FOUR DIRECTIONS IN TAPESTRY

Close-up of Inquistion Revisited, one of a pair of weavings.
My own interpretation of Kieth Haring and Judy Cicago as inspiration.
Weavings based on drawings from my 1998 sketch book

FOUR DIRECTIONS IN TAPESTRY EXHIBITION

Official opening of this is tomorrow @ 11am. If you are going to the Creative Fibre Festival in Blenheim, or you or someone you know  lives there, grab the opportunity to veiw four different artists creating contemporary design tapestries. Patricia Amour, Elizabeth Arnold, and Marilyn Rea-Menzies are the other members of the NZ Proffessional Weavers Network that are showing their work in this show. We are all producing very different work, and it is a great opportunity for tapestry weavers to see where those of us that have been weaving tapestry technique for a while are going with it.

While this exhibition is on I will be giving a lecture entitled Expanding Your Creative Responses at the NZ Creative Fibre National Exhibition on Saturday at 1.15pm.

Weaving Letters Of The Alphabet

Weaving letters is always a bit of a challenge and has been the subject of many tapestry weaving workshops. However it is more time consuming than it is difficult to do. As long as you follow the lines on the cartoon behind the work and ensure the warp count is high enough to avoid obvious jumps across the warp threads, it is no more difficult than blending or hatching techniques can be. The speech bubble shown below here is part of a portrait weaving I will be exhibiting in the Four Directions show.

Anime/Manga Design Influence

As a child I was discouraged from reading comic books, they were seen as very inferior reading material in our house. But I do remember small stacks of second hand comics being in the house from time to time after visits to friends and cousins who were willing to part with some of their old unwanted ones. Since the 1980's the street art movement has been gaining kudos in the mainstream art scene, and  I have remained fascinated with this definitive graphic style of art. Some of the tapestries I will be putting into the Four Directions In Tapestry exhibition will reflect on this continued somewhat taboo art influence. With its defined areas of block colour and solid lines the anima/manga style lends itself to tapestry weaving.

Elizabeth Arnold, Patricia Armour, Marilyn Rea-Menzies and I are having an exhibition of our tapestry weavings at Clear Water and Clear Skies Galleries, 204 High Street, Blenheim. 

As the title suggests, this exhibition will reflect where each of us are heading with our work. This is a great opportunity for visiting tapestry weavers to view how four established weavers approach different aspects of design, and the visual diversity that contemporary images in tapestry has to offer. 

The exhibition runs from the 20th April to the 6th May. As the annual Creative Fibre Festival opens on the 26th in Blenheim we will be having a meet the weavers morning tea from 11am-12.30pm on Thursday 26th April to coincide with the opening of this event. 

I'm looking forward to the opportunity to explore viewer reaction to this ancient craft presented as modern art. It is this aspect of tapestry weaving that I find the most exciting and I am loving this opportunity to have my work out there in the same arena as these other three very able and professional craft artists. I will be popping into the gallery most days between the 19th and 29th April so if you want to meet up with me I'm sure the gallery staff will be able to let me know if you would like to arrange a time to meet and talk about my weavings.

TAPESTRY LOOMS VERSUS JUST GETTING ON WITH IT.

Thought I would write a quick note on looms for the job as I forgot how many people over the years have told me that they haven't had a go at tapestry technique yet because they don't have the right loom to get going. I do not own a specific tapestry loom. The looms I have are adequate for weaving the size of work I have been producing thus far.

My work in the main, is woven on any one of my 3-4 looms which are 2-shaft, peddle operated, upright looms. They are all well and truly pre-loved and wonderfully functional. A new and larger specifically tapestry loom would be fantastic, but is not imperative for actually producing a hand woven tapestry.

The first loom I ever wove a tapestry on was a chunky 4-shaft rug loom. Not so hot on the neck muscles, but adequate never the less to decide if I was interested in producing more tapestries or not, and determine what my future comfort needs were likely to be.

Paper Making Demo

Heirloom Hand-Made Papers

Last Saturday was the Auckland Area Creative Fibre A.G.M. and I was asked to set up a display table showing the basic process of how to make sheets of re-cycled paper. Making paper from scratch is always a fun activity, and the results look gorgeous. No matter that the ones that include a lot of fresh or dried organic material are more decorative than functional. They always seem so very Victorian and feminine, and are beautiful additions to any craft project that incorporates paper as a decorative element.

Sampler Booklet

For my paper-making workshops I like to spend the morning making the sheets with the students, stop for a shared lunch while the paper dries, and then spend the remaining time putting all our hard work together in the form of a keepsake record sampler book. It always makes for a day of great fun, good food and interesting people. Listening to the reasons why each person wants to learn this basic, environmentally sound technique I find it is usually to enhance or to support a completely different skill or hobby. Mainly envisaged as being used for presentation paper for anything from home preserving to hand-made cosmetic or soap products. Some just want to work with the pulp so that they can go away with the experience and explore the moulding or casting possibilities their art direction is leading them towards. It is this  very broad end use aspect that makes basic paper-making such a very cool medium to explore. 

It is fine to reconstitute waste paper for use as writing/drawing paper, however a good quality end paper is dependent on the initial materials used in the pulp mix. 

Keep those photo-paper off cuts in mind next time you are trimming up the edges, and put them aside separately with other better quality papers if you are wanting to make acid-free sheets for exhibition quality drawing or painting. 


Also, if you are looking for waste paper to re-cycle, a good source for raw materials are the offices of local law or architect businesses. Their shredded paper waste is usually made up of better quality papers and light card and they are usually o.k. with passing it on for paper-making purposes.

Work in Progress

New work on the loom, just to keep interest going on what I have been up to. Little else to show you at this stage..... garden grows, years end screaming to the finish line, and not enough hours in the day.