Two parter-Life, death,and rituals and creating videos .

Dog

This is a two part post. It didn't seem appropriate to put the first post with this post.  The first post is about James Koehler and other  losses. This post is about my life and times in the studio and trying to keep it all together. 

 This Dog is done. I am ready to start my next piece.I thought I would never finish this piece. It's only 5 by 7 inches, but it took me way too long to weave and way to many start overs.  Last time I wrote my blog I was just tearing out some out of sync soumack. It’s gone and I don’t think I am going to add the lines back. Makes me feel very omnipotent. I just wiped out a whole town on Lolo Pass without a passing thought of guilt only relief.

I have already photographed and sent it into a juried show that I am sick of entering. It’s always something with them and me. My only disappointment in this piece is-- Again,  I have woven something that is almost impossible to photograph. Mixing colours such as orange and blue, yellow and purples and of course greens and reds grey out in photo's badly.I love the complementary contrast and the contrast of warm and cool colours within a given colour especially in a weft bundle.  In person the weaving creates an active soft  active grey from a distance that you can still see the individual colours in the optical blends, but disappear in a photo.
       On top of that I may have just tied up several pieces that I really need for a group show in June. Now I need to weave double time if I am to have enough pieces for those shows I do want to enter. I seem to be such a glutton for punishment.

mottled Mayflower

      Like a good little camper I finished Dog, photographed, and promptly mailed it and several others to be juried in a particular international show.
        Now I am really kicking myself and wondering at my mind set. I keep asking myself how many times do I really need to be in this particular show. By the time I thought it through I had already photographed and sent Dog into a juried show that I am sick of entering without thinking it through. It’s always something with them and me.
      After the last 2-3 years of fiasco, why did I enter? There is always a problem when I enter this show, which at this point will remain nameless. Again, it boils down to why does one enter shows and getting ones ego involved. Much better to think of it as a game-win some loose some.  I get in to this particular show, but something always happens or goes wrong-bad advice from their office, damaged frames in transit, lost work,  CD’s that won’t open, bad colour in their magazine, not publishing all entries, their policy of a piece never having been published anywhere, won prizes and then been disqualified, etc., etc., etc.,  etc.
And, finally,  Et Al. I have been in it 14 possibly more times in the last 20 years or so. I keep telling myself that I am going to re-think why and the logic for my entering this exhibit every year, but always forget until too late. 
 OOPS!!! I am ranting again-so sorry! Need a disclaimer! I am turning into such a grouchy old lady.

      On top of that I may have just tied up several pieces that I really need for a group show in June. Now I need to weave double time if I am to have enough pieces for those shows I do want to enter. I seem to be such a glutton for punishment.
OOPS!!! I am ranting again-so sorry! Need another disclaimer!

Camellias in bloom

detail of Camellia 

Peachy coloured Camellias

Mayflower slightly different

The one show this summer I am very excited about will be at the Corvallis Art Center. Actually, there are several others such as Passages(ATA) and Fantastic Fibers 2011. "Oregon Weaving-The Tradition Continues" Exhibition date: May 28 - June 18 or 25*, 2011. Now I just need to find several of my students and or people who think I have influenced their weaving who would like to put their work in the show. I have no idea who to ask-again my shyness is hindering me. It’s a little like suppose I give a party and no one wants to come. It seems like such a personal question to ask someone “Have I influenced you with my teaching or the work that I do.  So perhaps if your reading this missive and I have taught you or influenced you and you want to be in an exhibit with me. You could maybe contact me-please, before I chew my arm off worrying.

I am excited about the new piece I am beginning. It’s a dog-not a mental dog, but an actual dog-Chene.  It’s the first time I have woven an animal since I was at OSAC in 1979 and wove a frog from the unicorn tapestries. I am not even sure that counts. It was copied from and not original. Occasionally, I Wish I had a picture, but I sold the tapestry in 1980 to buy more wool for the next tapestry
and in reality I hope it never resurfaces. It was so long ago and  I so needed to learn so much more.
      I have woven a face-human- and 3 caricatures of faces from several time periods and a Portrait of Pat from a shared project.

Mary of the little dark cloud

Same Old Same Old

Portrait of Pat

That I haven’t done more animals and faces is really rather odd because I began as a cartoonist and was always in trouble for my caricatures of -well-people I shouldn't have been drawing caricatures of doing not very polite things. Basically what one would expect from a teenager-so its been awhile. - way before I knew about tapestry other then needlepoint and embroidery.

If Mary could have....?

The word cartoon according to Wikipedia-“The original meaning was in fine art of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, where it referred to a preparatory drawing for a piece of art, such as a painting or tapestry. In the 19th century, it came to refer to humorous illustrations in magazines and newspapers, and in the early 20th century it was sometimes used to refer to comic strips.[1]. In more modern usage, it commonly refers to animated programs for television and other motion-picture media.”

