The plants were yellowing so badly i took them to the nursery to see if they had some type of weird virus. Chene’s path construction has been called do to mud-Maybe tomorrow-or not. The good news is as long as it’s raining he isn’t chancing the Great Dane by the fence and I don’t have to try an capture him before he totally annoys the huge dog and ends up minus something or finally does figure out how ooze through the fence. Thank god he’s not capable of manipulating time space and atoms. He’s still in the running at the fence and bouncing off stage.

The good news!!! I finished Kona Pink. The more I weave with black or sort of blacks the more interesting it becomes. Blacks are such an interesting colour to work with. There are so many different blacks. All have the ability to change the look of the colour next to it-Warm blacks, cool blacks, blue blacks, red blacks, indigo blacks and of course shiny blacks and matte blacks. Then there is the textural difference in sewing thread, rayon, embroidery floss. Combining this all with the pink, purplish colours of the vog has been really interesting because there is a softness that easily greys out when the black colours of the foliage overlay the soft colours and in the centre of the piece without the dark. Contrast of hue and light and dark contrast extremes are not something I usually to prefer to work with. I have a tendency to use warm and cools to create my perspective in complex pieces.

    This mirrix is so great for weaving. I love it's treadles and how smooth it works whenI am weaving. I want to put another top bar at the bottomto stablize the warp in position when I travel with the loom. I am also going to but the texsolve heddles and prey that tthe are small enough  for 20epi.

The more I use soumack for lines the more I like it. It’s amazing how different the lines can look just by varying the amount of yarn in the weft bundle. It still is about half of the size of the main weft bundle that gives a flat surface and not a raised surface. I really like using just one thread to create really small lines. I think on the small sewing thread tapestries it’s really important not to create a ridge on the surface. Light creates too great a shadow if the proportion of the soumack to the base cloth is wrong.

Another thing that I became really aware of on this piece is just how much detail one can get in a small piece if you use half of the size of the normal wefts. This really allows one to pack more turns hence more hatches and hachures into a smaller space.

I still can’t figure out how to photograph the small pieces with all of the black. There is a shine or something that the black takes on that looks like lice. I am thinking it might be the flash that is causing the problem. Normally I try and photograph out of doors on a cloudy day. I think it’s time for another photography class on taking pictures of small things. I am fairly comfortable with large stuff- mountains, sky etc, but I think I get way to much detail and perhaps non-existent detail in my small stuff. I seem to miss the point of the photograph with too much detail. Just because you can do something doesn’t always mean that one should.

Marge has been ill. I miss weaving with her even though I still visit her. She’s almost finished with her desert piece. We have finished the cartoon for her Tyger and piglet piece. The loom is warped and waiting. Empty warped looms are so depressing. It’s like it’s time to out to play and no one to play with!

With the completion of Kona Pink--- Kona Pink really needs another name. Pink has so many negative connotations. I have hated pink and all of its hidden agenda’s since I was little. I was forced to wear pink because I have dark hair and my sister who is/was blonde was always dressed in turquoise-My favourite colour. I keep looking for frills to sprout out the side of the tapestry and change it into something besides a colour study.

It’s definitely time to do another piece. I think I’ll use the colour study of the Las Vegas night scape to clear my mind for my next piece(grin, disbelief, and a little LOL to boot). I have this idea for my photograph of sego lilies, feathers, earth stars, whole nautilus, and a broke nautilus shell that has been in my studio for seems a hundred years. I need to journal about it because I want it to say something about the probable circular continuum of past present and the future we seem to be destroying. Each day seems to produce a pending cataclysmic event-whether real or imagined or reinvented by those people we call reporters. I can think of better names, but probably shouldn’t. How long before the Motel of Mysteries by David Macauley becomes an actual happening? I already feel buried in paper and digital bytes.

The size  of the new piece will be about 10 inches by 10 inches, because I want to keep it in the range of 100 square inches. The other thing I know is this piece will not have a landscape in the background, but chene’s and melanges. Some of the reasoning with this is that I can weave the background faster. A greater part of it is because when I am not filling the background with as much chaos as possible I like the relationship of the images to a void. The images will then seem to float on the surface of the void. A little, like the first five verses in Genesis, this has been defined partially by the following quote.

“Creation or the act of creating is merely the exploit of bringing about the existence of that, which initially was not. It is to make something be when prior to taking form it was nothing...which in truth is a manipulation of a certain volume of void separated from the undefined void subsequently possessing a density of its own nature to be separate from void.” Borrowed, stolen and or liberated from a commentary on Genesis 1-5 by prefprefprefhori

On another level as a “between” I have always been fascinated with the lack of backgrounds in traditional and not so traditional Indian art. I have often wondered what the correlation to those backgrounds might have to do with the lack of backgrounds in the tea towels and pillow cases that I embroidered as a child for hours at the feet of both Grandmothers.

And, Yes, Wednesday mornings for silver work is working out. I am signed up for 4 silver classes at the Puget Sound Bead Festival. The four sides are laid out and mostly souldered. The Peruvian Opal is beautiful and very complex in there silver bezels. It's easy to see what is souldered and what isn't. The brightt so pretty stuff is the unsouldered pieces. The dull souldered silver before its polished.

On that note finally it’s time to go weave and with a fervent prayer for several days without rain!!!

kathe