Selinde's String Theory

What a Difference 10 Degrees Makes

2012-01-23T14:22:00.000-08:00

These pictures are both taken from the same spot on our hill outside Hot Springs. The first was from Winter 2010 and the second shows how well the moss is thriving this year with all the unseasonably warm wet weather.

The weather changes but that grassy, earthy, mossy green is irrepressible. Green green green green green green green green green .....

"A Cosmic Connection"

2012-01-06T06:35:00.000-08:00

Here is the text from the Winter 2011 article on me from Carolina Home and Garden magazine. http://www.carolinahg.com/Carolina-Home-Garden/Winter-2011/A-Cosmic-Connection/.

Thank you Naomi for a wonderful interview experience and for your excellent skills at boiling down all my ravings as an artist and hopeless idealist.

A Cosmic Connection

Selinde Lanier’s cultural journey comes together in the loom

by Naomi Johnson

Photo by Naomi Johnson
Textile designer Selinde Lanier was inspired by an old Appalachian pattern, “Sun, Moon and Stars,” that she spotted in a home decor magazine years ago. She has created numerous versions of the same motif on her looms.

Selinde Lanier still has the photograph that changed her life. It’s a page from a decorating magazine, now a bit tattered with age — she used to read such things, back when she was designing upholstery for high-end furniture. It features a fancy drawing room (gilt, columns, mounted animal heads) and is intended to advertise the artfully draped bits of fabric in the foreground. But what caught Lanier’s eye was an afterthought: the weaving that covers the billiard table in the background, a spare geometric coverlet.
Something about it captured her imagination. Little did she know that she would find herself, nine years later, in a light-filled studio at Marshall High, surrounded by her own handwoven iterations of that same design, which turned out to be called “Sun, Moon, and Stars.”

“It’s a traditional Appalachian coverlet pattern which was popular about a hundred years ago,” she explains, showing the first swatch she made on her small four-harness loom, then subsequent versions made after she upgraded to a large dobby loom for the express purpose of recreating more nearly the pattern she saw in that original photo. The new loom allows her to double weave, creating “two very fine layers that interlace by means of the motifs, leaving pockets between the ground areas,” as she explains in her blog. The weavings, made of wool and alpaca, are light and luminous, hand-dyed in subtle colors she creates with natural materials: black walnut hulls for the warm brown, goldenrod for yellow, tansy for a range of soft greens.

Talking with Lanier, who holds an MFA in Textile Design from Savannah College of Art and Design, is an education in all things weaving-related, ranging from the science of plant dyes, to the cultural anthropology of weaving in this region (it was often done by itinerant weavers moving from town to town), to the weavers of Greek mythology (Penelope, for example — Odysseus’ wife who held off unwanted suitors with nightly un-weaving), and the early history of computers (which were based on the punchcard-using jacquard loom). This erudition is balanced by an exceedingly down-to-earth creative process: She gathers roadside plants for dyes and spends weeks at the laborious task of putting the warp on the loom. “There’s really something yummy about the crafting, the hands-on, the making,” she says thoughtfully. She expands on this in her artist’s statement: “The idea of weaving as a magical process to mete out time is a universal one, and to think that I am weaving the sun, moon and stars, the day into the night and back out again, well … it’s a powerful thing for me.”

Until recently, this inner process, an exploration of her own interests, had been the primary driver of Lanier’s journey with the “Sun, Moon, and Stars” — she’s focused entirely on versions of this same motif, experimenting with altering it and deconstructing it. “I sometimes wonder, what if I only ever make this one design?” she says with a laugh.

The past year, though, has brought a new element into her process: the public. Along with six other women artists and craftspeople, she helped form Flow gallery in downtown Marshall, thus bringing the audience into what she describes as “a dialogue” — and she’s still not sure how that may influence her work. She cites a workshop she attended which crystallized her understanding of what that audience may be looking for, especially in this social-media age: “People want to connect with the maker. They feel so unconnected to the human touch. They want to ‘drink from the cup of the sage weaver.’ They want to touch that magic that is the handmade thing. And you need to sort of stand up and be that.”

So she’s not quite sure where all this is headed: will it be “design” for production, will it be “fine art” by commission? There’s no saying, yet. But the process seems to have its own mysterious intelligence, invisible but palpably there: the pattern that’s gradually emerging as she keeps weaving.

A Good Plain is Hard to Find

2011-12-09T08:30:00.000-08:00

In taking a break from the dobby loom to weave scarves for Flow's holiday inventory, I am once again reminded of the profound importance of the lowly tabby or plain weave. You know, under, over, under, over, like that very first potholder you ever wove:

What fine creations have been born on the potholder loom;)

My scarves didn't come out quite as colorful as this but the warp yarns, all silk, were a multicolored panoply of skeins dyed in the Natural Dye Demo that a few of us from Flow did back in October in honor of American Craft Week (see Oct.'s post). The first scarf off of this three-scarf-long warp was woven in an M's and O's nubbly kind of pattern, which allowed a shimmery tussah silk weft to float along the surface. I then tried that pattern with a skinnier raw silk but it came out a little thin in places without the benefit of the beefiness of the tussah. So I decided to see how a plain weave would look with the thinner green silk weft and no surprise, it is possibly the nicest of them all.

Revisiting plain weave after a year of complex weaving is like getting new tires on your car. It reminds you how important the basics are and it recharges the battery for inspiration and just the basic love for the task at hand. Isn't it a miracle that under over under over is all it takes to make yarn hold together and become a textile? Simplicity so belies its own definition. Done well it is far from simple or easy. It is, simply put, sublime.

Happy Season of Wonder and Awe.

Quantum Mechanics, Louis Armstrong and the Write Notes

2011-11-24T11:49:00.000-08:00

This may seem to some readers as something of an aside to a blog about weaving, but if you know me, you probably know that I came to art through music first, spending the first third of my life training to be a classical flutist. While I decided that was not the path for me, I would never say that I wasn't a musician anymore - music remains the language that expresses my deepest self and so I continue to engage with it in multiple ways other than through performance. One thing I've been doing lately is watching the Ken Burns "Jazz" documentary, in order to really educate myself about this field I love but which I know little about. I have always viewed jazz as "the other" music that I could never reach, since I came to music through learning to read it and playing what I read, rather than through depending on and trusting my ear and letting it lead my brain to create. I thus always felt inferior as a musician, holding in much higher esteem those who could play by ear; those folks were the "true artists", who were able to create something completely their own rather than just reading something someone else wrote off a page. I've since learned that some jazz musicians felt exactly the opposite - inferior to those who could read music. The grass is always greener, eh....

One thing seems universally clear though from watching "Jazz" - Louis Armstrong was a phenomenon that only comes around once in a very long while, a Halley's Comet of the music world, if you will. In Episode 4, there is a wonderful comparison of his tendency to hold one note over the frenetic playing of his backup band to the way time stops as you reach the speed of light:

I know that great music is so much more than just hitting the write notes, but hearing Armstrong's playing described this way was a new level of lightbulb on for me. The great moments of music do remove you from time; even if you are completely ensconced in a swing beat on the dance floor or some other sweet groove, the repetition of it is less about meting out time within a certain space than about existing in this place just for the joy of being there. You don't have to think about where you're going next because well...you're already where you want to be. If there's a better application of quantum mechanics, I'd like to hear it. Thank you Matt Glaser and Ken Burns. And Einstein. And his ex-wife (that would be another PBS documentary;). And Louis, of course.

