Tapestry in the Making

These are the first couple of pics of the tapestry I will be documenting as I weave it. Full detail of the colour is going to be dictated by just how fussy I decide to be as time goes on. However it looks as though this left-hand panel will be following reasonably closely to the script. 

The warp-up was a total pain as I haven't used this loom before. Although I won't go into detail here, the warp could prove to be a problem at a later date. I hope not!

Set at 12 e.p.i. on a coloured cotton warp. There is a small degree of fluting/corrugation in the warp, but I believe this is due to the warp-up rather than the weft materials being used as there is no actual splay in the warp spacing as I continue to weave at this stage. It will iron out fine once the spacing has been removed at cut-off time, which is hours and hours and weeks away. By that time I will have sorted it I hope!

Photo 1 The very beginning.

These three sections (the woman, the door and the teacup )will be woven as one complete panel.
 I will keep a visual record of the left hand panel to share with you on the blog.

Photo 2 Introducing the splashes of colour that dominate this design.

Franklin Annual Art Awards

My last post shows the sewing machine ready for action and the hand-made paper sheets drying on the cloths line outside, so best I up-date what they morphed into.

"A Day Well Spent"

This is the re-cycled tapa piece, that much to my surprise won a second placing in the Non-Functional Fibre  category of the Franklin Arts Festival last month. A most unexpected surprise on the night. So a big thank you to all the sponsors and volunteers involved with this long-running event. It was most satisfying for me to feel that the judge recognised my attempt to push traditional boundaries of what Fibre Art can mean. 

Recently I have been lamenting the fact that so few young/marginalised N.Z. women in particular are not well represented in the creative fibres. Why?

My latest series of work have been pondering this. As soon as I finish weaving the tapestries that go with these pieces I will hope to have purged this obsessive, youth oriented and simplistic design phase that has gripped me for the last few months.

As a child, comic books were very much frowned upon, so these pieces are part of a catch-up time for me as well as a salute to the often regarded "low-art" genre of the visual novel.

As an adult, street art is very much frowned upon, so I see this medium as a magnet for future comment......

Close-up showing detail.

Not A Loom In Sight....Other Fibre Stuff

I have recently been making paper for a fibre based art-work that I have been putting together for the annual  Franklin Arts Festival. I love making paper as it is a perfect balance for people like me who actually really enjoy instant gratification, but who choose to spend most of their creative time doing something as slow moving as tapestry weaving. 

These sheets are going to be used in a multi-media piece, part of which is shown below. 

Paper sheets hanging out to dry

Sewing the paper and tapa cloth. Note the very clunky but gorgeous old machine being  used to work on the piece.   

I have just spent another Saturday up at The Art Barn in Orua Bay attending a screen printing course. I have a screen sitting in a corner of the studio that hasn't been used for years, but having been on this latest Tastes Creative course, I would like to think that at some stage soon I will drag it out again and have a bit of a play. 

We had the choice of printing either a T.shirt or a tea towel, so I thought I'd go with a cliche' and print "Home Is Where The Heart Is" on a tea towel. It came out a bit wonky but it was another great day surrounded by good people and good food, that had me refreshing my memory on the technique of screen printing. Thanks to the girls at Tastes once again for organizing another full and inspiring day.

Tea towel screen-print

Remembering Another Tapestry Weaver and Her Work

Weaving from 2002/2003 N.Z. Traveling Suitcase Exhibition
20x20cm Hand-woven by Astrida Dahm

It's funny how things go around. I was stuck for things to post....I don't have much to show for myself that I can share at the moment due to exhibition commitments so I thought I would add some notes about how I came to acquire a loom that used to belong to a little recognised but very able tapestry weaver I used to know.

A few months ago I was given this loom by fellow spinner/weaver Rowena, who is a member of my local Spinners and Weavers group. It is a Leclerc, Nilart, 8 shed, 10-treddle jack floor loom with a 45" weavable width. This loom is totally unsuitable/overpowered for my tapestry weaving, apart from weaving the occasional rug. Weaving smaller tapestries on it would be like using a steam roller to crack a nut.

Anyway, she had bought the loom from a person who had got it from the estate of a tapestry weaver called Astrida, who used to live and weave in Coromandel during the 1990's to early 2000's. She had told our group leader she was off to pick up her new loom....

Well Glenys knew that I had spent several years living in Coromandel and that if there was a fellow tapestry weaver living in that tiny township, I would know who that weaver was.

And I did. Astrida was born in Germany in 1950. I believe sometime after leaving school she went on to train as a weaver for quite some while under a master weaver in a studio that I do not know the name of, but that she seemed pleased to have received her training from. 

She travelled a lot during the late 1960's and 1970's, until she reached N.Z.'s East Coast north of Gisborne. It was here she met the potter Helen Mason (an extraordinary and beautiful older wise woman with adventurous tales of her own I might add). Astrida settled down on the coast and was soon invited to learn how to weave flax/harakeke, attending regular flax-weaving wananga with the local Ngati Porou women.

In the early 1980's her son Mingus was born, and they both moved up to Coromandel in the footsteps of Helen Mason who was by then living in the Old Tram at Driving Creek Railway and Potteries. 

