Anne Jackson Knotting Workshop

Back in April 2011, Anne Jackson came to the American Textile History Museum to present a lecture about her work.

I knew that TWiNE (Tapestry Weavers in New England) members were fascinated by her tapestries and curious about her knotting technique, so I convinced Anne to present a day long workshop the day before the lecture.

Anne Jackson: Witch Hunt Maleficium (in memorium)

We met at the museum, in their lovely education room.  I supplied all of the materials, which are pretty simple. All you need is a piece of Sound Board (“Tentest” in UK), some T-pins or large sewing pins, and some yarn. The yarn should be smooth, and can be cotton, rayon, linen or a blend of thin threads.

(Right: Anne Jackson, Leaving Eden, detail)

We spent the morning learning the technique, then in the afternoon Anne presented a slide talk about Creativity, Sources of Inspiration and Working Practices. Some  of the participants shared images and comments on these topics as well, and it was really inspiring.

In my first knotting effort (below), you can see that we started off using a heavy cotton, and we used it with both warp and weft doubled.

So the knots at the top (the left in this image) are very big.  Then I used the same yarn (Lily “Sugar and Cream,” a good weight for both warp and weft for learning), only not doubled. When I got home I thought it would be simple to make a sampler like my tapestry students: Squares, Triangles, Curves….it turned out to be more challenging than I expected.

I tried color blending, using combinations of thin cotton, and played with dropping warps to create triangular shapes at the end. This is a great technique for making shaped pieces.

I have found knotting to be totally addictive.

For a few weeks, every time I went into the studio to weave, I found myself pulled away from the loom. It’s really fun to just play with something new, to see what it can do.  

I made myself some smaller boards for travel, and then realized that, unlike tapestry, it is very simple to just remove an unfinished piece from the board, fold it up until later, and pin another one onto the same board.

So with one board, a small box of pins, and some yarn, you can work on many pieces simultaneously….that may or may not be a good thing for me, I don’t need encouragement to start new projects before finishing the old ones.

By the way, the sound board is very cheap, but I had to buy it at a real, old fashioned lumberyard. Neither Lowes nor Home Depot had even heard of it. It also sheds, and makes a big mess, so after the workshop I painted my boards them with 2 or 3 coats of white latex house paint (including all the edges). If you were really enterprising you could mark a grid on it too.

Even with a cartoon pinned underneath, I have found it difficult to make well defined shapes, especially vertical lines.

So I’ve been playing with simple stripes.  For the piece above I used a space dyed microfiber knitting yarn. LOTS of fun!  (3x6”)

It looks really cool on the back side too.

My latest project is TINY, only 1.5 inches wide. I’m using a linen warp, which I really like. It behaves very nicely, and since the warps are loose, there are none of the tension problems I have using linen warp on a floor loom.

Although I understand how to do the knotting, I still can’t figure out how Anne achieves such perfect shapes and so much detail in her large knotted tapestries.

I guess it’s the same way you get to Carnegie Hall:

Practice, practice, practice.

 

Technorati Tags: Tapestry,Knotted Tapestry,Anne Jackson,Knotting

Last Day in Taos

Despite the high winds and dust, I decided I had to see the famous Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, which is only 10 miles from Taos.

There is a small parking lot next to the bridge, but it was impossible to see much from there, and I saw somebody walking across the bridge to take a photo. 

Off I went, with my fear of heights, and having the feeling I might blow overboard.

I’m sure I looked foolish clinging to the railing all the way. I’m glad I didn’t know it at the time, but I heard later that the gusts were up to 60 miles per hour!

The sun came out, and those amazing New Mexico clouds appeared. 

As I drove back towards Taos I had to keep stopping to get photos of the clouds, the mountains, the trees. Even the dust! I stopped to visit Taos Pueblo, a World Heritage Site and National Historic Landmark. Some of the adobe buildings are 1000 years old, and they are still inhabited.

The north and south villages are on either side of Red Willow Creek, which flows from the tribe’s sacred Blue Lake in the Sangre de Cristo Range.

I had a lovely tour from a young woman who told me all about the history of the church and the Pueblo Revolt. 

We stayed inside the San Geronimo Chapel, to avoid the dust blowing around outside. Photos are not allowed inside the chapel, but it was very beautiful with wonderful stained glass windows.  

She explained that the river comes from Blue Lake, which is not only the source of their drinking water, but of the people themselves.

The lake and the land around it was taken by President Theodore Roosevelt as part of the National Park system in 1906, but was given back by Richard Nixon in 1970.

I wandered around, taking lots and lots of photos, accompanied by an adolescent dog who seemed to think I needed an escort.

I entered a tiny shop where the proprietor greeted me with wet clay on her hands.