Happy Thanksgiving ya'll.

Letting the Mystery Be...

2011-11-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

I am busily weaving away over here and not blogging as regularly as I'd like, but I'd like to throw out a few shoutouts that have risen like clotted cream to the top of the heap of everyday craziness. One is to the North Carolina Arts Council Board of Directors who had their meeting here at Marshall High Studios last Thursday. They took the time to come all the way over here from their various abodes all over this great state to see how art and craft are making a difference to our little town. They are individually and collectively of the opinion that art matters. Indeed it does.

I've written a little here about how I see music and weaving in the same light, how I think of loom harnesses as chords and treadling patterns as musical phrases. So you will then appreciate my delight in discovering after the fact that Pierce Freelon, an NCAC Board member and jazz/hiphop musician extraordinaire, had been in my studio as part of a tour they took during their meeting in our building. I should have known something was up when he called Esperanza Spalding, whom I had playing in the background, by a nickname. Thank goodness I didn't do my homework on the NCAC Board members so that I could provide him with five whole minutes of being able to go in cognito;) He and his band The Beast are pushing the envelope of jazz and hiphop. Check it out ya'll:

The second honorable mention of this post is for the current show Unexpected Edge:Yugen in Contemporary Art up at Cavin-Morris Gallery. I have only ever visited this gallery virtually, but they have been a constant inspiration for how they write about the work they choose to exhibit and in the artists they choose to showcase. The press release for this show is a fine example. It puts all current scholarly attempts at the art/craft debate to shame.

Yugen is the Japanese word for the mysterious or profound sense of beauty in the Universe. It is the power to evoke rather than to directly show. It is Exquisite Mystery as it informs the creative process. It is not an aesthetic we use as a critical criteria in the West. This is unfortunate because if we did use it, there would never again be a question of whether functional/non-functional Studio Craft, or self-taught art, should be recognized as High Art.

This exhibition demonstrates the part of process that goes beyond the materials used - it reduces the hold of our critical slavery to materials in craft and presents the cognitive and spiritual essence of the work; its non-physical intentionality as the most important part of its process.

The mysterious edge, the Unexpected Edge, is not an abstraction of anything; it is not 'like' abstraction; it is not the Western concept of 'deliberate' abstraction or creation of symbols. It is the essence of abstraction itself. It is abstraction and we face the unexpected task of absorbing that Mystery without necessarily having an explanation of, or for it.

May I be so bold as to say that this is EXACTLY what I strive to do in my work, only I haven't known it until I read this. May I also say that I don't think I have necessarily accomplished it yet but at least now I feel like I have a goal, without having to pigeonhole myself. Labelling....what a waste of valuable time, energy and matter....

Dyeing for Flow

2011-10-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, in recognition of American Craft Week , Libby Woodruff, Jesse Amy Moore and I set up shop in the parking lot across the street from Flow and dyed some wool. And silk. And generally had a good ole' time.

Some would even say we were in ecstasy.

I'll let the pictures paint the rest....

Dahlias, marigolds, goldenrod, sumac, black walnuts...

Cochineal and logwood

...and the magic of indigo

eh, voila!

Fruition - "Dyed in the Wool"

2011-09-12T07:47:00.000-07:00

What a wonderful feeling of accomplishment! And doubly so as the opening for my first coverlets was at our own lovely Flow with Amy Moore. What a year. This is up until October 15 if you get a chance to come this way.

Here is my Artist's Statement for the opening.

"When I was in graduate school for textile design, I never once went near a dyepot. That was partly because I was so seduced by exploring woven structure that it just seemed too distracting. But it was also as a result of hearing too many stories about fiber artists dying of cancer from years of exposure to chemical dyes. I was planning to work for the upholstery industry anyway designing fabric from behind a desk, so experimenting with dyes just seemed unnecessary. However, the lure of color was ultimately too strong and after finding myself with my own handweaving studio in the Appalachian mountains, needing to be in control of my own color process, natural dyes finally found me.

Things dyed naturally seem to automatically possess a clarity and harmony of tone that I find soothing and easy to work with. The complaint is that they fade in the sunlight, but over the years I have noticed a mellowing rather than a complete fadeout of the colors. With proper mordanting (preparing the yarn prior to dyeing with a metal compound) and care to keep them out of direct, harsh sunlight, natural dyes can have every bit as long a life as chemical dyes. I most regularly use curly tansy, goldenrod, golden marguerite, dyer’s coreopsis, woad, marigold and black walnut, all of which are present in the work for this show.

A word about the pattern 'Sun, Moon and Stars': I first caught a glimpse of an antique coverlet woven in this design in a magazine 8 or 9 years ago and I suppose it has been my doggy in the window ever since. Its circular motifs and poetic name drew me in as well as its doublewoven structure, which consists of two very fine layers that interlace by means of the motifs, leaving pockets between the ground areas. But there is also a metaphysical element to my relationship with this pattern. The idea of weaving as a magical process to mete out time is a universal one, and to think that I am weaving the sun, moon and stars, the day into the night and back out again, well…it’s a powerful thing for me. The weaving on the wall before you represents the culmination of years of experimenting in the studio with this pattern and its construction, and I am incredibly satisfied with this edition, but somehow I suspect that we are not done with each other yet."

Selinde Lanier

A Peek

2011-09-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

Here are a few snapshots of what's going into my opening with Amy Moore at Flow on Friday night, September 9th.

Thanks for the comments all. Gotta keep at it. Unfortuantely, this loom doesn't weave automatically....

2011-08-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

Three weeks have gone by and what a difference it makes. I have worked six days a week getting this warp on, enlisted the help of brave relatives, and, even though I still have 3-4 yards to wind on, the light is definitely shining at the end of the tunnel. It's good to have a timeline for how long it really takes in hours to get one of these beastly warps onto my loom. A month!

Here's a little photographic journey of what's involved in warping 16 harnesses at 40 ends per inch with hand-dyed yarn for a big project like a coverlet. See all that mass of yarn hanging on the end of the loom up above? It all has to be threaded through the reed, the little wire spacer that the yarn is going through in the photo below:

Then threaded in through the harnesses, those little white things hanging behind the reed. Below is the threading pattern. This is where I get to "cheat" a little - since I'm not changing the pattern of threading from the last warp that was threaded through there, I can just tie the new warp onto to the old one and pull it through the harnesses. Except for where I added width (i.e. new threads) on either side...

Threading:

Then I tie the threaded ends of the warp onto a beam at the back of the loom:

and walk around to the front and pull on the loose ends to straighten and separate them so that they can be pulled through the reed and harnesses and wound on to the back beam of the loom.

...and the view from underneath the canopy of warp as it's wound on.

