ATB8 Opens at ATHM

Lots of acronyms there! The American Tapestry Biennial 8 opened at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, MA on Thursday evening. It was a lovely reception, lots of artists, staff and other guests. I was relieved that the weather cooperated and I didn’t get lost.

It was great to see old friends from near and far, and to meet a new friend too. Marie-thumette Brichard came all the way from France. Her piece is beautiful and SO BLUE, and the way it’s displayed at ATHM makes it glow and makes you feel you are falling into the blue waves. Spectacular. Here it is at the previous venue, it’s the blue one in the middle. You have to see the real tapestry to get the feeling. It is 57.5 x 76.5

Kathy Spoering came all the way from Colorado, and her husband took some photos of the two of us with our tapestries. Mine is above and hers is below, and is titled “January.” It’s part of a series she is doing of each month. It looks an awful lot like those tree shadows on the snow in my front yard, but in fact, it’s HER front yard!

You can see that the walls are painted to compliment the tapestries which looks really great. They did an excellent job hanging the show, the groupings are very good, and I like the galleries, which are big enough that each tapestry has enough space, and yet small enough to feel intimate.

For once I did not take any photos of the exhibit, just enjoyed looking and chatting.

My daughter came along and it was great to share the occasion with her, and get her reactions to the work, since she’s quite an accomplished artist herself. This is a detail from a collage she did back in high school. You can click on it to see it larger.

Technorati Tags: American Tapestry Biennial 8,American Textile History Museum,Tapestry,Tapestry Weaving,Fiber Art

Dazzled by the Snow

It snowed a few inches last Saturday, then another 11 on Wednesday. I can barely  make it through a day without taking photos.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve been weaving in black and white, but today when I went for a walk in Goddard Park, I kept having to take off my gloves, fish my camera out of my pocket and take some more pictures! I guess I need to hang it around my neck!

I’m thinking of a series of tapestries of very simple tree images. I was thinking of it even before the snow.

What I really mean is the spaces between the trees. If woven sideways, trees make perfect sense to weave, which would be new for me. I usually weave things that don’t make any sense at all, and I’m getting a bit tired of all that struggling!

Sometimes the trees are dark and the background is snowy white. Other times the trees are white and the background is dark. And I love the sun and shadows on the snow.

Sadly, the camera that has served me so well the past 4 years bit the dust. It traveled to Europe on our sabbatical in 2009, where it took thousands of photos. Somehow it got moisture inside the lens, and for what it would cost to get it repaired, it made more sense to buy another one.

At least I was smart enough to buy a new one that uses the same batteries, so I can use the 2 spares I already have. There was  a sale on, but they had run out of silver, and I didn’t want black because it’s too easy to lose, so I chose this bright pink color.

On the plus side, it’s 14 megapixels (although why would I need that when I mostly save them as small files for the web?) and has the image stabilization that the old one lacked.

Ring out the old Diary, ring in the new….

On New Years Day we had an impromptu “cutting off” ceremony for my Tapestry Diary. I have been weaving a small parallelogram every day since January 1, 2010, except when I’m away from home. At those times, I would weave all those “days” after I got home. Most days were simple, sometimes I just wove a color I felt like weaving, but on other days it seemed appropriate to weave something special. I have a small notebook that identifies those special days, like a birthday, my Mom’s memorial service, or this day when my grand niece Ruby visited from afar.  

Every month has a color scheme. Below is September into October.

This choice, as well as the choice of what to weave each day, was not something I gave much thought to…these decisions were quite spontaneous. I realized after a while that this project was really about the process and not the product. 

Each day I would sit at the loom and weave what I felt like weaving; at the end of a month I’d think about what colors I felt like using for the next month. I didn’t worry too much what each day looked like, after all, it was only one out of 365! Every  inch is a week, so the width of the tapestry has 7 parallelograms, always beginning with a Friday (because January 1 was a Friday). At the end, I had ONE day left to weave, so I wove an entire line that day, including my signature, the year and the words Tapestry Diary.

So back to the cutting off ceremony, my husband was a little perplexed to be intercepted on the way to his woodworking shop…and to suddenly find himself performing this (not so) solemn ritual, all properly documented with a camera.

The back side looked like a rya rug, I have spent some time trimming all those ends, but have not hemmed it yet. I also cleaned up the mess around the loom.

This project was woven with left over yarns from my Thrum Bag, which is still quite overstuffed. I actually threw away some of the short pieces that were lying around in my yarn basket and on the floor. I feel so virtuous.

I have started my 2011 Sketch Diary. It will consist of large pieces of paper, made into a grid. Every piece of paper, which has 20 days, will have a theme, and maybe a medium….so far, I am drawing moon snail shells and using a china marker. I expect to use this, as with the tapestry diary, to try out different approaches and techniques.

It’s very exciting because although I don’t know exactly what I will sketch, or how, I know that it will be an adventure, and a learning experience, just like the tapestry diary.

 

The last few days of October, and all of November and December.

