retreat ahead

Spring is in full bloom & I am in the midst of preparations to once again journey to Janie Hoffman’s place on the Blue River in the White Mountains of AZ. Janie & I have organized a tapestry weaving retreat… there will be 7 of us attending, hanging out together in the mountain spring weather, weaving, soaking in the sights & sounds of nature, & talking about all things under the sun that could possibly interest any fiber artist!

I finally completed canyon night. It was difficult to finish, it felt as if all motivation I had to weave suddenly dried up and blew away. The lack of fanfare with its completion is a direct reflection of the ambivalence & dissatisfaction I have been feeling about my design process. I did submit it & painted hills for IWC’s Fiber Celebrated, but I am not sure they will be accepted, especially with my poor batting average as of late. Yet another rejection notice today, received from the Tucson Museum of Art for their Biennial exhibit.

I am not upset in the least by these rejections, they are just confirming what I’ve been feeling… my artistic soul is experiencing a period of fallowness. With the exception of IWC & the upcoming Tohono Chul fiber art postcard exhibit, I have decided to stop trying to exhibit right now. Sometimes we need that thwack on the head to wake up & say, “Yeah, I knew that.”

Time to renew, regroup, reinvent, rethink. I have begun that process, it is in the rumination stages. I am researching new design methods, I hope to greatly improve upon my weaving skills by taking Kathe Todd-Hooker’s tapestry workshop at IWC this summer, & I have registered for a couple of other non-tapestry workshops that I hope will allow for deeper design & creativity explorations. I plan to make major changes to my blog & website. I am ready to dig deep to find my true artistic vision… it’s in there & just needs encouragement to rise to the surface.

I am viewing this upcoming retreat as a door opening to a new & exciting place. While I am there I will be reading about design methods used by collage & journal artists, & I have a new camera, a Nikon P80, that I have started experimenting with & I will take it with me… some of the first images I have taken with it are below. I am preparing a cartoon so I can work on a very small piece while I am there, it will be a postcard for the Tohono Chul exhibit, & it is a depiction of one of our bobcat kittens from a previous year. This particular bobcat mama would leave her kitten in our courtyard lemon tree while she went about her business for the day. We discovered this when one day, as Dennis went out to water, he looked up & was startled by this tiny bit of fluff staring at him with amber eyes through the bright green leaves. Below is my design sketch, just started, using watercolor crayons & pencils. I am working from a cropped version of the photo Dennis managed to take & also getting inspiration for stylized versions of lemon leaves from a Frida Kahlo painting I admire.

Now I am off to continue preparing for the retreat… I will keep a diary of my time there & will look forward to posting about it all upon my return!

same tapestry, different deadline

So, what I had planned to write in this post was that I had come to my senses after the weaving frenzy over the weekend, realizing that it wouldn’t be humanly possible to meet IWC’s March 15 deadline for the Fiber Celebrated exhibit, not for this human, anyway. I had decided instead to shoot for a different deadline & submit canyon night for the 2009 Arizona Biennial exhibit at the Tucson Museum of Art. Not a shabby proposition by any means, but I was disappointed because I thought painted hills & canyon night would complement each other so well if they were accepted & exhibited together at IWC.

But, suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, or an answered prayer to one of the many saints of weaving (my favorite out of the many I recently discovered searching on Wikipedia is St. Maurice, who besides being the patron saint of weavers & dyers is also the go-to guy for soldiers, swordsmiths, armies, & preventing menstrual cramps), I received a wonderful email from Rebecca Mezoff informing me she had discovered that IWC has extended the deadline to April 25th!!!!

You rock, Rebecca, for recognizing & understanding the angst of a sister tapestry weaver & coming to the rescue with the only thing that could possibly assuage the torture at this point--- a deadline extension! Wooo Hoooo!

early spring

I had a thought the other day when we started getting these warm temps that spring isn't green in the desert, it's yellow. Our desert is green all year... not that Kelly green crayon box green, but chartreuse, sage, silver, avocado, & army greens. Spring in the desert, I thought to myself, is really yellow. Yellow prickly pear blooms, yellow palo verde blooms, yellow creosote blooms, yellow cassia blooms, yellow fiddleneck blooms, yellow desert marigold blooms, yellow brittlebush blooms, & even more plants with yellow blooms that I cannot think of just now, none of which are really blooming just yet, but which will soon if the warm weather continues.