All of these nicely wound up balls of alpaca (thanks Mom!) will then be woven in to make...

...one of these!

Calling all Rumpelstiltskins

2011-08-01T07:42:00.000-07:00

Day 1 of 40 to go before this miasma of thread must be turned into 5 throws...

Section 1 (light-colored threads) on the right is tied on to the old warp and pulled through and then the new middle section is being started on...note the darker section in the middle...gotta go all the way to the left as far as the eye can see tying teeny weeny threads onto other teeny weeny threads at about an inch per hour....

And finally....

Let's hear it for gravity-defying garlic in the garden!

Did someone say Mermaids?

2011-06-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

For the 4th year in a row, the town of Marshall is putting on it's annual Mermaid Parade this Friday, June10 at 6pm. Maybe it's because Jack Sparrow himself was spotted in Asheville recently, or maybe it's just because a bunch of artists are all hanging out on an island in the middle of a river. Hard to say, but one thing's for sure - that's where I'll be Friday night, paying tribute to a town that's been good to me, my friends and our little store named Flow....

Fending off the Chaos

2011-05-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Starting to thread...the transition to the loom is always sobering. This is pretty back-breaking, mundane work, but at least it does bring the satisfaction of order to potential chaos and ruin. Overdramatizing you say? Hey - when you grew the sheep (which I didn't), sheared the wool, carded and spun it (which I also didn't), dyed it, wound it off, and go to put it on the loom...well let's just say you sure as blankety blank want to make sure you have a system for keeping all that concentrated labor in order so that it doesn't turn into a giant knot of wasted string.

Risking chaos. I guess most good things teeter on the edge of that though...

On a lighter, or perhaps more colorful note, here's a little collection of my naturally dyed yarns that I'm putting together for a little exhibition at Flow on Friday night.

And take a look at these shy ladies just keeping all to themselves on the forest floor.....

Textile Heritage

2011-04-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

Just a quick peek at my mother's and grandmother's mother-of-pearl button collection:

Hats off to all of our own quiet little textile inheritances...

Those bloomin' warps

2011-04-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

Now for the fun part...threading each of these 3600+ threads onto the loom...I keep telling people I'm starting to understand why the industrial revolution was fueled by textiles...

Color, color, color....and everything else

2011-04-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

Like my flute teacher once said, "Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm....and everything else," I find color to be that sine qua non element of visual design. So after viewing life through a warping board for the last few weeks, I'm relieved to be moving onto the mordanting and dyeing of this 25,000 yd beast, and I'm a little over halfway through. I've got a known weaving structure here that I am reproducing from other samples so there's not a lot of creativity going into the weaving of this - instead my delving into the unknown happens here in the coloring process. I am working from a color story that I found on an Angie Lewin greeting card:

So far so good but I'm barely halfway through the dyeing and it remains to be seen if I can keep myself from using more colors than I need. It's a like good John Coltrane - knowing how and when to play it straight and simple can be harder and require more restaint and skill than playing all over the place. You risk junking it up. I've divided my warp into six equal sections and am space dyeing each one in the manner of my first coverlet sample (see 2009 posts "SunMoonStars Success" and "Weaving Finally") in order to get a layer switching effect. I'll spare you the weavegeek details for now - am planning to weave 5 throws on this one warp and will probably use five different weft colors. Learned my lesson on that first sample though - no light and dark weft alternating - only using a single color for both layers so that the warp color switching effect can be highlighted properly.

It always amazes me how the dye process sometimes just lifts the color right out of the dyebath, leaving a

crystal clear liquid. Just your everyday transfer of molecules...

Hit the Jackpot!

2011-03-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

Just picked up the rest of the yarn that I need for my next coverlet throw project from Lorien Farms in Candler, NC, right around the corner from Marshall. As tempting as it was in January to go fiber optic with the sun moon and stars - that WILL happen eventually! - I decided I needed to get some product into Flow that was a little more in the home furnishings directions - a la warm and fuzzy. So I'm putting on a 14 yd warp in the same structure as the other two coverlet samples I've woven (see 2009 2010 posts) and hoping to get 5 sofa throws out of it. Trying for the ikat, layer exchange effect again - we'll see. Needed some superfine 2/16 alpaca for the weft to get that yummy lofty hand and Jean Castle at Lorien had just the right thing. That's all alpaca in the picture except for the bleached 2/20 wool on the right. This is not an easy size to find in alpaca, and baby alpaca at that, so I was thrilled to find it locally. Now on to the fun part. Dyeing. Check back in May ? for some finished product pictures...

Seeing some light

2011-01-19T07:13:00.000-08:00

This is how this piece is really supposed to look! I've been trying to figure out a shortcut around the lightbox Laird had to build ten years ago when I first wove it to simultaneously light this piece up and cool it down. On a recommendation from a photographer who came to shoot some pics of me a'weavin' for WNC magazine, my brother located a tactical flashlight for me to try instead of the LED flashlight I was using which didn't have enough juice. The toilet paper tube I use to funnel all the wefts into behind the piece still gets pretty warm and the battery only lasts two hours on full like this, but it's enough to inspire me to do a whole series of new fiber optic pieces. Maybe now or maybe later...but eventally for sure!

Floor Love for Flow

2010-11-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

Just in time for the cold weather....

And graced by a new cherry side table we just got in from Jacque Allen....

But let's not forget...handwork can also enslave

2010-10-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

Here is an excellent Deutsche Welle video made by my friend Jesko Johannsen on the ravages of Ethiopian child labor and some attempts to offer alternatives. See also Hope for Children http://www.childdignity.org/index.php

On the Significance of Handwork

2010-09-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Inspiring words!

Aurora

2010-09-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

Here's my formal description of "Aurora" which is posted on the wall at Flow but which I lately realized wasn't available to my blog readers! It's addressed to the general public, so forgive the redundancy if you've been reading my blog and already know about my process...For more pictures of Aurora see the June entry "Coming off the loom and into the Flow".

Now when Dawn in robe of saffron was hastening from the streams of Okeanos, to bring light to mortals and immortals, Thetis reached the ships with the armor that the god had given her.

But soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered, then gathered the folk about the pyre of glorious Hector."

Homer's Iliad

Aurora

100% naturally dyed wool and silk, 2010

Ever since learning to weave, I have been intrigued with doubleweave, a structure that creates two entirely independent layers, each with their own weft and warp. Traditionally, the two layers are interconnected for stability and aesthetic purposes through the use of a pattern where the bottom layer is brought up to the surface, sending the top to the bottom and thus “tying” the fabric together structurally. Doublewoven fabrics are found in cultures all over the world, but some of the most complex and awe-inspiring examples come from right here in the Appalachian Mountains in the form of the handwoven coverlet.

