"If I could save time in a bottle..."

The beginning of my new tapestry. It's based on a quote from a folk song that Peter, Paul, and Mary made famous. The line is-"And, he who tells a bigger tale will have to tell a lie. That and the Jim Croce song.Time in a bottle. The two songs have been torturing me for the last 2-3 months. they are like a cycling rhyme that is always in the back of my mind. So i decided to design a wool tapestry that is going to be at this point 59 inches by 30 inches and be woven at 10 epi. The cartoon seems to be a little elusive to put on paper. It's been a sound in my head rather then an image. I had fun drawing and cutting up the images of one of my Grandmother's doilies for the corner and surrounding one of the peonies. The falling corked bottle with numbers or times is an old magnesium bottle I have in in my studio for years. The bottle glass starts out clear and when left in the sun they turn purple. There are more puzzle images and a banner that i adapted from a 17th Spanish tapestry. The clock face is the back of a raptor in flight. The peonies 3 of them are adapted from my drawings and photographs that I have taken over the years. The sunset pictured here is the probable backgound for my new piece. I took this photo at Mary's Peak just outside of Philomoth Oregon on a very cold evening.

I should be further, but I have been working on my book So Warped. Pat Spark and I are writing it together. Pat is one of the few people I would trust to write this book with me. She is incredibly knowledgeable about anything that has to do with a loom. Before she was a felter she was a tapestry weaver. I am working on a very special section about the loom that the Turkish Old Believers weave tapestry belts up on. It's been a few years since I have used the loom. Let alone tried to remember all of the steps to warping and weaving on the loom.The belt to the right is a Turkish Old Believer belt that is woven in tapestry. The loom is a type of backstrap loom and has interesting heddles. The belts are woven 3 at a time and are highly symbolic and are identifiers of the church members. The belt designs no longer designate a place or a village-only what the weaver thought was a beautiful design.They are given as gifts, requests for prayer, on all special occasions including birth, weddings and death. They symbolize the wearer as being wrapped in the arms of the church and of Christ. The more common type of belt to be woven on this loom is a warp faced warp replacement pickup. On the left are is the more common style of belt woven on the loom. In the center is the loom without the weaver in the center. The loom is made to hook into or onto the belt that is always worn by the Old Believer.

I am still studying soumack. i have been reading everything I can find on it by Marla Mallert. She has an incredible web site that is just stuffed with information. I also have used her book on woven structures as a resource. The other book that is very helpful in my studies of soumack is a book written by David Fraser-A Guide to Weft Twining... Soumack can be broken into two categories one is a construct that creates a ground fabric and the other floats over the ground fabric, but is always controlled directionally by the placement of the warps. On the tapestry list some one called it a surface design as opposed to a ground fabric. So my question is --can a tapestry that has soumack lines be entered into surface design competitions?

Chene's new kitten Rya/Wry and her facial markings and for the knot because he has tufts of very long white fur mixed with shorter black soft Persian hair. He is half Persian. Ryaa was raised with a doberman pincher. At this point he weighs close to 4 lbs and Chene' has topped out at a slight bit over 5 lbs. Pyewacket ways 13 lbs. Rya has huge feet and we expect him to be 2-3 times bigger then Chine' . Chene's still in shock that Rya doesn't behave like a cat should and run from his kingly majestic self.
I am not sure that Rya doesn't think that that Chene" is an over grown rat that's the way he treats him. They wrestle and chase each other all around and up down our two story house. Chene' is totally bent because already Rya can get up on things such as the bed with out being lifted up like he has to be lifted. It's pretty hilarious.

Yes we did see Turandot Saturday. It was live feed. We loved it. Still have never figured out why Calipha didn't find away to dump Turandot for her evil nasty ways and keep the Liu the slave. Put Liu was at least compensated by having the best lyrics and best arias. So maybe there is a little justice. The costuming and sets were wonderful and designed by the same designer and producer as the movie Romeo and Juliet in the very early 70's.

Okay, This seems to be enough for now!
kathe

Beginnings-The intensity of getting started-again

I think that keeping a blog is a little like weaving tapestry. If you don’t adhere to a schedule it doesn’t get done and/or updated. The ancestors take over and you just never get back to it, OR, only back to it with great difficulty and only if one is really trying to be disciplined and only if one can control the multiplying distractions that can happen in a studio. Yes-I know that was a very long run on sentence, but sometimes a run on sentence is a needful necessity. I have been busy doing other “needful” things like teaching and getting lectures set into PowerPoint-one of those things that actually does –eventually-make life easier. If one can stay on task long enough to sort through 30-40 years of slides and enter them into the computer by scanning, resizing and labeling. So many excuses so little time.

And now the tapestries-I am working on two new tapestries’ at the same time-Finally.

I have just finished reading a book on Optical blending-Ellen Marx's book, Optical Color and Simultaneity which is leading me into reading a second book Color and Meaning by John Gage. I have decided to see if the concept of simultaneity really exists in the true since of Einstein’s theories in relationship to weaving two diametrically opposed tapestries side by side. This is what happens when one spends a whole weekend updating ones research on optical colour blending for a class on colour that I am teaching at IWC this summer. It wasn’t until the end of the day when my eyes were so blurred out from playing with simultaneous contrasts that I realized the play on words/ideas that were happening with the words simultaneous and simultaneity and how it relates to my weaving several pieces at one time.

Anyway-The two pieces are a colour study of a Kona sunset that was taken from my son’s balcony on two different evenings with the vog in play-really 2 pieces one on top of the other. Vog is a combination of fog and vapors from the erupting/venting volcanoes near Kona. The first evening the sunset is as red, orange and as violent as one can possibly see. The next evening as lavender and pink, soft and visually brilliant as one could wish for. The two colour studies are 5x 7 inches and the other is 10 inches by 14.5 inches.

And finally-the "serious piece"-a piece called So Many Chances. It has many different elements all having to do with chance and what if’s. One of its most interesting elements is a border taken from a scan of a piece of my Grandmother Schoolcraft-Todd’s filigree crocheted lace. There are elements from both Grandmothers with a lot of Ikotomi thrown in for good measure (for an explanation of Ikotomi-see-SPIDERS ARE MYSTERIOUS”: THE SPIRIT OF THE SPIDER IN LAKOTA ART AND LORE by Ron McCoy-Drawing on surviving ethnographic records, this article offers some observations about the use of spider symbolism in Lakota belief and art. Volume 34 Number 2 spring 2009)
I have always wondered about the elements of chance that have to do with determining ones fate. Life has so many small and large variables that can affect everything just like the butterfly sneezing in China. It seems that life and the quality of life often hinges on chance elements that aren’t terribly controllable. How do you stop a butterfly in China from sneezing in China and changing the outcome of the weather a thousand miles away? So Many Chances are about those elements and what happens. All these elements layer over an intense landscape of water and sunrise and/or sunset-life or death. Both can become either are often dependant on the chances and choices one makes by chance.