I love viewing tapestries in person. I can get a close look at how they were constructed and if I’m lucky enough to be at an opening where the artist is present, I can ask them to show me the back along with peppering them with questions about their work. The small format unjuried tapestry show that the American Tapestry Alliance (ATA) holds every two years is one of my favorite shows because it is full of surprises. There are usually hundreds of tapestries and if I can see them in person, I can have a grand time seeing other people’s ideas and techniques not to mention imagery and color use.
The American Tapestry Alliance’s Unjuried Small Format show (this year called Renditions 2020) deadline is fast approaching. I’ve been getting increasing numbers of people asking me how to resize photos, so I’ve made a quick set of videos to help you with that.
The American Tapestry Alliance (ATA) puts on an unjuried small format show every two years. It is always displayed alongside the Handweavers Guild of America’s big event, Convergence. In 2020, Convergence will be in Knoxville.
ATA has announced this year’s show. The title is Renditions 2020 and all the information about it can be found HERE.
This is my favorite ATA show just because the diversity of submissions is so outstanding. It is a really fun show to see in person, so make sure if you’re at Convergence in Knoxville in the summer of 2020 that you go and see it! And if you live close enough, it is worth the drive to see this show. You can see some photos I took of the show in Providence, RI in 2016 in THIS blog post.
The postcard I wove for the Here and There project did make it to Michigan. I wrote about the adventures of making it HERE.
I love sending real mail. Cards or letters with stamps on them and maybe some artwork. Perhaps tapestry postcards are something I’ll do again.
Here and There online exhibit
The postcard exchange was through the American Tapestry Alliance and you can see the whole online show on the ATA website HERE.
Dorothy Clews (hopefully with a team of helpers!) did a tremendous amount of work to make this postcard exchange happen. In her curators intro she talked about subverting the postal system by sending these pieces of art naked through the mail—sometimes around the world.
The title of my postcard is Waypoints. I’m including photographs here because I don’t think they’re going to make it into the ATA show which is quite disappointing actually… but entirely my fault.
I started this piece forever ago. With the intention of actually finishing it of course. I was planning ahead, sure I’d get it finished and mailed before the end of the summer, determined not to be the last person in the show to mail their card. Partway in I had an idea I liked better for the theme but I was lucky to get this one done, so the new design will have to wait.
I determined, mostly from photographs I took likely with this very blogpost in mind, that my original intention was to finish this piece that is on my biggest copper pipe loom before starting the postcard for the ATA exchange. I do remember looking at this piece, thinking that I didn’t much want to cut it off but neither did I want to finish it (because I still can’t, after a couple years, decide how to do that), so instead I went to the garage and…
I just received my catalog for the American Tapestry Alliance small format juried show Small Tapestry International 5: Crossroads. What a lovely show. I am tempted to take a road trip when it is near Dallas.
This post includes some images from the catalog and a statement from the juror. She challenges us to think about tapestry's place in the world and directions we could take this art form. Do you agree with her?
A painter can add a bit more red to her blue and make the
purple she wants. A tapestry weaver has no such luxury. We either need to dye
another color or use tapestry techniques to make the colors of our yarns blend optically.
One of the easiest color blending techniques is irregular
hatching. Let's look at how we create this effect.
Most contemporary tapestry weavers use a method of weaving
often called meet and separate, though I've had many students call it "meet and greet". This means that adjacent yarn butterflies or
bobbins are moving toward or away from each other. It looks like this:
I find that this little graphic can be rather helpful for people to remember how this works.
Understanding meet and separate is essential to blending colors using irregular hatching. Let's talk more about meet and separate in a short video. (Remember that if you get my blog posts via email, you will have to go to my blog on the internet HERE or on YouTube to view this video.)
Once you understand how meet and separate works, it is a
short jump to understanding irregular hatching.
Meet and separate can be used with butterflies of the same
color. If two different colors are hatched together using the meet and separate
technique, irregular hatching is the result.
Much of what I achieve with color gradation in my own work
is done with irregular hatching. For example, in this piece, Emergence VII, all
the darker shading in the teal band is done this way.
Using irregular hatching is a great way to change colors horizontally across your warp. In the section where the two colors are overlapping or hatching together, you'll create a third perceived color. Depending on the hues and values used, this can be very subtle or look like distinct stripes.
In the image above, examples 1 and 2 were done with simple
two-color irregular hatching. Notice that the places the colors meet change
with each sequence and are random. When you use more similar values as in examples
2 and 3, the blending is more subtle. In example 4, the colors were mixed even
further and the points where individual colors meet is lost. This is the point at which you can start to create horizontal color shifts that are seamless.
Let's look at a how to weave irregular hatching in a video. (You can see this video larger on my YouTube channel HERE. Subscribe to my channel while you're there!)
Why would we want to use irregular hatching?
If you are trying to create effects with color blending,
irregular hatching is an important tool. Certainly many tapestry weavers use
sharp delineations between colors in a very graphic style. Others like to
blend colors to achieve more subtle gradations and movement of color. Irregular
hatching is the first of many tapestry techniques that allow this kind of
expression in tapestry weaving.
Below is another example from my own work. Notice that the colors in the five rectangles moves from yellow to red. In each of the rectangles, there were three colors. I hatched those three colors together to make the color change horizontally. There were fifteen colors total in those five blocks, three in each one.
This blog tour is in celebration of ATA's upcoming international, unjuried small format exhibition, Tapestry Unlimited, which hangs in Milwaukee next summer. We hope you'll consider participating!
The American Tapestry Alliance is a nonprofit organization that provides programming for tapestry weavers around the world, including exhibitions (like Tapestry Unlimited), both juried and unjuried, in museums, art centers and online, along with exhibition catalogues. They offer workshops, lectures, one-on-one mentoring and online educational articles as well as awards, including scholarships, membership grants, an international student award, and the Award of Excellence. They also put out a quarterly newsletter, monthly eNews & eKudos and CODA, an annual digest. Members benefit from personalized artists pages on the ATA website, online exhibitions, educational articles, access to scholarships and more.
There are PRIZES for participating in the blog tour. Unfortunately, American Tapestry Alliance members are not eligible to win, but if you are not yet a member, consider entering. All you have to do is complete one of the easy social media options in the Rafflecopter box below, one of which is leaving a comment on this blog post. During each of the six weeks of the tour, there are two prizes. One is a free ATA membership and the other is an ATA membership plus a free entry to the unjuried small format tapestry show (tapestries are not due until March, 2016). You can enter every week by following the instructions in the blog post. Many of the bloggers will be using Rafflecopter. Others will choose winners from those who commented on their post.
Some options can be done every day to increase the chances of winning one of the prizes. ATA is a fantastic source of information about tapestry weaving, so don't miss this chance for a free membership!