It is early spring.

It feels like early summer with the 80 degree temps we've been having. This is the desert, but even that is unseasonably warm for this time of year. I am not complaining in the least, it feels fabulous compared to the highs in the 30s we experienced while visiting my parents in Illinois during the family reunion to celebrate their 50th anniversary. It is quite cruel to force desert dwellers to visit locations with those kinds of conditions!

Here's a photo of all of us gathered together after a wonderful anniversary meal at one of my parents' favorite restaurants, Zapatas. I am usually skeptical of Mexican food outside of the Southwest (it tends to be what I think of as Amerxican). Not bad for Illinois, not bad at all. There are 6 of us offspring (I am the oldest, there is a 12 year span between myself & my youngest brother) & we all attended along with most of our respective spouses/children. Two old & dear friends of my parents, whom they met when they were stationed in Cheyenne, WY together, were also able to join us. This is the only family photo from that experience I will subject you to & I'm not even going to say who's who in it. If you are dying to see more, which unfortunately includes the strange gringo habit of drinking margaritas & donning sombreros, visit this set on Flickr.

Today, however, as I meandered about outside enjoying the sun, I started really noticing things, like waking up from a fog. And I noticed more than yellow, although yellow was first-- the photo at the beginning of this post is of the eensy-tineensy electric chartreuse flowers on a zig-zag cactus.

Here are others...

A diaphanous purple vinca bloom

Pink tinged newly unfurled pomegranate leaves, sunlit & glowing against a blue blue sky

Chinese star jasmine buds; slender, rosy, & soon to burst into little twinkles of white that will fill the air with their divinely sweet, heavy scent

My hot orange kalanchoe kettle

The always sudden & astonishing beauty of fuchsia pincushion buds... one day it's just a little cactus, the next, a tiny jewel box

Plump indigo purple velvety Texas Laurel blooms that smell exactly like sweet sweet grape Koolaid & make me think of hot sticky summer days of childhood

And Roger & Mo on lizard watch & wondering why I am crawling around on the ground with that little metal square box pointing it at things.











canyon night is still underway, you can actually start seeing the forest for the trees. If my cartoon looks odd, in case you missed an earlier post-- I decided to create & use what I've dubbed an "X-ray cartoon", a black & white color inverted version of the original that allows me to see the detail in the trees much easier than tracing them onto vellum would ever have done. The IWC Fiber Celebrated deadline is a little over two weeks away... will I make it? Weave, weave, weave...

rejected, but not dejected &... accepted!

Yes, I also received my "Dear Artist," letter on Tuesday from ATA. Thanks to Kathy Spoering's subliminal post, I was prepared. It is only my second rejection since I've been exhibiting, so I feel fortunate. I also knew that it is notoriously difficult to be accepted into ATA's juried exhibits, whether you are a master or novice weaver. At least this letter was tempered by Kathy's wonderful handwritten message... thank you, Kathy, I know that must be taking quite a bit of effort!

My first rejection was several months ago after I submitted several works to a gallery in Tempe for a Contemporary Craft exhibit. Guess I was either not contemporary enough or crafty enough, but I wan't dejected about that rejection either. However, I did become quite irritated when the same gallery quickly started inundating me with requests to support them (as one of their artists!) with monetary donations. Let's just say I communicated to said gallery my desire to stop receiving those solicitations in as an adult way as possible.

Yesterday I received another letter from another exhibit I had submittted work to. Uh oh, the envelope felt awfully thin, so I steeled myself for another Dear Artist letter. But, instead it told me they had accepted one of the three tapestries I had submitted, my monochrome macro: agave, one of my first tapestries. The exhibit is "Of The Earth" & is being held at the Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles, Missouri which happens to be very close to where my parents are living in Illinois & where I am headed next week to attend a family reunion that I put together to celebrate my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, the exhibit won't be up until March, so I won't get to visit it in person, but I am very happy that they selected this tapestry to be included since it is one of my favorites.