She was making Grandmother Storyteller figures, which is just so serendipitous, since I already owned 2. Obviously I was supposed to buy another one. Then I saw the minis, so now I have 4! Here are the 2 that I bought at Taos Pueblo. The artist wrote her name on a card for me, but I lost it, sad to say.

These figures take me back to the times when I would read aloud to my children in the library, and suddenly realize I had acquired about a dozen more kids!

It was a beautiful day, and an inspiring place.

NOTE: You can click on any photo to see a larger version.

Taos Fine Art

On my last day in Taos, I woke up to a cloudy day, with high winds. I’ve never seen dust flying around like that before, and I was so tickled to see actual Tumbleweeds tumbling across the road!

My first order of business was to visit Taos Fine Art, just a block from the Taos Inn. I was lured in by the rugs in the windows, but once inside I found another treasure: Prints by Gene Kloss, (1903-1996) a renowned printmaker who lived and worked in Taos from 1925 to 1996. Her work is in many important collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian.  I fell in love with her drypoint etchings, particularly those that are inspired by Pueblo culture.

Gene Kloss, Corn Husking – Taos Pueblo, 1960

I was also quite taken with the color woodcuts of Gustave Baumann, (1881-1971). When I was getting my MFA in painting, I did an independent study in color woodcuts. It’s a medium that I’m familiar with, but I don’t see them very often.  Gustave Baumann, Taos Placita, 1947.

I got chatting with the owner, and he offered to show me some very rare antique Navajo rugs. One was an exquisite child’s rug, mostly white and including designs made with white wool against white silk (unraveled from French underwear!). The other was the “Spider Blanket” in the picture below. Both rugs were beautifully woven, with very fine yarns.

According to Anthony Sobin, this rug was collected by J.K. Moore ca. 1865.  “He had been in the Civil War and, when mustered out, made his way to Wyoming.  He made a living by bringing salted Bison meat and skins (which were still relatively plentiful on the high plains), to the Four Corners area and would trade them for blankets and other items produced by the Pueblo/Apache/Navajo peoples which he would then trade back to the Blackfeet, Crow and Lakota people for more bison.”

“He understood that this blanket was something special and rather than trading it, he wrote his name on it and kept it until his death, after which it found its way to us in the 21st Century through descent.
It is impossible to say for sure what the intention of this textile was but it is highly likely that it was ceremonial.  The presence of the small eight-legged "spider woman" crosses is not unusual but when combined with the major design element which is itself a huge, highly abstract spider, it becomes likely that is was a homage to Spider Woman, the mystical being who taught the Navajo to weave.”

“Two other such ‘spider blankets’ have survived and all three textiles use the same secondary colors, (golden yellow and sage green) in addition to the standard red and indigo colors of classic period Navajo weaving.  This is undoubted a woman's wearing blanket because of its size. It is a good educated guess that such blankets were viewed by their makers and their users as power objects--likely specifically for weavers because of the Spider Woman imagery.” 

“When worn, the legs of the spider would envelop the wearer and if she were a weaver, would prepare her for the challenge of her next blanket and would hopefully imbue her with the power and skills of Spider Woman herself through the medium of the blanket.”

“The blue-dyed hand-spun wool is from from indigo obtained through French traders. The two reds were obtained by unraveling English/Scots red trade cloth known as Bayeta which used natural reds obtained from lac and cochineal from Mexico by way of Spain-- (the darker, browner red at the top of the blanket was dyed with lac--the lighter, bluer red in the lower part of the textile came from cochineal). The ivory is natural, home-spun Navajo wool.  The gold and green were raveled single-ply commercial yarns from undetermined European sources. It was probably woven close to the date of 1860, when the art of Navajo weaving was at its highest point. It was created by a master weaver and is an example of the very best extant Native American textile art which anticipated the optical and highly abstract forms of the mid-20th Century art of the Modern period in Europe and America.”

For more about these rugs and prints, check out Taos Fine Art.

Technorati Tags: Navajo Rugs,Gene Kloss,Gustave Baumann,Taos Fine Art

Northern New Mexico Studio Tour

In conjunction with Small Tapestry International 2: Passages, the American Tapestry Alliance organized a Northern New Mexico Studio Tour on Saturday, April 2. We had a mini-bus with local tapestry artist and blogger Rebecca Mezoff as our guide, and a very pleasant and reassuring driver, who ferried us to four studios in the area.The first stop was Metier Gallery, in Dixon, where we saw all kinds of handwoven items, from rugs and tapestries, to baskets and delicious wearables. Next was Centinela Traditional Arts, in Chimayo, which is owned by the renowned Rio Grande weavers, Irvin and Lisa Trujillo.

