weaving
“Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry”
Cascades
One of my favorite weaving moments - when fiber, light and potential fill the loom. The moment before things come into being, when darkness and light are still intertwined. The moment plans are pushed to the background and instinct is allowed to take center stage, Yesterday, before starting to play with a woven transparency, the instinct had me reaching for the camera. Yarn & light. So simple, so beautiful.
“The world of utility and the world of beauty are not separate realms. Who is to say that spirit and matter are not one?”
“Night” handwoven cloth
The last few weeks I divided my time between Soetsu Yanagi’s book “The beauty of everyday things” and the loom. Few books have resonated with me as much, helping translate scattered thoughts into words and objects.
‘If it is our ideal to live in a world surrounded by beautiful things, in a virtual Kingdom of Beauty, then we must raise the ordinary things of our daily lives to a higher level” (quote from Soetsu Yanagi’s book)
The ordinary. The things we touch and use everyday.
“Utilitarian crafts have been looked down on as something of a lower rank. As a result, our aesthetic sense has been severely impaired owing to the fact that beauty and life are treated as separate realms of being. Beauty is no longer viewed as an indispensable part of our daily life” (quote from Soetsu Yanagi’s book)
Weaving allows me to do just that. put beauty back into everyday life. Who is to say that a tapestry hanging on the wall is more precious than a poncho that warms AND delights? Why should one be labeled as ‘art’ and ‘precious’ and the other referred to as ‘just clothes’? Why do we look at a piece of ‘art’ and ask ourselves what is the idea behind it and ignore the thoughts, wishes and symbols embedded in the simple things we use everyday. Granted, not all objects are worthy of this kind of attention. Some, maybe even most are just a reflection of market demand. Of the quick, the cheap and the popular. But handmade objects, the ceramic cups, the woven rug, the embroidered shirt. Why are they looked down upon as merely ‘crafts’? These are the objects we can enjoy every day with our morning coffee, sense against our skin each time we breathe. Does it make any sense to think any less of them because of that?
“Day and Night” handwoven poncho
“A lane of Yellow led the eye
Unto a Purple Wood
Whose soft inhabitants to be
Surpasses solitude
If Bird the silence contradict
Or flower presume to show
In that low summer of the West
Impossible to know”
Framed old photo taken at my father’s 70’s birthday
A portrait of my father in linen and wool.
Soft, muted colors inspired by a vest of his I still wear in the winter.
Browns and purples he loved to wear, green for the forests he liked to walk in. Bits of cognac … you can guess why.
Yellow and white for the warmth and memories he left behind.
Hills for calm and stability, bits of pink for his sense of humor, birds for things that are no more.
Empty warps, torn edges for the empty space and grief that never goes away.
A fringe of 182 warps. 73 pairs each one standing for a year of his life. 18 pairs, not knotted, frayed, one for every year that passed since his death.
No foreground or background, What was once tangible - becomes memories. Intangible words, jokes, his smile - are the only things left.
Tapestry hanging in the living room.
My father’s vest
73 knotted pairs of warp + 18
Green for the forests, browns and purple for the colors he loved, white and yellow for the warmth and memories he left behind
What remains
“To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.”
It never used to be difficult to finish an image for a photographic project. Quite the contrary, if I liked what I saw - there was a sense of pride, sometimes a sense of wonder - did I really do this? If I did not like what I saw, the work ended up in the darkroom bin, or abandoned in the folder maze on my working drive. So, how to explain this feeling of loss at the end of a woven piece? Is it because the sheer amount of work filled such a big part of my time for months? Or because I can look at the finished piece and see how I changed during this time, can tell the point when I realized what I am doing: unconsciously translating the rhythms of birds song into bright colored hand-spun wool.
“Morning Song” is up on the living room wall, and me ….I miss the time working on it. Miss the process, feel the need to create. Listening to an interview with Connie Lippert led to a tiny weave that was instantly baptized “A really ugly thing” :). Then, without thinking too much, I pick up the small battered frame loom, the one with the crooked nails and a ball of hand-spun grey yarn which I had no idea what to do with (too itchy to make a wearable piece out of it) and started to improvise ‘a letter to myself’. How about adding a scrap of text? Out of the ‘papers to be used in the future’ box, a page captures my attention. On it, a line seems to be winking - “Perhaps it was because she had nothing whatever to do …..”. Maybe so …..
“Morning Song” rests on the wall in our living room
A letter to myself, May 12, 2020
“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
A different world #1, Lumen print digitally enhanced
These past few weeks, living in the shadows of Covid-19 were easier on me than most. Spending time in the studio, gardening, reading and most importantly having all family members well and healthy - I really can’t complain. Most of the time I am at the loom, weaving. “Morning sounds”. Weaving while talking to the birds perching on the tree just outside the studio window. Weaving (or spinning for that matter) are just the thing for letting the mind wander. And wonder. How will our world change? Will this pandemic make us realize how connected are we to each other and to the other parts of nature? How a bat on one side of the world can change lives of millions of people on the other side. Will we find a different equilibrium between the physical and virtual world?
While “Morning Sounds” is off the loom, resting for a couple of days in the studio, I’m back to playing with Lumen prints. Combining physical and virtual reality in my own way. A different world.
“Morning Song” off the loom, resting on the table in my studio
Talking to the birds