I am fresh from a weekend in Bisbee which I spent with Shirley & Lynn, two of my first students who are now special friends, helping them to stay on track with their tapestry weaving. Lynn was getting back into weaving her impressionistic wetlands & Shirley was learning to use her new Mirrix & starting a tapestry of a sunset on a special "friendship beach" near where she lives in Alaska most of the year. What could possibly be better than a weekend of weaving, friends, & wine? I was so involved with helping them that I forgot to take photos with my own camera, but luckily Shirley shared hers with me...

Work continues on canyon night, although the trees are still looking a bit ambiguous at this point. I am planning to submit it to IWC's Fiber Celebrated exhibit & it will now have a companion, as I think Kathy's suggestion to consider submitting my recently rejected painted hills to the same exhibit is most excellent! Great idea, Kathy, & if they are both accepted I will get to see them in person since Janie Hoffman & I will be attending together & taking Kathe Todd-Hooker's "Color & Tapestry" workshop she's teaching there. Anyone I know planning to attend?

a touchable tapestry

sensia...

smooth, silken, soft

rough, ribbed, ridged

thick, thin, thirled

desert life fragments

human made trinkets

tangible & visible feast

a NM trip & new tapestry

At the end of June & through July's beginning we took our first trip of the year to our New Mexico mountain property. It was also the first time Roger & Moka have gone there, & for Roger, probably the first time he's ever been on a trip at all. Moka's foster owners, Lisa & Kurt, had taken her on a brief camping trip just before we adopted her. So, this was more of a "shake down cruise" than the laid back relaxation we had enjoyed when we took Roux in previous years. After all, she was, as Dennis put it "an old lady" & knew how to behave; in sharp contrast, Roger & Moka are two rowdy teenagers & needed constant supervision! Their senses were in high gear, seeing, smelling, & hearing all things new & wonderful. They did pretty good overall, although they became quite vocal over turkeys that passed through our clearing on a couple of days & very agitated with a bold vole that kept dashing through the middle of camp & seemed to know just how far Roger & Moka could stretch their ropes. They were tired & quiet at night, very ready to come into the camper & settle into their beds. The biggest issue we discovered turned out to be Roger's inability to cope with riding in the vehicle in a calm manner, so this is something we'll have to work on so we can better maintain our sanity when we travel with them the next time!

I did do a bit of gathering on this trip, collecting more stinging nettle-- the last I collected was in late summer on a previous trip; early summer is supposed to give slightly different colors, so we will see. I also collected elderberry leaves & branches to bring as a gift for DY when I made a trip to her hogan in Tselani with Janie Hoffman--- that trip will be the subject of the next post!

On a walk down our road with Dennis & the dogs, I was surprised to look down & see a spiral shape amongst the rocks... I found a cephalopod fossil! What a special find, I did a small sketch of it with my watercolor pencils & crayons, inspired by Tommye Scanlin's ferns. I think I would love to design a tapestry based on my sketch! I also did a sketch of a vervain bloom, New Mexico's state flower, & one day worked just a little on my painted hills tapestry, unweaving some of what I had woven previously because the colors weren't working, & began to replace those areas with yarns that I just dyed this past spring which worked much better.

Before leaving on our trip, I had started working on a mixed media tapestry, entitled "sensia", for submission to the exhibit, “Please Touch, Again”, the third in a series of award-winning, hands-on exhibits at Tohono Chul Park. The series is intended to give everyone a unique opportunity to experience art using multiple senses, reaching out to people in the community who have vision loss. Once we returned from NM, I was able to finish the weaving & submit it. It is constructed of linen warp, wool, linen, & sea silk weft with mixed objects woven in. Some found & picked up here on our desert property & during walks with Roger & Moka & others from my stash of "art stuff"-- seed pods, cholla & saguaro skeleton fragments, a snake backbone, desert luffas, wood & glass beads. I also used a few different weaving techniques with the wool & linen weft in areas to add texture-- soumak & a looped weft Coptic technique. Now I need to finish the hems... I have been considering several different methods & will choose one this week to complete it.

a retreat, a studio gathering, an exhibit, & getting my head on straight

It has been a long time since I last posted, but life has been overflowing the rim...

