Of flying turtles and snails

Too Little/Too late

Time seems to fly at various times and crawl at others. Perhaps my logo should be a flying turtle.  I wonder how that would look. Decided to procrastinate by doing a web search. Anything to not get on or be on task. (LOL!with a sense of irony)There are even videos of  flying turtles. But this site was even more wonderful l . (http://www.holisticforgeworks.com/company/ then go to flying turtle ).  This flying turtle  illustration is very Da Vinci journal like in itself a fascinating piece of avoidance literature in its self. I did find some images of sea turtles whose scaling on their legs/fins looked very much like feathers gone bad.

OR since I am from Oregon and really feeling the unevenness and the  slowness  of time I could be represented as a flying snail. I refuse to think flying Banana Slug-just to yucky.

Check out the flippers for feathers

Okay enough! I really thought I was thinking an original image that would fit my mood as of lately. Not so there are thousands of images of flying snails and turtles. Even Darwin thought about flying snails according to Nature magazine and scads of blogs. They are a little different then flying turtles  as they are the ultimate hitch hiker. Well, at least one breed and most likely a thousand other snail species is the Balea perversa. They hitch rides on birds. I even like the name perversa. I seems sort of apt to what I am thinking lately.   Talk about cool images and relationships. The idea was written about originally by Darwin and produced prodigious amounts of laughter to most naturalist. Turns out he-Darwin-gets the last laugh as it is true.  It’s an image I can actually maybe see in a tapestry. That is if I ever get into weaving fables ala Aesop. Well perhaps I should just stay with the images of flying clocks.

I am not really this good. These
tables come in kit form.

I am really overdue on this blog by at least a week or more if I posted on the 16^th of November-yes-2010-which I seem to have done. It hasn’t been thorough lack of thinking about  the writing. It isn’t that I have been lazily ignoring it. I have been really super busy. I am getting a little bit of weaving done but mostly it’s the switching of the my stuff from the first floor to the second floor and FFP to the first floor. I now have everything up on the second floor for the most part. I have built two table, a small moving drawer thingy for my silver,  and hung the grids from the ceiling. Spencer has been making almost daily trips to goodwill with stuff that is still good, but not of use for the direction that I am heading. This whole digression seems to be very much like warping a loom. The longer you don’t the harder it is to get back to the doing.

I have also reached the stage-about a third done-that the new piece fills like it’s going to work. I am over the need to add one more thing. I think the water looks oily, which is one of the things the piece is about. I was fascinated with the red, black, brown of the gulf oil slick against the pristine beaches. The murky sky comes from a photo I tried to make many years ago when living in of all places Bakersfield and heading to Loma Linda over the grape vine. The slide is gone, but the memory of the smoggy sky has stayed.  The Chinés and hatches are blending the water and oil quite nicely. I have woven my pristine beach with a few trees and now am working on a dirty-muddied sunset.  It felt so good when I managed to get the colours the first time for the beginning or lower portion of the setting sun.

Before time could be between

This piece Too Little-Too Late is part of a series of 3 possibly 4 tapestries that has to with the past, present and future of the world.Nothing  like hitting the whole dazzling spectrum of glittering generalities for subject matter. The piece-Before Time could be between with the Sego Lilies or and the fossilized earthstar are the first, Too Little Too late is the present and the future is yet to be done. The theme of the earth star carries through from the past as a fossil into the present it is a nautilus in the future a broken shell. The earth star has at various times been both a talisman and an amulet.