With Aurora, I used the traditional coverlet pattern known as “Sun, Moon and Stars” as a point of departure, gradually removing its pattern elements from top to bottom as I wove; first the largest “sun” circular motif, then the medium-sized “moon”, leaving only the smaller, checkered “stars” which, when removed in the blue section, results in no means of interlacing at all, allowing the two separate layers to hang apart from one another. Narratively in time, the actual weaving process of top-to-bottom pattern disassembly moves from brightest light to deepest darkness, in a downward motion, suggesting a dying light rather than the dawn of Aurora. However, if the piece is read as a static two-dimensional canvas, divorced of its process of making, it could be read either as a sunset or sunrise. In any case, Aurora gives expression to the other structural fascination that I’ve tackled in various ways over the years – how to get light into fabric. At the bottom of this piece, you’ll notice that I attempted to literally do just that - I used a Yoruban weft technique to weave holes in the top blue layer, exposing the space in between to light as well as illuminating the back layer with a pattern of stars.

Color, however, is arguably what this piece is most about, and I didn’t hold back. Three years ago, I began to experiment with growing and collecting natural dye plants and I was amazed at how easy it is to achieve a full palette of colors. Additionally, the colors all seem to share a common undertone which blends them in a mysteriously harmonious way, creating a magical union that I don’t find with chemical dyes. All of this yarn was dyed in my studio from plants native to this region, with the exception of the blue, which is from woad. Woad is an indigo variant that was the main source of blue in Europe prior to the import of indigo from warmer climates. Woad grows quite well here, producing this clear, bright blue, but to my knowledge, it was never popularly used by the settlers of this region in the way that indigo was.

“Aurora” represents the culmination of over a year’s worth of time and experimentation in the studio, as well as the realization of a dream to have the time and space to explore this pattern and its structure – truly a trip to the sun, moon and stars and back.

Selinde Lanier

Equinoxes and Estuaries

2010-09-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

After a crazy hot August, I am welcoming the time of transition known as autumn into my studio, with all its luscious color, perfect temperatures and butterflies flying in and out through my open windows, even if it sometimes feels like there is a little sneakiness in that perfect air, an attempt to distract me with beauty while the business of life has to go on. This is the time of year I want to just unfurl a rug onto the grass, lie down and dream into the sky all day, but in the interest of cash flow, I decided to compromise and weave a rug for Flow. I've had this magazine page (above) on my bulletin board for at least a year and in surveying my bins of castoff rug yarn cones from Rob Pulleyn (whose studio I'm honored and awed to have directly under mine!), I was able to match the colors in the bins to the color on the page - always a boon for a textile designer - and come up with a stripe rhythm that I feel honors the earth, river and sky that feed our town and little undertaking known as Flow.

I am also welcoming my grandmother's rocking chair, recently back from the upholsterer with the new seat designed by me and needlepointed by my mother. Here's a little video of it by Peggy Davis:

Happy Slow Craft Harvest ya'll...

Summer Musings

2010-08-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

It's been a hot summer, folks and I'm looking at this image wishing I could have half my body in frigid space where it might have a chance at cooling the rest of me down. What with getting Flow up and running and trying to stuff the activities of three months of summer into the two that our school system gives us, I can count on one hand the number of days that I've spent in the studio. Nevertheless, I have come across several things that pertain to either String Theory or Sun, Moon and Stars that I thought I'd share.

One is this anonymous woodcut image of the man peering behind the heavens first published widely in "L'Atmosphere meterologie" by Camille Flammarion. This has popped up more than once - in a book I read recently on sacred geometry and in a show at the Madison County Arts Council in the form of a phenomenal embroidery done by local artist Dory Brown. Its depiction of thinking outside the arc, as it were, resonated with the design process for my latest weaving where I disassembled the traditional sun, moon and stars coverlet pattern and drained the elements into a deep blue ground permeated by an arc of light blue holes (see previous few posts).

I also heard an NPR review of a play called "The Disappearing Number" which ran in July at the Lincoln Center Festival. It addresses the creation of beauty through mathematical equations as comparable to the quest for form in art and poetry. The more I design and weave, the more fuzzy that line becomes between art and math or logic. Especially pattern building - that's all about geometry and balance. Color and light - they can be described in chemical and physics equations. It's not the language I choose, but it's a language nonetheless. We're all just using the language that comes naturally to us to try to describe the beauty that lies before us in our everyday world. And, sometimes, the not so everyday world.

http://vimeo.com/11883809

And finally, a new view of the sun, moon and stars courtesy of the Planck telescope and some really old light waves, 380,000 years after the Big Bang, to be specific:

Coming off the Loom and Into the "Flow"

2010-06-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

It was a furious race to get "Aurora" off the loom last Monday....

...and into the new space in downtown Marshall that we've christened "Flow: Adornment for Body and Home."

We had a fantastic "soft" opening on Friday night and are getting our ducks in a row to be open for real on July 9th. Time to weave some rugs :)

100% Cotton does not equal 100% Truth

2010-05-19T15:04:00.000-07:00

New art in my hallway!!!
After visiting Gwylene Gallimard at her home in March and viewing a piece that she recently completed for a show in Columbia, SC, I decided that this piece, quite large, could perhaps find a home in my hallway at Marshall High Studios. This first section of it went up last week and the hallway is already transformed. There is also a woven canvas section of a smokestack that will go up later this summer. The piece is a blowup of an old photograph called "Farm & Factory" from the book Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, a Text Book for the Use of Textile Schools and Investors by D.A. Tompkins publ. in Charlotte, NC 1899. Gwylene projected the photograph onto several large pieces of gessoed canvas and re-recorded it in charcoal (an interesting choice, given the smokestack). The result is something of an inkblot impression; since the whole pickers' section is almost 20 feet long and over 4 feet high, one needs to step away a bit in order to let the brain configure the drawing into a recognizable image. As Gwylene explains it, it's much like the study of history; if you focus too myopically on one subject without seeing its historical context, you risk losing sight of the whole picture. Detail is of course important, but meaningless without context.

Several things went into my motivation to purchase this piece. Having grown up in the South and made my living so far in the textile industry, I have always been aware of the role cotton has played in the history of this region. Recently though, I've read several articles on current global cotton production issues, which have made the old adage, "the more things change, the more they stay the same," ring all too true. A Harper's Magazine article from Jan. 201o "Shopping For Sweat: The human cost of a Two-dollar T-shirt" by Ken Silverstein reminded me of the untold truths behind the popular ad campaign in the 70s and 80s "The Fabric of Our Lives" put out by Cotton Incorporated. A $30 T-shirt equals roughly one third of two months' salary for a Cambodian garment worker. The photographer Hans Peter Jost has a new book out called Cotton Worldwide , and a review of it and its accompanying exhibition is in the current issue of TextilForum magazine. This book takes a look at the current cotton industry worldwide and points out the extreme differences between the conditions faced by subsidized growers in wealthy countries and those faced by less fortunate farmers. In India, suicides by cotton farmers is a tragic but all too common reality. Monsanto, the giant producer of genetically modified seed, is using India as a testing ground for its newest GM cotton seed, and as whole crops fail repeatedly and farm families go deeper into debt, farmers are seeing suicide as the only option.

So the story of cotton continues. Does it mean you shouldn't buy T-shirts? I don't know how any of us would fare in trying to purge our lives of cotton. But I know that every time I put on a piece of clothing, I have an ever growing respect for all the work and possibly lives that went into producing it, whether it was fairly compensated or not. No matter how it may be presented, making clothes is never a cheap undertaking.

