TWIST IN THAMES

"Twist in Thames" is the title of this National Creative Fibre Festival, offering a feast of activities for fibre fans. Based in Te Puru along the Thames Coast Road heading towards Coromandel Township, this is a beautiful area to spend a few days, or just a great opportunity to take a road trip with a couple of friends for the day. 

Although it is not a full festival as it has a smaller theme based exhibition instead of the usual large Exhibition format, there will be plenty to see and do with guest speakers, fibre related sales and spinning, knitting and weaving action competitions.

It runs over the last weekend of April, from Thursday the 28th April until Sunday the 1st May. The creative fibre website is your point of contact.
Go to www.creativefibre.org.nz for more details about the festival or to join a Creative Fibre group near you.

Tapestry Weaving from Drawn or Painted Design to the Finished Woven Image.

Above is a cartoon I have documented as it is being woven in the photos below. The original painting has been adjusted in Photoshop to produce a workable cartoon. This process helps to clarify and select clear boundaries within the painting. By simplifying the original painting with Photoshop or a similar program I was able to create an image that still retained the integrity of the original painting, while at the same time creating a weavable cartoon which better suited the technical restraints of the low warp count I was working on. 

Note that in this instance the weaving has well and truly deviated from the exactness of the detail, especialy in the dogs main body area. There are 3 reasons for this. The first is that the warp count was too low (there should have been more vertical threads). The second is because the size of the weaving space is too small (it would need to be a much bigger weaving to allow for the detail to be included). And thirdly, it was a play piece of my own, which enabled me to have the freedom of extreme artistic license. It now belongs to Su anyway, who lives near the dingo isle of Fraser, and who also happens to have been born in the year of the Dog.

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THE MAIN BODY AREA OF THE DOG HAS BEEN WOVEN USING HAND-SPUN DOG HAIR. OTHER YARNS USED ARE RAYON, WOOL, COTTON AND SILK.

  

TRAVELING SUITCASE EXHIBITION CLOSES

Temperature Rising

This tapestry and the one below are the 2 entries I submitted to the 2010 Suitcase Exhibition.  This and the one below are the finished works that I wove in response to the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen. 

Temperature Rising is a comment on our desire for consuming goods and how our desires have a suspected influence on global warming.

                                          Summit Inertia

Summit Inertia shows our Heads of State discussing important matters concerning all of humanity and how they propose to plan for the future state of the planet.

Tapestry weaving WORK IN PROGRESS.

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The two tapestries were woven side by side.  Numbered 1-3 above and below, you can follow the works progression and clearly see the cartoon behind the weaving indicating the design lines which need to be followed. With these smaller pieces I usually avoid marking the actual warp threads as the cartoon is small enough to flip up and down into view to use as an adequate enough guide.

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DESIGN IDEAS FOR TAPESTRIES FROM THE IMAGINATION

I have spent the last few weeks looking at my old work/sketch books.
Several years ago I began weaving tapestries that were based on the unreal subject matter from my dreams or  imagination. 

Wyuna Bay    1999

I still have a tendency to create weavings  that have a certain surreal or abstract element to them. By moving away from a realistic representation of an image towards the unreal aspect was probably my way of getting around that dreaded and usually unjustified statement .... "I am not very good at drawing"....  I am actually quite good at drawing so don't tend to use this as an excuse anymore, however I do remember a time when I did, and it was really another way of saying I don't spend enough time drawing!!

Using a more abstract or surrealistic  approach to tapestry design for producing a weavable image is one I use to remind myself that it is not so much about being able to draw a perfect representation of an object, landscape, animal, etc but more about conveying a connection on an emotional level with the viewer. 

Although I rely heavily on the technical wonders of Photoshop to assist me with my portrait weavings, I prefer as much as possible to use only my own hand-drawn images to create most my other design work.

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.

WEAVING AS ART... EXHIBITIONS, DESIGN AND RECOGNITION.

I have always loved exhibiting my work and have decided that I am now at the stage of my weaving career where I probably need to produce less but larger works. Once I get my next Solo Exhibition out of the way in June 2011 I will be making a concerted effort to do larger works for a while.

The next 18 months or so for me are mainly being committed to four major exhibiting opportunities producing large works. It has been nice to get back my focus on the planning and design of fewer, but more important works. These working drawings and concepts are what carry the final piece, giving the underlying strength to simple designs, the x-factor that makes a tapestry weaving gel with the viewer, drawing them back for a second look maybe. Where did the weaver get their idea to weave that particular image? These are the types of questions that once answered, help the viewer to better relate to each individual tapestry weavers work.

I am available for several types of tapestry workshops, particularly design focused sessions should a group of you wish to get together. If you have a particular area of interest I am able to customize a learning workshop to meet your needs. For details and costs e.mail:       warpedartanddesign@gmail.com