From Wikipedia-"An amulet (from Latin amuletum; earliest extant use in Pliny's Natural History, meaning "an object that protects a person from trouble"), a close cousin of the talisman (Arabic: طلاسم‎ / transliterated: tilasm), consists of any object intended to bring good luck and/or protection to its owner. An amulet (from Latin amuletum; earliest extant use in Pliny's Natural History, meaning "an object that protects a person from trouble"), a close cousin of the talisman (Arabic: طلاسم‎ / transliterated: tilasm), consists of any object intended to bring good luck and/or protection to its owner."

more fog

fog

Turquoise Fog

I have been fascinated with Talisman and amulets since reading an illicit forbidden copies of Scott’s books for this essay the Talisman that were kept in a locked cabinet in the work room of the library at the Academy that I attended when I was  a sophomore. (The Talisman is a novel by Sir Walter Scott . It was published in 1825 as the second of his Tales of the Crusaders. ) The only reason I was allowed to read Scott's novels was that I worked for a young  literature  teacher and his wife as a grader. He wasn’t old enough or indoctrinated enough at the time to realize what he had allowed me to do-break  the no novels rule. Those particular Scott books appealed to me because of his descriptive language, but also the beauty of the old books with the gold art nouveau covers and black and white lithographs illustrating the books, the descriptions of minutiae in the lives of the participants, and the smell of antiquity between the covers.   I can still visualize the scenes in my head and see the textile banners floating in the wind and hear the musical instruments announcing the battle scenes and see the colours, be fascinated with the symbolic language of heraldry.

Later when I took craft history at OSAC Marlene Kerrigan had me study and write a very short paper on the differences of Talismans and Amulets. 

Probably will be late too. Suppose
to bloom before Christmas.

I think they were especially fascinating to me  because they were total taboos AND probably broke the 10 commandments as being related to graven images and their worship. I am still trying to figure out how to include them in my tapestries. 

Just because it winter and I need a shot of colour. An AZ.
flower whose name I can't remember.

I am designing some tapestry bracelets or cuffs.  On the Internet they are calling this kind of thing "karma bracelets".  Doesn't make a lot of sense if  karma is the law of cause and effect. So prevalent that like gravity we don’t notice it unless we fall. Somehow, I am not sure that is what I am going for. If I weave a tapestry I want it to be noticed, therefore I think I’ll stick with weaving talismans and amulets or forget the whole thing and just go with pretty and striking. I am using the cuff’s that I brought from mirrix looms. I have been trying to find a slightly wider cuff so that the design could be be a tad bigger.

total needful book!

Yesterday was interesting in a weird way- It started off rather badly. Really Really heavy rain!We drove to Eugene and discovered we were an hour late to  Verdi’s Don Carlos. It’s a long opera therefore they start earlier. Would have been nice if they had put that little piece of information in the brochure. So now we are faced with going to a makeup in January. Consequently, we turned around and came home. On the way back I spent the hour playing with my very perverse i-phone which would not work. So we stopped at Borders. I purchased the book I-phones for dummies.It really should have come with the I-phone-no manual was included with the purchase. I spent the rest of the day reading and learning to use my i-phone. I am half done with the book. What I would like to know is how on earth the person who sold me the phone could have possibly believed it was so simple to operate that I would intuit the whole thing?!?  Anyway I digress. I spent most of the trip trying to take pictures of layered mountains fog and rain. What I am trying to find is still totally illusive. I can almost see the image I want to weave, but it alludes me every time!

Chene with basket command-accompanied by 2 friends his kitty and a pink duster that he has loved since he was 2 months old.

       Chene  and I started training with an actual trainer this last week.  My goal is to have him so well trained by this summer I can take him anywhere. I have one week left before the next session to teach him the proper hand signals for sit, stay, come and heel, also, extra credit for  stand so he’s easier to groom and fetch, hold and drop. Some of this he already knows. He’s been heeling on a lead since he was two months old-just a bit further back then proper, but always on a lead. He will sit, but again not on hand command and only if he deems it necessary for no longer the 2 seconds. AND,knows,  of course-his favourite basket and get your kitty(a stuffed toy he carries around. get in the basket) Pye and Wry would kick his butt if he treated them like he treats his kitty and duster.  Then there is his personal favourite stay for 5 minutes on a pedestal-if it’s several feet off the ground. So, we have our work cut out for us.