So, wear it with pride, I say.

Slow Blog

2010-04-26T14:46:00.001-07:00

I was just reading about "slow cloth" in HandEye magazine (which incidentally just did a little article on me too: Garden Color. Let's hear it for Keith Recker!) But I realized that I approach this blog, as well as my studio work, with some of the principles of slow craft: joy and contemplation, with, I like to think, a little skill, beauty and expressiveness thrown in, all for the sake of connecting with community and my textile heritage. I'm enjoying and relishing the intersections of interest that I am finding in the virtual textile community that are sustaining me in a time when I'd otherwise be thinking about pouring resin over myself and my loom just to align myself with how anachronistic I feel being a weaver these days. Did anybody notice that the April/May issue of American Craft that the editor's letter talked about craftspeople and their tools but never once mentioned weavers and their looms? Is this because that's just old news - everybody knows the jacquard loom was the precursor to the computer, get over it - or is it because nobody weaves anymore? Are we all just too busy tweeting and twittering?

Sometimes I feel like I'm on one of those medieval stretching racks with my toes tied to about 1953 and my fingers barely reaching 20?? and the rest of me hanging over this void where the loom is a chimera, and time will only tell if we lose the skills we've developed to make fabric on it or not.

No Beige Beige world after all

2010-03-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the final product for the new warp: woad (different soaking times for different intensities) for the blue; marigold for the orange; tansy for the lighter yellow; and golden marguerite for the gold. Now comes the fun part - warping it up:(

A final note though - I continue to remain awed at how easy and satisfying dyeing with plants is. Of course if you are going for dye lot consistency, you will have to approach it very scientifically, take careful notes and allow for the beauty of subtle variation. After all, don't we pay more for that tea-stained look? Mother Nature does not guarantee consistency. And why should she? 'Twould be a boring, beige, beige world if she did. Happy spring, ya'll...

Dye Daze

2010-03-26T14:56:00.000-07:00

Boilin' up some marigold and golden marguerite for the new warp...

tansy and woad coming next week...

Green Fingers, Zest for Life or Purple Haze?

2010-03-10T05:53:00.000-08:00

Okay folks. View the sublime in the form of a birthday gift. Can you believe how cool my friend Peggy is? Need I say more?
I'll let the mugs speak for themselves:

"Green Fingers?
Spearmint,
Space Alien,
Tree Frog,
Absinthe"

"Zest for Life?
Space Hopper
Clementine
Tequila Sunrise
Pumpkin"

"Purple Haze?
Aubergine
Amethyst
Lavender
Pint of Snakebite"

Free associative and non sequitous comments welcome.

Making plans...

2010-03-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

Many times before starting a new project, I have attempted to draw or paint what was in my head, as a way to think it through first and to get all the various facets coalesced into a visual whole for my own satisfaction. Usually I give up halfway through, muttering something about how 2-dimensional portrayals of 3-dimensional woven fabrics are pointless since they are essentially different animals. This time, I persevered, and voila! I am happy with the result. I wanted to capture the colors and dye plan for the two warps - with all natural dyes, of course; the ikat technique which I'm using to create places of transparency (Thanks, Sharon!) in the pattern; and the overall flow and development, or in this case, disentegration, of the Sun/Moon/Stars pattern.

So on now to winding and dyeing. The finished product may not look anything like this when I'm done, but at least now I won't be able to kick myself for not having thought it through first.

Letting in the Light

2010-02-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

It's...wait...SNOWING. This may be the year that winter wins by cancelling out summer altogether since my daughter hasn't had a full week of school since 2010 began. So just to throw a little pie in the eye of that old groundhog, I thought I'd upload a few pictures of old work of mine that I came across while cleaning off my hard drive recently. This is work I did for my graduate thesis where I was experimenting with different methods of getting light into fabric. In these first few, I am using very simple weaves and finger manipulated twists (leno)in combination with various fine yarns like sewing thread to the left or a cotton with a stainless core. In the sample below, I wove in the cotton weft and then used nasty chemicals to burn off the cotton exterior, leaving a stainless steel/polyester thread mesh mesh.

In the next two, the yellow and red samples as well as the pale blue flowers next to it, I used weave structure to create openings: in the yellow one I basically did a version of slit tapestry to make the little holes and in the flowers, I designed the pattern on a computer in such a way as to allow the spaces where the flowers overlap to be two separate layers, and I then cut the back layer out, letting that little bit of light shine through.
These last two are actually the same weave structure, waffle weave, using two different types of yarn. The top one is a stainless steel/ merino wool blend that glints a little in the light but the bottom one is using a relective tape that in the right light, looks like aluminum foil. When not reflecting light, this little piece looks black.

I can't resist an analogy to winter, or at least Candlemas with its celebration of the crossroad between the winter solstice and the spring equinox - equal parts light and dark. There was a quote I found carved into a Fachwerk house in the German town of Celle back in 2001 when I was finishing up my thesis:

Licht und Schatten muss es geben
soll das Bild vollendet sein;
wechseln mussen drum im Leben
tiefe Nacht und Sonnenschein.

Light and Dark must coincide
to make the Picture fine;
as in life we also have
deepest Night and bright Sunshine.

Same Same But Different

2010-01-19T10:13:00.000-08:00

After several months of tedious weaving amidst stretching and breaking warp ends, I finally decided to take off what I had woven so far and see if it was worth continuing with the remaining yardage on the loom. After I washed and trimmed it, I had what you see here at the left. And the answer is yes, it was worth the effort, but no, it was not worth continuing with the #$%*! alpaca warp. So as it stands today, I am planning to pull off the gray alpaca with the hope of salvaging the yellow warp which is 50% of the warp on there, at about 3-4 yds length, and make a new second warp to tie on. Whatever, technical rambling...the long and short of it is that I like the texture and color of this new sample; the alpaca shrank at a different rate than the wool and so gives the whole piece a puckery, shabby-chic look which works great for a throw. But in looking at it hanging next to the other project I've done, I find the brown and cream one more visually interesting. If I'm doing a wall-hanging, then I think I should pursue more of a conversation between warp and weft than just straight yardage and repeat pattern. I have on my chalkboard the following: "warp carries one idea and the weft, another". I think maybe what I've discovered with this second project is that I have two products: a fine art wall-hanging and a luscious, high price-point handwoven throw. Hand-dyed colors are the first, most essential ingredient to both undertakings, underpinning my mantra: "Color, color, color, color....and everything else." There's nothing like those earth tones, in my opinion. But it's that "everything else" which is the point around which the end product turns. I can dye pretty colors and just make a yummy throw and I can artfully manipulate the dyeing in order to create a conversation between warp and weft where both do the talking and share some silences too, like in my first sample. I need to redo that one though, using one weft color and make it work right this time. What I can't do though is this:

Although I did do this:

2-0-1-0

2010-01-09T10:32:00.000-08:00

November 12. The date of my last entry. That's pathetic. But that's the holidays. I hope everyone's were merry and blessed, despite or perhaps even because of, the wintry weather and the havoc it played with us. The sudden absence of things like electricity and water pressure can quickly remind us of all that we too easily take for granted. There is nothing like the return of the sound of a flushing toilet to inspire shouts of praise and thanks.