Sol Lewitt Retrospective

I have always wanted to visit the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and finally I did it in November. During the ATA tapestry workshop in July, James Koehler mentioned Sol Lewitt’s Wall Drawings, which struck me as relevant to my plan for a 2011 Drawing Diary. Then in August I had a visit from my dear friend and former college roommate Abby, who lives in Bennington, Vermont, just a short drive from Mass MoCA. We have been trying to set up a meeting for a long time and this seemed like the perfect outing. As another coincidence Micala Sidore mentioned she wanted to see this show too, so now we were three! 
Mass MoCA is on a 13 acre historic mill complex in North Adams, a small city in Western Massachusetts. During the colonial period this area was home to numerous businesses including shoe manufacturers, a brick yard, a saw mill, hat manufacturers, marble works and more.
Arnold Print Works occupied the site from 1860-1942, at one time supplying fabric for the union army. They employed 32,000 workers in the early 20th century but in 1942 the effects of the Great Depression and the falling price of fabric forced them to move to a much smaller facility. Sprague Electric bought the site and turned it into an electronics plant that made components for weapons and the space program.
After Sprague closed in 1985, the town was looking for a way to use the property, and Thomas Krens, the director of the nearby Williams College Museum of Art was looking for an exhibit space for large contemporary art. With support from the Massachusetts legislature, the community and the private sector, the museum opened in 1999. You can see beautiful photos of the renovation by Nicholas Whitman.
I love the building. The renovation preserved the feel of a working mill building. The brick walls have stories to tell, like the one above that shows evidence of an old staircase. I was as intrigued by the walls as I was by the artwork.

The Sol Lewitt Retrospective is in a 27,000 square foot building which was restored specifically for this exhibition. It took 6 months and 65 artists to complete the installation of 105 wall drawings. The artists included 22 assistants who had worked with Lewitt, 33 student interns from Yale, Williams, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and other colleges, and 13 local artists.
The Yale University Art Gallery owns some wall drawings, and the entire wall drawing archive (donated by the artist), and their director Jock Reynolds, collaborated with Lewitt to plan the retrospective, and with Mass MoCA and Williams College Museum of Art to create it. Lewitt  made some new works for it before his death in April 2007. Since the exhibit opened in 2008, I assume Lewitt did not get to see it, which is very sad. This is the first time the wall drawings have been gathered in a group, in the past you had to see them one at a time in far flung galleries. 
I was not sure what to expect; Lewitt was a leader in the field of Conceptual art, a movement with which my art school professors were quite enamored back in the 1970s.
It never did much for me, obviously, or I would not have turned to tapestry weaving!
Lewitt believed that the idea was the real work of art, and that the execution of the art could be performed by others, which makes perfect sense given the history of tapestry weaving.
In this case, each wall drawing consists of a set of detailed instructions. For example, the left side of this photo shows Wall Drawing 46, and the instructions read
“Vertical lines, not straight, not touching, covering the wall evenly.”
The materials range from pencil and chalk, to transparent ink washes, to glossy enamel paint, and cover the years from 1969-2007.
I had a great time taking photos of these.
They are all very large, and cover the walls completely, so there were many places where I could see 2 or more at the same time, and taking a step to one side would change the view radically. These drawings were made with translucent colored ink washes, giving an unusual matte finish that makes the colors glow, almost like wools in a tapestry.
In other cases, with the glossy drawings (executed in acrylic paint) reflections of another drawing seem to add a three dimensionality to the work.  This is 821, alternating glossy with matte bands of black.
Wall Drawing 901 consists of colored bands and a black blob.
The blob is glossy, and has the same properties of reflection as 821.
I  wonder whether Lewitt considered this possibility, given that most of the wall paintings were not in groups.
Below is Wall Drawing 880, “Loopy Doopy.” I found it painful to look at because of the intense contrast of the orange and green. Apparently the painters did too. They executed this by taping the wall, so they never saw both colors together until it was almost finished. Then when they did the final touch up they discovered the dizzying effect of the contrast.
I didn’t notice the effect of the sunlight on the walls until I looked through the camera. It almost looks like the wall is glowing from within.
On the right is a photo of 2 different drawings, on walls that are at 90 degrees. The composition of this photo would be something else if I took a step to one side of the other.
The catalog, “Sol Lewitt: 100 Views” can be purchased here. You can also see all of the works on the web here and some time lapse photos of their creation.
Because of the size, you really have to see them in person.
The exhibit will be at Mass MoCA for 25 years, so you have plenty of time to get there!
For more about Sol Lewitt, check out the Artsy Sol Lewitt page here

Technorati Tags: Sol Lewitt,Mass MoCA

2010 Tapestry Diary

is almost done! I had a little scare when I saw how little warp I have left, but it will be enough….whew, just barely enough, but enough. My one inch weeks were expanding into 1.5 inch weeks, but now I’m being very careful to keep them to an inch or less. September was just obviously blue and yellow, I don’t know why but that was clear to me right away. I made October all shades of red, yellow and orange, for the fall foliage and because it just seemed like it was about time I used colors like that. November is brown, orange and white, and I’ll decide on December when it comes up. One thing I love about this project is that I can play it by ear like this, no thinking ahead.

In addition to colors, I have also been choosing images to weave, like in September I wove a lot of spirals, in October leaves, and in November I’m doing tree branches. Of course I continue to include special occasions.

The yellow hills are from my trip to California.

As much as I’ve enjoyed this, I have decided not to do it again in 2011. I have learned so much, using the diary to try out new ideas, and techniques. There is really no worry about the final product because every day I weave just that one parallelogram, which is just one 365th of the tapestry!

Next year I plan to do a drawing diary, but instead of doing a separate drawing for each day, I want it to be like the tapestry where each day’s drawing is just part of a larger whole. So I will probably take a large piece of paper and make a grid. I will also choose a topic for each month, like, for example, Moon Snails. I might also choose a medium for each month, like a colored pencil, or pen and ink, or graphite pencils or china marker.

I hope to learn as much from my 2011 drawing diary as I have from this 2010 tapestry diary.