An article in VAV magazine came across in a discussion on the tapestry list. It is called the Enigmatic Overhogdal Tapestries.  It’s a countered soumack-half pass of linen between the soumack rows.  They also called it a snare–weave. With a little research on the net I discovered that the term snare weave mainly is used by people that have read the article in VAV and read the book that is about that particular tapestry.  Because the technique was done on a ground cloth everyone at first thought it was embroidery. Interestingly, they decide it was soumack or snare-weave because  the pattern weft never pierced a warp or a weft.  

Sampler that I use to Teach my
Something Old Something new class.

More fuel for my on going study of soumack and all it's variations.

front

reverse side

Two samples of soumack I have been studying. I think I am going to start a new sampler this week and do more soumack samples. I am especially interested in using soumack as the ground both with and without a counter pass.  I will  probably start by copying this sample of promgranate pod from one of several pictures of a Soumack rug that Pat Dunston sent to me many months ago.

I think one of my favourite uses of soumack is still the pod I made this summer. I am going to be doing more of this type of work as soon as I finish rearranging my studio. Eventually I want to make a series of large pins or fibulae to wear with the ruwannas I love to wear. I have also seen soumack used for making earrings that are in fan shapes. I enjoy it when one technique such as metal work overlaps into my tapestry work-even though soumack is only tapestry in the loosest meaning of the word.

I did do a tad bit on this one too!

The next month is going to be rather busy. I am writing a couple of articles on colour and tapestry. Still arranging my studio to the way I want it. Hopefully the computers will be moved in the near future from the 2nd floor to the first floor. Trying to finish two pieces for the next series of shows.  I am involved in a show that will happen in May or June . It should be an interesting show. It's a group of Oregon weaving teachers and their students. I need to start looking for some of my students work to hang with my work in the show. Spencer and I are making plans to go to San Francisco before the 14^th of January. I want to see the impressionist show at the Legion of honor.  There is a Seurat that I really want to see. It’s all about the optical blending he and his followers used. Pointillism is so related to colour blending in tapestry.  is so related to chene and mélanges in tapestry.  We need to do this before tax season hits. 


I think I have written enough on my blog that I can stop feeling guilty. Will just need to try harder to do the next one on time.




END!!

Maybe's and other wonderful things!

I had such a wonderful amazing  time in Arizona.  Autumn came while I was gone. The trip back was all about amazing colour, light, and speed. I saw so many wonderful things-amazing things, curious things. Best of all I taught some amazing people. I hope they all enjoyed the classes as much as I did teaching the classes. 

 Everything is now about maybe's. Sometimes reality just plain sucks.

Not a whole lot of weaving to show for the last several weeks since I got back. At least not a measurable amount. Everything seems to have come to a stand still or a crawl. The Shannock is gone, but furniture is stuck where it's not suppose to be in the way of things that need to be. The new looms are ready to use. BUT,The table is down stairs waiting for a light table to shrink and be gone. The old fridge is waiting for recyclers where the mail table/desk should go and not on the patio, because everything is waiting for something to move.  Dad's out of rehab and maybe I won't need to go to Portland every other day. Time seems to be all about watching rocks grow and disintergrate and trying to remember to drink from empty teacups. Waiting for things to happen or most often lately not to happen.  Sisyphus and Daedalus seem to be my new best friends.  It may snow this week. Maybe Dad will do what he needs to do. Maybe not.  Maybe tables will grow wings and furniture magically move from one level to the next. Every task ends up with crazy happenings and twice as many steps-twice as much time to accomplish what should be easy task.  Maybe, well now just may be...Hope is elusive, but not forsworn-just may be. 

TUSCON

Every day and evening was incredibly packed with interesting things to do and people to met and talk with. I had so much fun talking to Joyce Boyle, my class  assistant-Cindy Brocious- to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for help in the class for all of her organizational abilities and care,  Lynn Hart and Karen Piegorsch in Tuscon. It will be interesting to see what comes out of those conversations. It ws so good to talk to them without having to write everything first!