I have been absent but not idle. You may remember the little tug-of-war I was playing with the sun, how it was flooding the light sensor on my loom and shutting it down. Well, thanks to Peggy, I now have lightfast curtains which have solved that problem. And added a not-insignificant design element to the interior of my studio as they are those Marimekko prints my dad brought me...

This allowed me to get some weaving done regardless of the position of the sun :)

I'm happy with the colorway of this edition second round of Sun Moon and Stars but working with the grey alpaca is a learning experience. It is stretchy for one thing, which means tension unevenness which is leading to some pretty consistent lifting errors which are happening naturally on the bottom layer which I can't monitor as I weave. I even had two harnesses stick together when one of the nylon heddles caught on to the hanging hook of the harness in front of it causing them to weave as one which looks real pretty :(. The stretchiness also then culminates in breakage, which is the reason for the pins you see on the face of the above sample. Oh well. I'm forging ahead because it is so beautiful anyway and I have a feeling the hand will be too delicious to matter when I take it off the loom. So it won't be perfect. The Amish had that right - leave that part to God. Right now I'm thinking of cutting it up and resewing a la patchwork quilt style. How's that for thinking outside the box?

Speaking of boxes, here was the design highlight of my Christmas morning!

Great eye, Giles.

Happy New Year, ya'll.

Everything Wode is New Again

2009-11-12T12:37:00.000-08:00

I just came across a little article in a 1996 edition of Handwoven magazine about the significance of the indigo crop in the Carolina colonies. Since "the other blue dye," woad, figures so prominently in my weaving right now, and since one of my devoted blog followers just happens to be a 16th century historian, and furthermore, since myself and this follower also just happen to hail from those very Carolinas, I thought I'd point out some of the interesting links between these seemingly disparate facts, and teach you a song in the process. Remember kindergarten? Everything really is more fun if you sing.

I knew that indigo could not be grown in the cold climate of Europe but I didn't know that woad growers there lobbied succesfully for hundreds of years to keep indigo from being imported from Asia in order to preserve their market share. According to this article, "in Nuremberg, Germany, dyers who used the 'devil pigment' indigo were sentenced to death." But by the 1700's, Europe had given up on woad and had decided to try to grow it in the New World, since a shipload of processed indigo was worth one ton of gold (!) Eliza Pinckney Lucas was a southern Carolinian colonist, daughter of a British Colonel, who was left in charge of her family's three plantations and had to find a way to make money with them. She experimented for five years with different indigo varieties and finally came up with the one that was approved by the British dyers. As a result, indigo became a major cash crop for the colonies for thirty some years. Revolutionary War trade embargoes spelled doom for this crop however, and we have had no indigenous dye crops in North America since. Maybe it's time for that to change. Indigo has a mystique and a reputation far and wide, but I think the pure sky blue of woad is divine. It is considered invasive in some U.S. states but Denise and Henri Lambert are doing incredible things with woad in France. Everything they have on in the picture below is dyed with it, even his eyeglass frames. It's amazing how the pendulum of history swings. Perhaps everything wode will indeed be new again!

Natural Dye Video

2009-11-10T12:41:00.000-08:00

Too much of a good thing

2009-10-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

Remember free lemonade? Well, I decided I wanted limeade instead so I overdyed all those tansy skeins with woad. With 4200 yards going through one dyepot, the range of green changes, as you can see, from a dark bluish green to a very geranium leaf green to a yellow-green.

Fine with me - I'm not going for consistency at this point. It will be fun to watch the hue change over the eight yards or so. This green weft is weaving with the yellow warp and right now the weft plan for the grey warp is a medium black walnut brown. With such a tight epi/ppi, the color and weave effect is such that this combination reads sort of lavender.

I still have to wind off, mordant and dye another 4300 yds for the second weft. It's a good thing too. My loom has decided I'm working it too hard (?) and needs an afternoon nap. The harnesses are lifted electronically by a signal sent to the computer from an arm passing in front of a light sensor. Well, now that the angle of light has changed for the autumn and is passing directly through all of my windows starting at about 1pm, the light sensor gets flooded with light and the harnesses won't change their lifting pattern. When the sun falls behind the ridge around 5-6pm, it wakes back up and cruises along like the well-rested machine that it is. So until Peggy gets my curtains made from the Marimekko samples, I can't weave much anyhow. I tried constructing a canopy today over the top of the loom and it worked for a little while but then stopped again. Good thing I have this blog so I can feel productive!

A Walk Through the Neighborhood

2009-10-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

When, you are undoubtedly thinking, am I going to get back to String Theory? Well believe it or not, I am still winding the same warp on. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though and should have pictures of the new project taking shape next week. Meanwhile I couldn't turn down an opportunity to take a quick trip up to Max Patch yesterday. A friend needed dropping off up there on the Appalachian Trail, which runs across the top of this bald not far from my house, so he could hike back to our door, about a two-day trek. It was chilly, with clouds blowing across the top, but exhilarating, especially to see fall finally starting to emerge. Fading goldenrod was everywhere. I loaded the pictures in high res so if you click on them you can sorta feel like you're there in the clouds...

Sierra's SunMoon&Stars

2009-09-24T13:32:00.001-07:00

When I happened upon this little 12"x12" piece while searching for a needle and thread in Amelia's sewing basket, I knew I would have to post it on my blog, seeing as how the pattern I've been weaving is called Sun Moon and Stars, after all. It was embroidered by one of my daughter's 11 year-old friends, Sierra Stanley. I have followed Sierra's artistic expressions throughout the time we have known her and I am always delighted by her work. Hopefully, there will be much more to come!

Direct from Finland

2009-09-05T09:49:00.000-07:00

I just received an exceptional gift - four 2-meter lengths of prints from the Marimekko store in Helsinki. My father was there last month for a conference and brought these back. Gorgeous, bold and big! I'm thinking giant window shades for my studio. That ought to brighten things up a bit this winter.

At water's edge....

2009-09-01T13:28:00.000-07:00

A few shots I took on the tip of Topsail Island a month or so ago...

at low tide...

at dawn....

with the wrong film speed setting..

accidents happen...which can sometimes be a good thing.

Free Lemonade

2009-08-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

STILL tying the new warps onto the old ones....I will admit to a certain amount of procrastination via dyeing weft...

Wanted more of a green and got this lemon yellow - could overdye with woad to really get a bold green or just make lemonade :) Think I'll hold off for now and live with it for a few days. It does get awful hot in here in the afternoons so maybe lemonade is just the ticket.

