Blog
I'm in Victoria, B.C., Canada this week teaching at the ANWG (Association of Northwest Weavers' Guilds) conference. What I can say is that Victoria is so lovely I'd move here and that Canadians are extremely nice. I know this is said about Canadians a lot, but I want to present a little evidence below.
My Petrified Forest tapestries have found their way into a wonderful show in Athens, GA this summer. Time Warp... and Weft. Woven Works is a show at Lyndon House Arts Center which is open until July 29th.
Tommye Scanlin, Janette Meetze, Janet Austin, Geri Forkner, and Kathy Spoering are the main force behind this show. They have been doing time-based weaving for many years and have displayed these works together several times recently. I'm so happy they have asked me to be part of the Lyndon House show with my artist-in-residence tapestries.
I just got home from Midwest Weaver's Conference which was at Butler University in Indianapolis this year. I have not taught at MWC before but found that it is one of the teacher's favorites. And for good reason. The students were bright, motivated, and self-starters.
(Spoiler alert for ANWG* students next week!) The pre-conference class I taught was Predicting the Unpredictable: Color in Tapestry. This is my color theory class and we start out talking about value. Value is the relative lightness/darkness of a hue when compared to the grayscale. It is incredibly important in art design and I find that many weavers don't understand it well at all. So one of the first things we do is rearrange the yarn table by value. This has an added benefit for me: I don't have to organize the yarn when I pull it out of the suitcase.
Many of the materials and tools I use for tapestry weaving are made by Harrisville Designs. So it is only natural that I wanted to visit this year when I was in Vermont. We flew in and out of Manchester, N.H. so we took a little different route back to the airport after the Vermont retreat and just had time to take the detour through Harrisville after a night in Keene.
I've read a bit about silkworms... and silk. It is a subject that could engross one for a lifetime I believe. Heather Winslow's pre-conference class at Midwest Weaver's Conference this year was about silk and one of her students raises silkworms. And she brought some to class! My classroom was just down the hall so I made a pest of myself and went to look.
I just returned home from a fabulous retreat at Good Commons in Plymouth, Vermont. We had eleven devoted tapestry weavers gather there for five days of weaving.
We met at Good Commons, a retreat center in central Vermont. This is the second year I've held a tapestry retreat at Good Commons and we greatly enjoyed the marvelous food and venue.
So you're headed for a week-long vacation in the sun and you decide to pack your little pipe loom for some beach-side weaving. Then moments before you head out the door, you pull the loom out, afraid TSA will think it is a bomb...
Have you been there?
I have flown a lot in the US and have never had weaving equipment taken away from me. I have, however, had my bags searched repeatedly. I get love notes from TSA almost every trip. I chalk it up to the combination of metal looms and electronics. And for the record, I am glad they are checking. Aren't you?