Only safe scorpions
They scurry really fast





Barrel  Cactus- 2 feet across



It’s still impossible for me to believe that some the cactus in Tuscon were real and not plastic decorator stuff that one see’s in offices in Oregon. Not so fond of the scorpions I kept running into if I stepped off some of the paths I was on trying to take pictures. I learned real fast to watch where I placed my hands and feet and what I leaned a against to steady myself.  So many new ideas-Thank you so much. If any one gets a chance they should go see Lynn’s pieces at Tholo Chula. Her night sky tapestry is incredible.  It took People’s Choice award at the conference in Durango a year or so ago. It’s well worth seeing along with her Cactus piece.   And one of my favourite things a small “sculpture” of an “older full figured women” that I love.  She reminds me of a modern Villendorf Venus, but with clothes.

Tuscon small format class!

Anne Fletcher's 

Anne Fletcher's cartoon
5inX5in

From Karen's Fence
check out moon shadow

Lilies from home1

Technical Aside--Okay, Okay another thing that came out of the trip was I love my i-phone. I am really carrying it around. I am even learning to use the Bluetooth in the prius and of all things liking it. No more Luddite for me when it comes to phones.  It is the  first phone that I have ever had that I actually find of value other then emergencies which seldom if never happen  and it tethers to my computer. No more sitting in the middle of parking lots for my “free” WiFi  connection that comes with each and every room   as I did on the last trip South.  I love the camera in it. It’s allowed in museums.  Maybe I can get Kathy Spoering to tell me what programs she uses for doing things to the pictures she takes. She has done some pretty neat stuff on her blog with her camera.  I also discovered apps-Thank you Peter!  There is an Eischer program and a music Program called Pandorium.  Thank you Peter for the hour or so you took to show me how to use the i-phone.  I now know how to turn the ringer on and off. Still would be a whole lot easier if it came with a written manual and didn’t depend on intuition for learning. What on earth is my world coming to.  I am totally amazed at myself and perhaps a little chagrined over the whole I-phone thing. I am really hooked on it

Few from the top Lemon
Mountain

Hoodoo's low on Mt. Lemon

One of my favourite places was Lemon Mountain.  It’s almost as tall as Mt Hood and takes in almost every climate from Mexico to Canada in a 3 hour drive.  For me it was kinda of interesting because I am vertigo challenged.  When we were in Moab all of the Hodoo’s and rock formations are pretty much vertical-close to 90 decrees so I didn’t have any problems with my balance. On Mt Lemon it took me a while to realize why I kept running into things and having trouble with my balance all the  rock formations look vertical, but are actually at 85 to 80 decree tilt because of geological deformation. SO visually my sighting was a little off. Still have a nasty bruise on my arm where I ran into a tree.   It wasn’t until we were at the top resort area that I realized what was going on. It was like being at Government camp-lush cold, ferns and springs and evergreens, stuff that looked like bear grass.

One of My favourite places in Tuscon!

Another wonderful discovery was an artist named Alexander Arshansky.(Arshansky.com) His paintings completely blew me away. I want one  of his paintings all for myself.  Couldn’t decide which one so I am going to buy it off the net.  The use of pattern to create images that were outlined left me thinking about so many possibilities that I am missing out on and really need to pursue.  Looking at his work made me realize that I wasn’t the only person working in what I call a controlled chaos style.

Mexican Tin Roses



Mexican  Repoussee

 PHOENIX  I even got some silver work study in. I watched Zuni, Hopi and Navajo silversmith’s working  at Dodge Chief in Phoenix. I was told that there are those who create and those who repair-each requires different skills then the other-usually a silversmith does one or the other.  Picked up a rose cross and a repouse cross at a Mexican furniture/pottery place.  I really want to try and make flowers after taking the class I took  in Tacoma that included repousse copper leaves. The two processes of the leaves and the roses look remarkably alike. Petals really aren’t that different from leaves.

Pop  up sheep by Emma Yanda
Cactus is bound weave embroidery floss

Sun City West Class-minus-the bicyclist.