By the time I moved to Coromandel in 1991, she and Helen had well and truly set up and established the Coromandel Spinners and Weavers in the Pink House over the road from the D.C.R.P. The Pink House was an inspirational hive of activity for fibre artists. It was through this group that Astrida learnt I was looking for a house to rent for me and my 2 children. After a daunting personality check, she gave me cheap rent on her run down old miners cottage over the road from her house, and where we stayed for several years while the kids grew up around us as our tapestry ideas bounced and banged off each other.

Her tapestries always included her hand-spun, often hand-dyed silks and fine wool. The images were organic, feminine, gentle and beautiful. She became quite the mentor for me as far as technical issues were concerned. She was incredibly funny in all ways, often abrupt, and very down to earth. I often wonder whether flax or tapestry weaving would have won the battle for her attention, as it must be getting close to a decade since she passed away.

However I think she would be pleased to see that as her beautiful, much loved loom has been battered and picked over, bereft of reed and other little bits and pieces, that I should now have it taking up a large portion of my very limited kitchen/dining space. 

I have inherited a monster that I love just because it belonged to my fellow tapestry weaver, neighbour and friend Astrida, and I like to think she would find that very fine indeed.

Tapestry Weaver, Astrida Ritchie-Dahm

New Design And Work In Progress

"Time for Tea"     The original working drawing/artwork before it has been modified for weaving.

Made from tapa cloth, hand-made paper, black ribbon, artist canvas, acrylic paint and machine embroidery detail.

(Click on image to enlarge)

This is one of the 4 pieces I exhibited recently that I thought you might want to follow the progress of as I weave it. From earlier postings you can see how I use various design techniques and ideas to form the basis of my tapestries. In this case I was playing around on the sewing machine to make comic book inspired story boxes that I hoped would translate well into weavable pieces. 

I need to have three of these completed by February next year and inspiration for sticking to my deadline might well come from sharing the progress on a semi-regular basis with those of you out there that pop in to see what I have been up to from time to time. I will be setting up the warp for this piece in the next week or so and I will keep a visual record of this particular piece to share on the blog. 

The final adjusted design ready for printing and tracing onto the working cartoon, which is then pinned up behind the warp as a guide for the weaving process.

So here it is, the final piece I will be weaving for the blog. Still retaining elements of the original fibre work at the top of this posting. Hopefully this gives you some insight into the background stuff that goes on between the day I took the drive home, the sketchbook, and the final tapestry weaving you see at the exhibition.

I love this process of where the piece comes from, and it is probably the weak link in the chain for those who do not understand the importance of having at least some form of design process as part of their creative endeavour.

Creating The Tapestries I Want To Weave And Pricing The End Result.

THE ORIGINAL PAINTING
This is the original small oil painting which was used as the inspiration for the weaving shown below. 

 

CREATING THE DESIGN
It was cropped to produce a width and height that I was happy with.

THE CARTOON

The image was then adjusted to create a weavable design. This is the most exciting and experimental phase in the design process for me. It is the time where the commitment to weaving time and detail is determined. How much do I want to deviate from the original painting? Do I want to pretty much retain the colour palette or do I want to change it completely? At this stage the warp count and all proposed materials need to taken into consideration as do the limitations of the actual loom it will be woven on.

THE COMPLETED WEAVING

This is the end result, and as you can see the weaving detail has been ever more simplified and altered as I have woven the piece. This is where the sub-conscious decision making processes of the artist-weaver takes control. It is where the auto-pilot kicks in and intuition takes over. You just go with where it takes you almost, and it is this some-what meditative state that becomes the tapestry weavers spell or magic that attracts different viewers to connect with each different weavers style of work, some more so than others.

Because I use my own images, during the weaving process there is often a certain amount of slimming down the details as can be seen in the finished weaving above “Beyond The Wall Of Melancholy”. If the tapestry were say 4 times larger than it is, obviously more fine detail could have been achieved also. As this weaving was a non-commissioned work that I was weaving to enter into an exhibition with a deadline to meet it was more a case of...Can I finish the tapestry weaving within the designated time frame I have allowed for. 

I think possibly over the years another reason I have tended to over simplify during the design/weaving process has been because I have tried to cut down on the time factor. I have always had a problem with the end pricing and in the past thought the price I ask for my work as very high for the size and complexity of the end weaving. The reality is that the prices reflect an hourly wage that sits somewhere between the minimum wage and the cost of hiring an average trades person. 

I think this constant endeavour to fine-tune and minimize the weaving time ultimately and quite unintentionally has led to the creation of a very distinctive personal style which can be readily attributed to my weavings. As my own particular genre and style has developed I have finally become comfortable with the prices I have to ask for my work.

I believe other artisans working with knitting, weaving, felting etc. who are practicing their art through fibre are beginning to value their own specialist work abilities by pricing the time they have taken to produce it,  including their design and planning time. I also feel the appreciation of these craft based art forms are becoming more and more valued as tomorrows fine-arts and hand crafted treasures. 

Craft And Quilt Fair- Hamilton

Running from Thursday 08 Sep 2011 to Sunday 11 Sep 2011, this event is open to the public for a reasonably small entry fee, and has craft related sales as well as the Quilt Exhibition which features quilts from Australia and New Zealand. 

Running in conjunction with this is the Creative Fibre Experience exhibition. This is a good opportunity to see some of New Zealand's finest hand spun, woven, felted or fibre based exhibits in one large exhibiting arena.

It is also an opportunity to network and catch up with friends for the day.

Where:

Claudelands Events Centre

Cnr Heaphy Terrace & Brooklyn Road

Claudelands, Hamilton