WEAVING AND WELL-BEING

"The Forgotten Fruit Years." My last Exhibition
held in Devonport at The Depot,  March 2008.

For the last 5 weeks I have been unable to weave at all due to some hideous un-diagnosed muscle pain problem. I will be seeing my doctor again this week to say that I am very grateful for the 800!!!! odd pain relief tablets prescribed, and will agree the advice that I was over-doing things was a good excuse to do NOTHING for a fortnight, but I really would like to get back onto the loom... THANKYOU.

I have so much to get up and going for various exhibitions, including my own. The last exhibition took a years weaving and planning and I am now down to 6 months weaving for the next one I am having in June next year in the Communnity Gallery of the Franklin Arts & Cultural Learning Trust .

Luckily the pieces are all very small and are being woven with the title of the exhibition..... Woven Tapestry Fragments... in mind.

So to all you weavers who have had a forced absence from the loom through lack of health at any time in your career, I now know the horror and frustration that our own frailties can have on our art practice. 
The wonderful flip side of this of course, is that the drawing and planning activities involved with creating our hand woven work gets extra special attention, forcing/allowing us much more time for planning and re-working our  ideas and designs. This in turn can only mean a much more resolved and therefore stronger end design. 

Portriat weaving "Evad" hangs between "Matariki Through Window Arches"
Invitation by Gallery to exhibit at Franklin Arts & Cultural LearningTrust 2010.

Close-up of weaving and hand-stitched detail in Window Arches shown above.

To Glass or Not To Glass- That is the question.

Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker - The Crown Wants a Piece Of it All

Tapestry weaving is arguably the most obvious technique that readily lends itself to being shown as fine art. I recently discussed exhibiting practices and the presentation of  tapestry weavings with another tapestry weaver. We queried whether our work should always be shown in a way that allowed the tactile element of the work to over-ride all other considerations. Does unprotected framing remain the best way to present contemporary, smaller, non-functional works?

Should the most important element of the work even be the weaving?

From a traditional and purists point of view, tapestry weavings should not be shown behind glass. In many circles and obviously at the judged national exhibition level,  there is a continued expectation that tapestry weavings should be presented in a manner that best connects veiwers to the the fibre/craft element of the work. 

I have always struggled with this as a hard and fast rule especially if conveying the message of the piece is more important to me than the fact that I happened to chose tapestry weaving as the medium to convey that message.

As a hand-woven tapestry work that is made special by "Please  Do Not Touch" signs, does the weaver take the initiative to present the work from behind glass, in a manner that  acheives the same result.
Is it a matter of educating veiwers/judges to accept the work as it is intended to be viewed as a whole by its creator or should the creators still be striving to educate viewers of their fibre art through the traditional and accepted manner of presenting the work open to the elements and inquisitive fingers?

At the end of our discussion we rightly or wrongly concluded that the craft artist would probably argue in favour of the status quo, i.e that to present a tapestry weaving behind glass deminishes the work. Whereas  the artist/weaver would probably be more inclined to want the piece protected and presented to the viewer framed behind glass if that was how the piece worked best in relation to their intended artistic statement or concept.

Recent portrait work

Close up showing detail

The photo on the right is a close-up image of a portrait being woven on the loom. This close encounter with the weaving as you progress is quite intense and engrossing. When sitting up close to the work as you weave, your sense of perspective is constantly being altered and challenged. It is only when you take a step back from the loom that you appreciate the image as a whole. 

Because of this altered perspective, it is important to have a smaller image of the portrait design handy to remind you of the bigger picture you are creating.

K. ROAD KENNY
In 2000 my son and I moved from our comfy nest in Coromandel township, into a new temporary one on K. Road in Auckland city.

The front door of the flat opened directly onto the chaos of one of the countries busiest and most notorious inner city streets. It was in dramatic contrast to what me, the brash Earth Mother and my Rudolf Steiner educated boy were used to.

There were many, many K.Rd Kenny's living on or around Karangahape Road, and this is a weaving of one of them.

Although not a calm place to live it was probably one of the safest places to live in Auckland city. Thanks for sharing the adventure Izack, I hope you forgive me.

E.P.I. CONTINUED....

Woven on a much finer warp thread at approximately 10 e.p.i. allows for more detail to be incorporated into a design. Being woven at 10 ends-per-inch still makes it a reasonably low warp count and the jump from vertical warp-to-warp threads is clearly noticeable where the line of the cheek on the face meets the main background. If the warp had been set at 20 e.p.i. this would be far less obvious, however the hours of work involved completing it would be much increased.

I love this weaving …Beyond The Wall Of Melancholy

Every now and again you produce a piece of work that you feel is as close to what you were trying to create as you wanted. For me this is definitely one of those pieces. By having such a strong visual impact, it manages to strike a chord with viewers, and got a half page review in the FEATURE PLUS section of the Timaru Herald when it was exhibited at the Aigantighe Gallery while promoting the 2009 National Creative Fibre Exhibition in April last year. It is often this type of unexpected hands-on support from people who are unfamiliar with me or my work that feed the artist within….. Soul food is good too.

* If you would like to help feed the artist without, the piece remains unsold and represents approximately 40 hours work. Offers that support the principles of N.Z. Fair Trade can be sent to me via my blogspot E-mail address.

"Chester" What you see is what you get.

Another one from the archives... This weaving has been woven facing this way up, or across the weaving as you are veiwing it. The strength of the horizontal lines in the design dominate the weaving. There aren't that many verticals, and the few obvious ones are manageable enough to weave without having too much affect on the resulting image. Despite the clean lines of his shirt, he looks a little strung out and devious, and although this has absoblutely nothing to do with the weaving process it is never the less still worth noting. Compare the flow lines of the hair in this weaving with the one below, and you are now able to view tapestry weaving with a more technical eye for details.

Although this is an early work that is reasonably basic in its design and construction, I still find weavings like this unashamedly simple and compelling.

Which Way is Up?

This archival weaving is a good example of how the design dictates the direction of the weaving process. This piece, and the weaving "Moehau" below, were woven sideways so to speak. If you look at the images with this in mind it is easy to see that vertical lines in a design need to be carefully planned, and that these vertical lines will ultimately determine whether the piece will be woven on the loom vertically or horizontally.

Work on the loom

Finished portrait

Work on loom

This woven portrait "Evad" won the Creative Fibre - Gisler Architects Award for Excellence in Artistic Design, when it was exhibited at the Creative Fibre Experience 2009 in Hamilton last year.
Working with what appears to be a predominantly black and white colour palette is a challenge for all fibre artists, and this piece was no exception. It measures approximately 1.3 metres by 900 cm. and took about 90-100 hours to complete; from the first stage of photo adjustment for the weavable design through to its final readiness for hanging.




Portrait Weaving in the making... Note the original photo above the weaving. This is used by the weaver as constant point of cross referencing while the work is being woven on the loom.