Larry and wife

Bound weave by Emma Yanda

I met a women  one of a couple of dozen in my two  class-Emma Yanna that is incredibly interesting.  She weaves the most incredible little pictures in embroidery floss. At one time she designed cards for Hallmark. Best of all she also collects Sabuda cut paper pop up books.  http://www.robertsabuda.com/popmakesimple.asp . Something of which I have a whole shelf of and enjoy immensely. I would have loved to have spent more time with her. There are others that I also have by several different artist, but he is by far my favourite. She reminded of Marge and my Grandmother  in some/many ways. I could easily visualize her with white cloves and tea and a wonderful creative sensibility and extreme intellect.  I hope that when I am her/there age I will have the complex intellectual curiosity and genteel  manners they-Marge, Emma and my Grandmother (until her Alzheimer's took over) had/have.   I had a lovely time with Phyll, Bob  Wolf,  Diane Wolf, Larry and his wife and so many others in Phoenix.

Another Namless beautiful flower,
but wasn't quick enough to catch the
hummingbirds feeding from it!

 Diane Wolf and I made this wonderful old connection! My Dad thinks he at one time knew the person she worked for in the airports when he was teaching flying at Evergreen. Dad was also wondering and thinking he might have met Diane  when he was flying through those airports. He said he kinda remembered this good looking young girl  gassing up the planes at one of the airports the man in question owned. I still want to her  elephant finished- Broken Rose path, soumack and tapestry a great combination!

Thanks to the two groups. We are now creating a very small bobbin for very small hands after a conversation I had with another weaver about small hands and small bodies and a tool that doesn’t have a name yet.  Roxane  in my Tuscon gave me a metal tool that looks like a bent letter opener with a whole in one end.  It is so good for old hands. My older ladies in Phoenix loved it. It made it so much easier for them to pick the sheds and pull the yarn through. I gave the tool to Mr. Witt who makes our bobbins. My business partner, Pat Spark suggested that we try and make a wood proto type and a metal prototype. It seems some people don’t like to use metal weaving tools because they don’t like the smell of the metal on their hands.  So Mr. Witt is going to try making some out of layered veneer. I didn’t know that about some weavers. I just assumed people preferred wood because it felt more natural and beautiful.

Annonomous tree blossom in a
rest area.



fascinating rock near Old Tuscon

 Spencer who goes out and has fun while I teach found several  pueblo Kaschina’s , Koshares  and Kokashin’s(Japanese bobble dolls) for me.  My new Kachina’s looks more like an Apache ga-an dancer, but I am going to quibble. Spencer  went to Tombstone and all sorts of cowboy stuff and I got to see what I was interested in botany silver and ethnography. Thank you all for your suggestions, directions and help.  Spencer  hit close to every museum  and second hand shop/flea market plus garage sales in Tucson and Phoenix while I was teaching. So many thanks to Joyce and Peter for helping in the search for the  perfect Sonoran hot dogs and the introduction to green corn tamales. One of the other great discoveries  was two more people that read as voraciously as Spencer and I. Thanks Diane and Peter for the book suggestions. AND, of Course Cleo who reminded so much of a Gigantic Chene complete with carry around kitty.  When I got home and watched Chene I realized he is using his kitty in the same way as Cleo- Like a purse when we leave, puts it to bed when he wants to go to bed and drops it on his towel when he wants to be dried. Must be a dog language of some sort.  

 I did go to the Heard Museum  and quite a few others in the Phoenix area.  I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to see or find out any information on the Glory Ross Centre for Tapestries and or a collection of tapestries when I went to the museum in Tuscon.  Evidently it is by appt only and one of several calls to find out about it were not returned. To bad, but o, well. 



Woven by Louise yazzie
coal miners edge 1.5 in x 1.5 in 

 I finally was able to find an affordable sample of coal miners edge. When I was at Chief Dodge the lovely Hopi/Pueblo women clerk found a very small piece about an inch weaving by Louise Yazzie, which I promptly purchased along with several beautiful Silver amber and malachite pieces. Actually Chene purchased the earrings for Pat for babysitting him while we were gone.  Chief Dodge is cool because one is purchasing directly from Indian Artisans rather than non-Indian middle men.  A little gem of 4 sided weaving with twined edge and coal miner with edge.