Black Hole or Sun Spot

2009-08-17T11:17:00.001-07:00

Sitting here, tying tiny knot after tiny knot, trying to attach the new warp to the old one, I'm measuring time through an inch-by-inch buildup of thread across the breastbeam. In other words, this is slow. This is not instant gratification - press a button and go. I do feel a pressure to be faster, make more, get on the proverbial hamster wheel and run so I can really earn a living and be "professional", but at the same time, I know that is just a black hole you can disappear into and lose yourself forever. So on good days, I surround myself with a sense of awe that I am able to have this place and time to create. And to become. Whatever that may be. August's issue of American Craft contains a great quote on page 36 which is 45 years old and speaks to that debate (albeit with exclusive pronoun use) of human against machine that the studio craft movement has always engaged in and even at times seen as its raison d'etre:

Today the craftsman is expressing for all men the dilemma of man in a mechanized civilization. He is affirming that man has prevailed not by his physical strength, but by his calculation in weakness...not because he could win, but because he could lose and not perish, because he could suffer and still not only be, but continue to be, in a state of becoming."
Amen.

Family HeirLooms

2009-08-13T07:56:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the 70's, my mother needlepointed this rocking chair seat cover. I've always admired its bargello pattern, color and handiwork. So when it came time to decide what to cover my grandmother's old rocker with, which is now in my studio, I could think of no better option than one of her daughter's personal needlepoint creations. So with a little input on color selection and repeat pattern design from her daughter, this lovely flame stitch emerged. I can't wait to get the chair redone now. Thanks Mom! A little inspiration to keep me going while I tie on my next warp...

New Moon - New Warp

2009-07-22T13:10:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the positive feedback on my first sample! Getting it off the loom and living with it for a while has given me a new appreciation for different characteristics of it which I at first wasn't so taken with. I have it draped over my loom right now and it shows it off more like a hanging, and I have had some people say it would be marketable as such - forget top of the bed. Certainly something to think about...This is a shot of the new warp I'm tying on right now - a stria of three yellows from Golden Marguerite heads. Looks like scrambled eggs. I thought it'd be faster to just tie the ends of this new warp onto the old ends of the previous warp that I left on there to hold the threading, but because of my reed pattern: 2-2-4, it's actually taking almost as much time as rethreading from scratch. I'm only putting one of the two warps on at a time so I have to separate out the dark end from the light within each dent of the reed, make sure they're not twisted, and then tie a knot. And then do it again with a dark warp. Which I've yet to finalize the color of. I wanted a natural grey to complement the yellow and am looking for a 2/20 or thereabouts but am having a hard time finding it. I guess natural wool is necessarily not consistent in color and therefore not as marketable as a retail product. I was given spool of dark grey alpaca that's half moth-eaten but I might be able to salvage some of it. I also have some natural charcoal and some natural cream/winter white. Thinking about just doing three solid warp panels with those colors for the other warp and then possibly weaving both warps with one single weft color to unify each face a little. I've gotten good feedback on that section of the last sample and it certainly saves time, to just use the fly shuttle alone. So still some things to decide for this one, but one thing is a given: I'm putting on 9 yds which will allow me to weave two complete coverlet panels longitudinally and then cut them apart and sew them together in the traditional way for a twin-sized spread. But we're talking a lot of yardage - almost 20,000 yds for the whole thing, warp and weft. Pricing ideas anyone?

SunMoonStars Success

2009-06-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

Here she is - my first sample off the new loom! I have it folded over to show off the doubleweave reversability.

I'm thrilled with it. It even puckered a little liked I'd hoped, from the pockets created between the layers.

After I cut it off the loom, I just had to lie under it to try it out:

I've washed it and I'm happy to report that the dyes didn't bleed at all, but it did soften it up a little. It also enhanced the subtleties of the dye variations, tightening up the warp and weft and blending them. You really have to see it in real life to appreciate the hand-dyed nature of it. My studio neighbor Peggy thought the reddish browns reminded her of Amelia's and my hair...

Weaving finally!

2009-05-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

After what seemed like endless, back-breaking days of threading, I'm finally weaving! I knew that starting out with such a fine, hand-dyed wool warp would be asking for trouble, but when did that ever stop me? It was one thing to thread it but another whole process to wind it on, since the threads were all stuck together, slightly felted, and required a lot of combing and pulling apart every time I wound a foot or so on. If this sett works, I'll invest in a 20 dent reed; I'm using a 15 which at 40 epi, requires a periodic dent with 4 threads and it creates havoc when a felted group pulls through a dent while winding on and then knots up in front of the harnesses :( With a 20 dent reed I would at least be separating out each thread per layer as I thread and it would avoid the harness-catching issue. I can't see how to sectional warp it though, as long as I am section-dying the warp, so that part may have to just be tolerated. If anyone has any advice, I'm open to it! The good news though is that the weaving is quite fast, now that I've got the automatic cloth advance right and am getting the hang of the fly shuttle. In fact, I had to spend the last two days dyeing more weft as I had already used up what I had. Fortunately, I had frozen enough black walnut and goldenrod for that purpose. I'm wanting to get to that middle section where the face colors will switch and what is showing up cream will change ikat-like to brown and vice versa. I haven't exactly decided what to do with the weft yet in that transition area...go all to one solid color for a while or switch right off? I'm going to figure it out as I go...More fun that way. Right now I have to satisfy myself with those nifty little pocket areas that are forming between the double-woven layers. I'm curious to see how noticeable that will be when I take it off the loom. I was hoping for a little bit of a quilted, puckered look.

You may notice the blue and gray coverlet hanging on my four-harness loom in the background. That is on loan from my gracious studio neighbor, Peggy. It is a family heirloom, late 1800's. It's an overshot structure, and the fine sett of the linen tabby puts my 40 epi to shame. It's quite evident by looking at this why often only one coverlet was woven per household per year, if that. Thank you Peggy. I'm honored to have this full-sized coverlet in my studio to show off and learn from.

Moon Musings

2009-04-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

First, a note of thanks to all who have read, are following and/or commenting on this blog. Bear with me as I get over the learning curve of having a web presence. I'll try to get better at responding to specific comments. Speaking of curves...As I procrastinate from the dreaded threading of the loom (I am making slow, painful progress), I am thinking about - the circle. In looking at the beautiful work of a commenter on my previous post (see Spirit Cloth), I found myself drawn to her recent embroidering of a circle on a nine-patch square, and it reminded me of how much mystique this shape holds for me. It's a powerful symbol (and more - did you sleep through the almost full moon last night?) but it specifically has meaning for me as a weaver because of its capacity to confound the grid that is inherent to weaving - warp perpendicular to weft. I've woven circles before - the above left is something I designed and wove in grad school on the very same type of loom that I'm threading right now. Interestingly, it literally depicts circles within a grid. The Sun Moon and Stars pattern that I am setting up to weave now in a third iteration is certainly attractive to me because of its central circle motif. Circles made out of squares - something to aspire to or not? Is it maybe an attempt instead to confine the eternal? On that note, happy Passover and Easter.

Das Loom ist Werking!!!