Jeane George Weigel wrote two wonderful and thoroughly researched stories about them, with photos and video, on her blog High Road Artist. After you read about Irvin, read part 1, about Lisa here.Both Irvin and Lisa weave gorgeous tapestries and rugs and have won many honors and awards. They also operate a business that sells their own work and that of other local weavers to collectors around the world, enabling many weavers to earn a living.

Lisa showed us how quickly she can weave a large Saltillo rug, standing at the old loom that Irvin’s father built.

Then we watched Irvin weave on the 12 foot wide loom he designed and built himself.  Very impressive and inspiring.

I’m intrigued by the standing looms. I suspect they may be better for the body than sitting all day long.

A fabric weaver friend was diagnosed with a case of Weaver’s Bottom (really!), and standing would certainly prevent that! I don’t know if it’s hard on the feet or any other body parts…. 

We had lunch at the famous Rancho de Chimayo, where we enjoyed comparing the amount of heat in the red sauce vs the green.  I thought the red was a bit hotter, but both were pretty mild.

Then on to Ortegas Weaving Shop, also in Chimayo. This spacious shop has huge piles of rugs from small mug rugs and placemats, to large floor rugs, all with simple traditional designs.

I think the delicate white lines in this piece are called jaspe, but I can’t find any confirmation of that. Please let me know if I’m wrong. Ortega’s also sells clothing made from the handwoven wool fabric.  The last studio we visited was the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center, a cooperative gallery and educational facility.

You can buy all kinds of fiber art there, as well as materials and equipment. 

I was delighted to find some of the lovely white wool warp (Clasgens) that I’d seen Lisa Trujillo using. It’s thinner than any other wool tapestry warp I’ve used before, and I think it will work at 10 epi. I can’t wait to try it out!

We used one of the rooms at EVFAC for a slide show of work by Rebecca Mezoff and Cornelia Theimer Gardella  (Connie).

The slide show included images from  Interwoven Traditions: New Mexico and Bauhaus, a collaboration between Rebecca, Connie, and James Koehler. The exhibit traveled from a modern Albuquerque gallery to a small church, in the medieval town of Erfurt, Germany, last summer and fall. Such beautiful work.

After the slide show, Connie showed us some actual tapestries, and dye samples (left). We were all impressed with Connie’s perfect tapestry circle, which, as any  tapestry weaver can tell you, is very difficult to achieve.

My photo was taken from a strange angle as the tapestry is fairly large, and it was lying on a table, but you can still see how smoothly the curves are woven.

It was a wonderful day, and in addition to visiting the studios, we had the excellent company of our fellow tapestry artists. It was fun catching up with old friends and getting acquainted with new. We arrived back at the hotel with about a half hour to clean up and walk across the street for the opening reception at Weaving Southwest.

Technorati Tags: tapestry weaving,New Mexico weaving,Rio Grande weaving

Small Tapestry International 2: Passages

When I entered this show, and saw that the first venue was Weaving Southwest, in Taos, NM, I told myself “If I get in, I’m going to the opening.”   I did, so I did!I arrived in New Mexico last Thursday, and spent the weekend basking in the dry, sunny, and at times quite warm weather. Aaaahhh. . . After this horrible winter, and the cold rainy spring so far, it was quite a relief.

I stayed at the Historic Taos Inn, a lovely un-hotel-like place, and right across the street from Weaving Southwest. Did I mention that I love Weaving Southwest? and Taos? Now I love the Taos Inn too.  I spent most of Friday wandering around Taos looking for a necklace or earrings to match the red border of my tapestry, and luckily I found both! I like to dress to match my tapestries when I attend opening receptions, just in case someone takes my picture in front of my tapestry; wouldn’t want to clash! 

I had lunch with fellow tapestry blogger, Kathy Spoering, who was in town to review the show.

Then I attended an Arlo Guthrie concert at the little auditorium right next door to the Taos Inn. Awesome concert, by the way, he’s an amazing performer.The opening reception was quite well attended, and I’m sorry I didn’t take enough photos, but I was buy schmoozing.  You can see all of the tapestries in the very reasonably priced catalog, or visit the exhibit either in Taos, or at one of the 2 other venues:

Handforth Gallery, Tacoma, WA   June 1 - July 2, 2011

The Cultural Center at Glen Allen, VA   Sept 15 - Oct 30, 2011

The exhibit is sponsored by the American Tapestry Alliance. Kay Lawrence, the Director of the South Australian School of Art, was the juror, and the show includes 47 tapestries by 41 artists.

My tapestry is the latest in my Chaos series.

I have a hard time remembering which of the Chaotic Fragments are Parts 1,2,3 and 4, so I decided to give this one has its own name: “Turning From Chaos.”  It’s 10 x 10 inches.

Technorati Tags: Tapestry Weaving,Weaving Southwest,Tapestry Exhibits,Small Tapestry International