 Thanks to Larry I now know that the coal miner does not refer to an area but the pick and pick. I also discovered thanks to the aforementioned weaver what crystals are. It is where the pick and pick or demi duites reverse and the colours shift.

Purple and lavender Prickly pear
with  Cochineal Lac encrusted

They had the most wonderful  sacred clown/contraries.  I would have loved to purchase the one with a sucker and the one with TV’s hanging off the contrary’s arms and necks, but they were completely out of  my price range around 800 a piece about half the price of purchasing one at the Heard Museum. But they did speak about my own and many others contraries.  There is something really wonderful about Contraries.  I own one sacred clown  a figure with a guitar and a spatula for a microphone that I bought many years ago when my youngest son was involved in CSG- Catholic school girls. Mine was carved by a Navajo women in a Pueblo style- a contrary itself. “Pueblo Clowns (sometimes called sacred clowns) is a generic term for jester or trickster in the Kachina religion practiced by the Pueblo Indians of the southwestern USA.  Each figure performs a set role within the religious ceremonies; often their behavior is comic, lewd, scatological, eccentric and alarming.  Each figure performs a set role within the religious ceremonies; often their behavior is comic, lewd, scatological, eccentric and alarming.” Wikipedia

Something I had almost forgotten from long ago stories. I remember fire and ice for every positive there is a negative for every serious thought there is an opposite.  “In Lakota tradition the Heyókȟa functions both as a mirror and a teacher, using extreme behaviors to mirror others, thereby forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, hatreds, and weaknesses. Heyókȟas also have the power to heal emotional pain; such power comes from the experience of shame—they sing of shameful events in their lives, beg for food, and live as clowns. They provoke laughter in distressing situations of despair and provoke fear and chaos when people feel complacent and overly secure, to keep them from taking themselves too seriously or believing they are more powerful than they are.” wikepedia

      I am thinking about doing or at least designing some several  contrary tapestries. I wonder what my contraries will be. It’s so interesting sometimes to be a between.

I traded Larry a  tapestry for a tapestry shoulder bag that should fit one of my two traveling mirrixes.  I did this after seeing the beautiful bag that Diane Wolf has for lugging things around. It has a wide strap that makes carrying things much easier.  If it works I am going to have a second one made with colours that are opposite from the first one. I love the butterfly designs in traditional SW weaving. 

Thanks to the two groups. We are now creating a very small bobbin for very small hands after a conversation I had with another weaver about small hands and small bodies and a tool that doesn’t have a name yet.  Roxane  in my Tuscon gave me a metal tool that looks like a bent letter opener with a whole in one end.  It is so good for old hands. My older ladies in Phoenix loved it. It made it so much easier for them to pick the sheds and pull the yarn through. I gave the tool to Mr. Witt who makes our bobbins. My business partner, Pat Spark suggested that we try and make a wood proto type and a metal prototype. It seems some people don’t like to use metal weaving tools because they don’t like the smell of the metal on their hands.  So Mr. Witt is going to try making some out of layered veneer. I didn’t know that about some weavers. I just assumed people preferred wood because it felt more natural and beautiful.

Finally I am at the end. It has taken forever to find the time to write so little about so much.  I'll write the next installment in a week instead of the usual 2 weeks as I try to get back on schedule.

One of the exhibits I saw at the heard Museum was an incredible mural by Stephen Joe Yazzie on Fear of a Red Planet: Relocation and Removal. It was such a moving montage of images and symbolism. It's made me want to stop and do a few hundred hours of journaling about family and past.  It wasn't tapestry, but it was extremely thought provoking about the stories we tell in tapestry, why we tell those stories and how we tell our stories. 

Cheers,

kathe