Back in the beginning of May, I & several of the women who were students in the beginning tapestry class I taught in Bisbee early this year, Darquise, Shirley, & Lynn, made plans to go to Janie Hoffman's Blue River Retreat for a tapestry retreat. We were there for 3 days and it was a wonderful & relaxed experience for everyone. Morning walks in the woods & birdwatching for those who wanted to go, gathering informally by mid-morning to weave the rest of the day with breaks for lunch. I didn't actually do a whole lot of weaving because I don't focus well in a group, but I helped them when they had questions or needed to learn a technique that hadn't been covered in the workshop. Janie also gave assistance at times which I appreciated since I think learning from more than one teacher can be so enriching & she was also one of my first teachers. On some days we invaded Janie's studio, exploring her space & admiring her work. This was the first time any of them had visited an actual tapestry artist's studio & it was a great experience for them to see some of Janie's finished tapestries, her work in progress, her cartoons & watercolors, her yarns, & her library. Some of these encounters led to in depth discussions about many things related to tapestry, inspiring for everyone! In the evenings, Janie & Don invited us into their home to gather at their dinner table to share our communally prepared meals. I was absolutely astonished by how well they were all weaving; their tapestries in progress were the first they had attempted since taking my workshop! We all decided it was an experience worth repeating next year, so when the time comes around I will post an announcement on my blog for anyone who might care to join us! I had so many wonderful photos, I created a slide show so I could include more--


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

After returning from the retreat, I hosted an informal studio gathering in my studio for friends & fellow weavers... unfortunately, I was so excited when everyone started arriving & had such a great time, I forgot to take pictures! Thank you to everyone who came, you all brought great energy into my space.

A week later was the artists' reception for Artful Insects & Inspired Arachnids at Tohono Chul Park's museum. My tapestry, pinacate shuffle, was included in the exhibit, but the highlight for me was seeing the drawing, Butterfly Magic, done by my husband, Dennis, his first exhibit. He was so low key about it all, I took it upon myself to secretly invite his father & "step-mom", so it was a very big surprise for Dennis when they appeared. And, luckily, they persuaded him to allow them to take a photo of him with his work, because he had forbidden me to do so!

During all of this, I was steeling myself for a visit to where my parents are living... they both have been having major health issues the last 8 months or so. I had recently seen my mother at the beginning of this year when she came to visit one of her sisters who lives nearby, but I hadn't seen my father, who is the most ill, for a little over a year. I wasn't sure how he would look, and let's just say my nursing experience was making me think the worst. As fate would have it, our hot water heater sprung a leak just prior to my visit... I had been storing practically the whole mother lode of our family's photos in the same space for my parents when they were traveling in an RV after my father's retirement, so I had to go through ALL of them to make sure none had gotten wet. Luckily, none were damaged, but I went down a very, very long walk on memory lane. Some of the photos were so old of my parents when they were children, & then there were all of those of myself & my 5 siblings as we each were born & grew up. I laughed, I cried, I felt so very nostalgic. Now they are all stored in a plastic bin instead of cardboard boxes! When I called my mother to tell her what had happened it proved to be good timing since my father, who is quite depressed over his condition, had been asking about specific photos he wanted to see again. So, I selected a few albums to send & used my scanner to scan in, blow up, & print a few photos from those albums. The box arrived in the middle of my visit there & one evening I persuaded my parents to look through one especially old album. It generated many good memories for them, & I heard many stories, some I'd heard before, & others new & surprising. It was, for the most part, a good visit. My father's condition is not ideal, but he did not look as bad as I had imagined. I cooked dinner for them most nights I was there, pulled weeds in the garden for them, did a temporary fix on a leaky AC pipe & got them to call for repair; we had a serious discussion about considering assisted living & I am going to research it for them. Although I am still worried about them, I feel a weight has been lifted because I have a more accurate image of how they are living & how they look.

My mother, 1st on left, the captain of her high school cheerleading squad.



My father playing his bass in a high school jazz band (I have this very same bass displayed in a prominent place in our house).

The only weaving I have done since the tapestry retreat was to weave an alpaca lap blanket for my father (I was there during Father's Day). In amongst all of the above, I was working on my volunteer job editing the ATA's Tapestry Topics newsletter for the online digest, putting together the final Desert Tapestry Weavers newsletter, & writing several articles for the next ATA newsletter. With all of that, along with the worry about my parents, I had no desire to weave or be creative... I was experiencing a complete creative block-- mentally, physically, & spiritually.