Cartoon 5 by 7 inches

Two photos of Chene
 that I combined
to make a cartoon




I have been fascinated with the idea of weaving a dog after seeing tapestries by Kathy Spoering and a Tapestry by Ruth Jones that was in an ATA Bienale a few years ago. Ruth Jones was based on a  design of a dog  in a millefleur and,  of course,  Dogs are all through  historical tapestries...The main difference I see in weaving a Dog and what I normally weave is it has to look like a dog. Everyone knows what a dog looks like and you can't fudge it. Unless you can convince the world that your really working in abstract or an  impressionistic styles. But, Somehow I don''t see Chene as a cubist dog.

Videos: The Care and Feeding of Bobbins-5 short videos with video 4 being in two sections. SO there are really 6-4 has a b section.
        Pat (Spark)an I have been doing something that really fascinates me. Well, parts of it does. Pat is so meticulously patient with the process and getting better everyday with the process. BUT, there is so much to learn and search out just in the doing.  The process of Pat's doing is fun to watch, but I think the skill of using the program is more then I can do, which is one of the reasons of many that Pat is such a good business partner for me.  She has her stuff and I have my stuff that I do.
        We have been working on a series of 5-maybe 6 short video's about the care and feeding of bobbins. The reason they are 5 or 6 and not 1 is that Pat noticed that anything over 5 minutes in length creates a certain ennui in the watcher and can be difficult to download depending on dial up connections and computers timing out in when downloading.    I find the process fascinating both personally and technically. I enjoy watching Pat edit the videos, because it looks and sounds like magic.

       On a personal level it's interesting too and sometimes frustrating to realize that I have fallen into some very  lazy speech patterns using words like okay, that, this, and okay as an affirmative that whatever was done was understood. It's also interesting to see and hear how ones teachings might be perceived by others and seeing all of the ways and things that one should be doing better.  So my goal is to stop using the word okay and do things a little more audiovisually for those that I teach that learn audiovisual. Which is really hard/challenging-okay?(gr)
       Pat has/is downloading the videos to Facebook on her channel at Care and Feeding of Bobbinshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDQOVW07_TM to which a person can subscribe. We will be  linking the videos to  the FFP blog and this blog to the videos.  Tommye Scanlin and Pat Williams are embedding them into their tapestry share blog at http://tapestryshare.blogspot.com. Hopefully they will pick up and embedd the next 3.

RITUALS-

My Dad/ Grandpa Todd

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about rituals and ritual behaviour in weaving and life in general. . I  have always considered myself  a spur of the moment type of  person. After the last year or so dealing with the older people in my life I have realized that I am not. When I weave and begin to weave I follow the same process. Cup of tea, butting Chene in his basket with a chew thingy, straightening threads and bobbins,  check warp tensioning, laying out threads for the space I am weaving, placing tools in order, cutting ends from the day before,  and a few minutes of only  looking at what I did before and then I weave. If I don't do this before I weave I feel disjointed and out of step and am more prone to choosing the wrong colours or just not interpreting the cartoon correctly.  Ritual behaviour is not a bad thing over times many of our rituals become by rote and give one a sense of safety and a place where things are right or feel right.  In watching my Dad as ages and forgets things I have noticed that those things he does well follow a ritual. When he shops , drives, fixes a meal, or takes his medication if I interfere with the ritual he becomes confused and disjointed and forgetful  and closes down. Edith and Marge were both the same way as long as I didn't interrupt the ritual of weaving they could weave

Solar Flash 

        Some where in one of the books I have read by Joesph Campbell he writes about our creating rituals for those things we do not understand and cannot comprehend. I have begun to notice and remember from teaching several of my older students that they could continue with certain processes because they could remember the ritual of doing and the mind  had created a pattern that they could follow without thought or hesitations. In many ways it makes understanding and dealing with My Dad easier.




From A Joesph Campbell interview; "The purposes of rituals are varied; with religious obligations or ideals, satisfaction of spiritual or emotional needs of the practitioners, strengthening of social bonds, social and moral education, demonstration of respect or submission, stating one's affiliation, obtaining social acceptance or approval for some event—or, sometimes, just for the pleasure of the ritual itself."


Cheers and all, 
kathe

Slow dog days of summer

I wish someone would tell me why there are days and weeks when things feel so slow. I feel like I am watching rocks grow. Perhaps, it was because the earth star was slow to weave. It is one of the most difficult images that I have woven. The perspective and depth were difficult to achieve.