2009-03-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

Yes it's true, and I am as giddy as Sesame Street's The Count with new bats or spiderwebs or something to count. Either that or the ghost of this Frankensteinian loom has entered my soul and caused some weird short circuiting. It's pretty strange to see all these wires coming out of a beautiful maple handloom going to a little laptop. I am hopeful that my elation will last long enough to mask the dreary work of threading the 1200 warp threads that now have to go on. I should sic the Count on that one! But seriously, it turns out I had to have one particular brand of serial to USB adapter for the loom and computer to talk, and then after achieving that, I realized that I or my handy dandy loom tech had put on a rather small but crucial part backwards. A few screwdrivers later, all was well. Weaveward ho!

b(log)

2009-03-12T14:41:00.001-07:00

Well so far it's been a few weeks of frustration as I try to get this loom up and running. I have the right software; I even have a design ready to weave. I spent the last five days in search of the right cable/adapter configuration to allow the loom and computer to talk and today seem to have hit on one that at least makes the computer happy. For all you techies, this means that I had to adapt a serial port to a USB. The computer sees the loom now and wants to weave and is sending lots of info (indicated by madly flickering little lights on the adapter) but the loom, which ironically was the first computer, is just sitting there like a Luddite on a log :). No solenoids are firing, in other words, to lift harnesses. I have complete faith in the loom company support desk, whose prompt response to my distressed e-mails are at least keeping me from throwing the whole thing out the window into the river, where it could become a literal log in the beaver dam. What was that last line in Gone With the Wind? Tomorrow is another day.

4 x 6 = 24

2009-02-19T12:19:00.000-08:00

Last October, my obsession with double weave led me to purchase an AVL 24-harness dobby loom from a graduate school friend, who, like me, is a victim of the textile industry brain drain brought to you by global capitalism, lack of proper labor laws and eight years of @&$%^!@&$^%*$$$$$$. Just a little venting. Anyway, this acquisition increased my harness potential (woo hoo) by a factor of six, finally allowing me to weave my sun, moon and stars pattern in 16-harness double weave. Trust me, this will be the coverlet that you are all waiting for with baited breath. As I unloaded the loom parts onto the floor of my studio at the time, I realized that I was going to need more square footage to set the behometh up. So I headed on over to Marshall, to the recently renovated old Marshall High School and got me a little nugget of floor space between to tynes in the fork of the French Broad. I pinch myself daily to remind myself how lucky I am. That is until I start threading the 1200+ warp ends for this new sample...

Is it Live or is it Technicolor?

2009-02-19T11:21:00.000-08:00

Here's a good sample of the colors I've gotten out of my dye garden or off the side of my hill, from left to right: Goldenrod (pale yellow), Curly Tansy (next two greens), Golden Marguerite leaves aka Dyer's Chamomile (yellow-green), more Goldenrod, Purple Basil (tan), Black-Eyed Susan overdyed with Marigold and Dyer's Coreopsis (warmer tan), Woad (blue), Golden Marg. overdyed with Marigold and pushed a little with baking soda (bright gold), Golden Marg. flower heads (daffodil yellow), Dyer's Coreopsis nudged with baking soda (orange), more Dyer's Coreopsis with Marigold and baking soda (less brilliant orange), Dyer's Coreopsis only (flesh), Yellow Bedstraw roots (brick orange), Black Walnut hulls on wool (rich brown) and on silk (greyer brown). So color range isn't a problem but quantity would be, especially for a whole coverlet. Talk about planning ahead - Goldenrod blooms in September and October and can't be used dried. If I want to use it to dye yarn for a piece anytime during the subsequent ten months, I better boil up and freeze enough during that two-month window when it's blooming. Fortunately, a little Goldenrod goes a long way. Many plants aren't as generous. These are some of the the things I'm figuring out right now through trial and error. I do want to use naturally dyed yarn whenever possible - I'm not concerned at this point about matching dye lots. But it will take quite a bit of planning to do this. It's starting to make sense to me why the old coverlets were often woven in two colors - undyed natural and something else like indigo or madder. Who had the time?

Sun, Moon and Stars

2009-02-19T10:39:00.001-08:00

Just like quilts, coverlets come in a myriad of patterns, often dictated by their weave structure. Some motifs, however, became so popular that people figured out how to reproduce them in different structures. One such pattern is the chariot wheel or sun, moon and stars, shown in the blue and white sample of the post below. It has a central round motif with a checked square in the middle (the "sun") alternating with a checked square of the same size without a circle (the "moon"), all surrounded by 8 little squares (the "stars"). This little sample was my first attempt at weaving an overshot coverlet structure. I won't explain overshot unless somebody asks me too but suffice it to say, it was a structure I could weave on my four-harness loom. I then varied it a bit (transposed it from overshot on opposite harnesses to overshot on adjacent harnesses) and wove it as a sample blanket out of yarn that I dyed from plants I grew at home (pictured above). A huge difference! I plan to do a full-sized coverlet in this more subtle style - I like how the color balances the pattern and I'm noticing that people respond to this sample more than the other one. Maybe it looks more like yardage or it doesn't scream "coverlet!" And that's my goal, to somehow develop a line of coverlets that take their cue from tradition but ultimately speak to my own more contemporary color sensibility and desire to slightly subvert the predictable. What that will ultimately look like is still a mystery...

What are Coverlets?

2009-02-14T12:41:00.000-08:00

Coverlets inhabit the same pioneer folk niche that quilts do in that they provided the utilitarian need for warmth as well as a creative outlet and aesthetic breath of fresh air to a domestic world often devoid of such luxuries. But while quilts were created from existing scraps of fabric with the relatively common skill of handsewing, the 19th and early 20th century coverlets of the Appalachian region were woven individually on looms often built by hand locally, in patterns passed down in cryptic shorthand and from flax and wool produced and dyed on site. In short, producing even one coverlet required a very specific and highly technical range of skills. That such examples of this region’s folk heritage exist at all is a testament to the extraordinary resourcefulness and creative energy of the people who produced them. Few people realize that Madison County coverlets are largely responsible for the existence of The Southern Highland Craft Guild. Here's one good example of the type of coverlet that might have been woven around here. These, however, were woven on jacquard looms and are more pictorial than what would have been possible to weave on a simple handloom. But the colors - reds, blues, naturals - are good examples of the natural dyes of madder and indigo which were commonly used. By the way, don't think I don't love quilts too.

The Big Bang...

2009-02-14T12:08:00.000-08:00

My interest in weaving first got piqued when I read about the Bauhaus weaving workshop in Germany in the early part of the 1900s (see 'In Memory of the Bauhaus Women Textile Weavers' (Zen Abstraction #10). Growing up I had a misconception of weaving as a homey, old-fashioned sort of thing that any self-respecting feminist wouldn’t go near. Well, looking at tapestries woven by Gunta Stölzl and Anni Albers soon put me in my place and after my first sampler in an introductory weaving course, I delved into double-weave, a construction that weaves two complete layers at once. About five years later I found myself in graduate school, weaving with fiber optic cable on a hand-controlled jacquard loom (above photo), and writing a thesis on the problem of getting light through fabric. During my three years designing for the textile and furniture industries, I discovered a book in the design library of the studio where I worked called The Book of Handwoven Coverlets by Eliza Calvert Hall. Hall's passion for the homey, old-fashioned Appalachian folk coverlet connected with my own interest in the region, and suddenly there was nothing I wanted to do more than to explore that field of structures.