Now, I feel the block starting to crumble... Dennis & I are planning our first trip to our mountain property this year next week. We'll spend close to a week there; it will be the first trip for Roger & Moka. I am bringing my Mirrix with the painted hills study in progress that I had started during the tapestry retreat, also my watercolor pencils, crayons, & paper. Our camping is primitive, but I make sure to bring good food, and we both love spending our days outside in the mountain air & out of the desert heat. I always feel renewed after a trip there, so I am looking forward to bringing that feeling home to the studio.

In sorting through all of those old photos, I came across one of a place we used to live on a river in rural New York from the time I was about 8 until I was 12. It was a tiny old cottage perched on a steep river bank; my parents moved our trailer home next to it & built a connecting hallway into the cottage. It was the only place we lived where I had my own room, & my room was in the cottage. A bed of lily of the valley bloomed outside my window in summers & I could smell it all night. The old German couple who sold it to us had planted many interesting plants on the property & there was a patio landing over the river where we went fishing. A study room surrounded in plate glass windows overlooked the river & the cow pasture on the other side. If the river froze solidly enough in winter, we could skate on it. I always loved that place & cried when my parents decided to sell it after my father rejoined the military. In finding this photo that I had not seen before, I realized it embodied the essence of how I felt about the cottage. It was where I learned to love nature, to see it, to smell it, to listen to it, to taste it, to experience it. I now have a copy of that old photo, enlarged & hanging on my board next to my desk so I can see it every day.

dye run - spring 2008

After preparing & organizing all last week -- choosing & weighing dyestuffs from the 33 I have on hand, most that I gathered myself, weighing & labeling the skeins, readying all of my dye worksheets & sample cards --I was finally able to start the dye run last Thursday! This was the largest since the one I did in spring of '06 & it was fun, but after 4 days I am happy it is finished. I decided to give Burnham's tapestry weight wool a try this time & also changed from using natural white to bleached white. I also always overdye grey skeins along with the white, they are so wonderful to use for shading & blending.

In the middle of the dyeing, I received good news... John Jenkins the wood artisan who creates fabulous tapestry forks (along with other beautifully crafted wood items) now has a website...

Magpie Woodworks, LLC

Everyone who sees my tapestry forks wants to know where they can get them, just as I was struck with fork lust the first time I saw one, so here it is.

And more good news, Jan Austin has joined the world of tapestry weaver blogs! Bravo, Jan, I think you'll be a natural. As far as I'm concerned, the more tapestry blogs, the better. It is so wonderful & inspiring to see an artist's work from planning stages to cutting off, so much more enlightening than looking at a photos of a finished piece in a book! Visit Jan's blog-- http://austintapestry.blogspot.com/

Every dye run has its surprises & this one was no exception...

The cutch given to me by Kathy Perkins produced a beautiful coppery brown & smelled of slightly burned cooked carmel. After dyeing my skeins I even threw a white washable linen skirt in that I love the feel of but don't wear much because of the color in the cooling dyebath to soak overnight. The "cutch skirt" has come out a beautiful light coppery brown.

However, the lichens were a complete failure, producing absolutely no color in the dyebath after simmering for an hour & no color on the one skein I threw in the dyepot! I had good directions to follow from a source that reported using New Mexico lichens. Hmmm. Well, that skein was rinsed & joined the skirt to soak overnight in the cooling cutch exhaust. Don't think I'll be one of the lichen dye junkies as I now have no desire to harvest any more, even though what I collected was from deadfall on our NM mountain property. Too many other plants out there are easier to harvest, more predictable in the colors that they produce, & less precious.

As far as the avocado, the results were a little disappointing. Even at 200% wog, the colors were very subtle, barely beige from the peels & a light apricot from the pits. I did an ammonia assist with one pit skein with no change. I did follow the instructions very carefully, including heating them once during their soak time to prevent mold growth. My feeling is that I did not let them soak long enough, just 7 days. The author of the recipe goes on at length about the longer they are soaked the deeper the colors, but she is quite vague on just how long is long enough! If I were to attempt it again, I think I would just collect the pits since they seem the most promising. You would have to be quite attentive & diligent about heating the soaking dyebath every few days to keep mold from growing, so I'm not sure how happy I'd be having to do that for a long period of time!