I am finally learning the difference between architectonics and shading in tapestry technique. I much prefer the realism of the shading to using technique architectronically such as Lurcat promulgated that tapestry should be!(Yes, I know I left out the silly tailed c symbol that I can't find in this particular program. So get over it.) The style that is used by so many tapestry weavers who taught in the 40's-80' feels dated and not appropriate to what I weave today. I am now half done with so many chances. It's right on schedule.

It all looks very yellow because I didn't turn off the studio lights before I photographed the piece with my flash. I am not sure what I have done, but I can't seem to move the photos around. SO, she said in a huff." guess they will all be dead center."Not quite what i had envisioned, but I am probably the only one who knows they are not where I wanted them to be. Aww-well. Decided it was going to really nag at me so I deleted and started over. Deleting things that didn't work quite right is so satisfying.

I have been several hours trying to build a web page, because I am finally tired of waiting for the other one to be fixed. It's a needful thing!

It is summer and all that implies. The photo of the hoodoos is a picture I took on the way home from Durango. It seems to symbolize exactly how i feel about the last week of weaving. I love the way the hoodoo women seem to be waiting eternally for something to happen. On the other hand maybe they are just doing what I am doing procrastinating hoping the day will end before...

One of the questions I am asked about constantly is what do I weave on. I am a firm a believer that if you weave on a bad loom or one that doesn't tension well you have lost the battle or are very close to loosing the battle of producing a good tapestry. These are my two favourite looms-both Shannock's. They have lasted me so far since I purchased them around 1996. Before that It seemed like a constant battle with the looms I used. A good loom doesn't need to be exspensive or a Shannock. I am now to the point that I really like my copper looms much better because of the painters easel I use to hold them. I have noticed the comfort level of my students that use the easels is also much better. I think there is a lot of agreement that the easel is really a good thing. I have taken 4-5 of the easels to each class for use in the classes i have taught this summer and sold everyone of them. I keep running out of the easels and have to get more for the next class. FFP is definitely going to be selling them. I just received my bulk shipment yesterday. I am also becoming a firm believer that no one should start a beginning student on a loom that doesn't have a tensioning device. I am so sick of hearing newbie weavers tell me that good tension isn't important. That they like having screwed up tapestries, because they don't know what good technique is.They have to fight the loom constantly instead of concentrating on developing good technique.

We took Chene' to the coast yesterday and put him on a 23 foot leash. He loved it. He was completely covered with sand. He could not figure out which was the most fun to haul around seaweed or drift wood. The wind kept bowling him over. He chased kites and seagulls. The seagulls were not impressed with him and attacked. Chene' like a good tactician retreated to behind me. He's so tiny around 5 lbs. Pye out weighs him by 7 lbs. He loves the freedom of roaming in the sand and sliding down the dunes. He can also dig in it, which he can't do at home without completely upsetting Pyewycket. Pye has taught him how to fight with his feet. It is the starangest thing to see a dog attach and slap like a cat.
It rained this morning. Chene' wasn't happy to go walking. Less happy when he had to sit on the wet ground while I attached his leash. Even less happy when he got wet from walking a mile and a half. He absorbs rain like a sponge. I swore I would never be one of those people who dresses up their cute little dog, b-u-t I am thinking that Chene' may need a rain slicker. No boots, though. When we got home he ran into the bathroom and pulled a bath towel onto the floor and would not move from the towel. It took me forever to coax him outdoors and over to the studio. It's amazing how long a Pom. can stay in a snit. He wasn't even happy with his Starbucks cup. He did pull his Oliver gig and demand tuna fish-seconds.(see accompanying photo) He's now sleeping the day away while I procrastinate from doing my weaving.
Have you ever tried to write every weaving trick you know about a subject down? It's amazing how much we just do and don't even thing about it. i have been keeping a weaving journal to try and catch all of those little tricks so that I can write about them. The weaving technique after 30 years has become an extension of my body. I don't even think about it. I remember one of my easatern religion Tao instructors telling me that would happen back in the early 70's. I have told my students that it would happen. That the technique would become so internalized that you don't need to think about. i have finally figured it out that the old master in the Zen of Archery was right. It finally just happens. One weaves with the eyes closed in the minds eye. Still doesn't help with getting it down in writing though! I think this blog may be making feeling a little narcisstic and definitely older.

New Tapestry Finally Finished!

Between Again
Copyright 2008 with detail

This is my new piece that is done with sewing thread. The piece is 96 square inches. I am using one of my favourite techniques-soumak. It involves images that are important to me such as puzzle pieces, Alpha and Omega, feathers, peonies, and a picture in the background that I took of the Vancouver BC skyline. When I enlarged the picture, I discovered that I had taken a picture with an object falling from the sky. A nice surprise!