The eucalyptus did not give me the hoped for oranges, but instead a green tinged gold. No matter, it smelled quite heavenly. I was quite happy with all of the other dyestuffs I used as well those I've already mentioned... mountain mahogany roots, elderberry leaves, nettle, & brasil wood.

Now I am looking forward to a Bisbee trip with Dennis to celebrate our 15th, then soon after that a trip up to Janie Hoffman's place on the Blue River for a tapestry retreat with several other weavers!

Live to dye another day; respect our Earth; live, love, weave!

february was a fiber filled frenzy!

I am not sure how the shortest month of the year could have held so much fiber related activity!!! I am still recovering from it all, but in a blissful, not devastated state. I am also very behind on reading my favorite blogs, so I hope to catch up soon on what everyone has been doing! This post will be loooong, so better get at it...

The month started off with the grand opening of the Land, Art, And The Sacred: Three Perspectives exhibit that I have been eagerly anticipating. I do not want to write much about it in my blog because I am working on an article about it for The American Tapestry Alliance's Tapestry Topics newsletter, but I will say it exceeded all of my expectations (which is why I feel driven to write an article about it!)... I was also able to spend time with DY & meet her dear friend Peg while they were in town for the reception, & I got to know Claire a little better, something I've been hoping would happen since meeting her briefly last year. I had the serendipitous pleasure of visiting the exhibit many times during the month, so I was able to really absorb & enjoy it.

In preparation for the beginning tapestry workshop I taught at the end of February, I drove the 2 hours to Bisbee one day to check out their frame looms that would be used in the class... I discovered it was a wise thing to do because they were a bit dusty & in need of a good tightening. I was also able to ferret around in their fiber room to see what was available to weave with. The next day my sister, Susie, arrived for a week long visit. We spent much of the time in the studio, where I put her to work weaving a sampler to improve & expand on the weaving techniques I had taught her last year.

While Susie was here, we, along with my friend Stacey, took an overnight road trip up to northern Arizona, traveling north through the Salt River Canyon route to visit Burnham's Trading Post, where, as the snow started to flurry outside, we indulged in a flurry of yarn buying & gaping at the beautiful Navajo weavings & turquoise jewelry for sale. I found the most beautiful turquoise bracelet I had ever seen & was able to buy it for myself because the price was right, along with purchasing yarns I needed for my next tapestry... my idea of heaven! Stacey & I have quite the love affair with Burnham's since we are devoted to using it in our tapestries & I use their natural white & grey exclusively for my natural dyeing... if we are ever in the neighborhood (oh, say within a 100 miles or so), we always go out of our way to swing by. We can mail order it, but it is just SO wonderful to buy it in person. The skeins that are vegetal dyed by Navajo women come in a rainbow of beautiful, earthy colors. The first time you walk into the yarn room, it widens your eyes & takes your breath away. Thanks, Janie, for turning me on to Burnham's, I am trying to return the favor by spreading the word! In fact, if anyone reading this has thought about trying Burnham's wools for weaving, but hasn't taken the leap yet, you should know that their yarn sample cards are free & also that during the entire month of April all of their wool yarns are on sale!

After Burnham's, we headed for Flagstaff to spend the night. By the time we got there, we were in a blizzard, but we braved the foot deep drifts to walk 5 or so blocks for dinner & afterwards to check out the few stores that were open. We awoke the next morning to a magnificent sight of snow covered San Francisco Peaks outside our historic bed & breakfast window & a scrumptious home cooked gourmet breakfast. Stacey made me laugh when I noticed that, a true desert dweller, she had rolled up her pant legs to keep them out of the snow. I even had to scrape quite bit of snow & ice off the Rover before we could leave to sled off back south, taking a convenient detour through Oak Creek Canyon, which was completely & breathtakingly covered in snow, & the red rock country of Sedona.

When we hit Phoenix, we made our way to the downtown Heard Museum to see a newly installed tile mosaic representation of one of DY Begay's weavings... it was stunning, DY! We also enjoyed a very delicious lunch at the museum's Arcadia Farms Café. By the time we got back home to Tucson, we were a very weary, but very content bunch of fiber addicts! A couple days later Susie left, with new yarn stuffing her suitcase & new tapestry techniques packed into her head.

The very next weekend, I was off to Bisbee to teach my very first tapestry weaving workshop & I kept a little journal on my mini computer...

thurs, 2-28-08
How odd that the first tapestry workshop I will be teaching should fall on a leap year... but this has been an odd week, precipitated by a phone call from a lawyers' office asking if someone at my residence was related to my ex-mother-in-law & could "handle her affairs". Quite a shock to receive that call, considering that my ex & I did not part on friendly terms & I haven't seen him or any of his family in over 15 years. Receiving that call & realizing that she was no longer alive prompted me to do a little online investigation & I discovered that my ex-father-in-law had also died, but 2 years previously. Learning all of this caused the resurfacing of many, many memories of people, times, & places that I have not thought about for 20 years or more, some good & some bad. Needless to say, these reminisces occupied my mind so much for the last couple of days while I made final preparations for the workshop that I had no time to think about being nervous. I loved teaching patients & their family members when I worked as a nurse & I had hoped that perhaps I could one day teach tapestry weaving, but I never thought the opportunity would come so quickly. I met the Bisbee guild's "education recruiter", Joan Ruane, when I was in Bisbee for their fiber festival last October; when she learned I was a tapestry weaver she asked if I would consider coming to teach a workshop for them.

So here I am in Bisbee, on the eve of my first beginning tapestry workshop. It will start tomorrow & run for 3 days. I came a day early to prepare the space & pull yarn out of the guild's fiber room. Bisbee is a tiny, quirky little historic mining town, converted in modern times to an art town/tourist destination perched on & in the nooks & crannies between the Mule Mountains & the Naco Hills at an elevation of nearly 6,000 feet. The Bisbee Fiber Guild is fortunate enough to have their own permanent studio space in the basement of the historic YWCA building where they have looms set up full time for members to weave on, a fiber room, a library, several storage rooms, & giant steel utility sinks for dyeing. It is a 2 hour drive from where I live in Tucson, through mountains & across high desert grasslands. It was an especially wonderful drive today-- the sunlight warm, clear & sharp; the sky very blue; the landscape a color study of duns, ochres, & greys... the high desert grasses gleaming wheaten gold & rusty red, the mountains looking dry & craggy with their canyons & drainages shadowed in sharp relief, and the creosote flats glowing with the chartreuse of tender new leaves. You can see across the basins for 50 or so miles & your eyes are constantly straying to take in the view, so much so that you have to remind yourself to be more careful to watch the road.


I have the pleasure of staying in a guild member's guest cottage while I am here, only a few miles from the guild's studio, but in the hills without a neighbor in sight. It is a spacious one room with a bathroom & "closet kitchen", surrounded by alligator junipers, Mexican oaks, manzanita, rolling hills, & bird song. This afternoon & evening I set up the student workspace in the guild's studio, set tapestry looms out, & selected yarns from the fiber room, arranging them by color family on a table. My efforts were awarded when a guild member who came in to do a little weaving on one of the floor looms was immediately drawn to my "yarn table" & began exclaiming over the display. Most of the guild's fiber has been received through donations & I was very happy to discover a nice selection of wools suitable for tapestry weaving. The frame looms the students will use also belong to the guild. They are simple frame looms made of hard wood with a nice tensioning beam on top & cylinders with grooves routed into them affixed to top & bottom beams for warping. The workshop begins tomorrow at 9 am, but I will arrive early to have a pot of coffee ready for those who need it & to put out class notes, spools of cotton seine, & bobbin kits. Let the weaving begin!

fri, 2-29-08
I arrived at the guild studio an hour before the start of class, set out all of the class materials, got my ipod set up with its portable speaker system, & started a pot of coffee for anyone who would be in need of caffeine when they arrived. One by one my 7 students trickled in, with the last two arriving just a little late. Today they were able to get warped, weave a header, & learn the first technique on the agenda, pick & pick. I feel very pleased that all of them are so very eager to learn & that my teaching seems so far to be effective. Everyone appeared to be intently enjoying the learning process & I felt I was able to give each person the attention they needed during the day. We worked from 9 to 4, taking frequent breaks & a lunch break. I cannot wait to see how it all goes tomorrow... with the difficult process of warping & getting the sampler started now accomplished, I hope to make good progress working through the other planned techniques so that they will be able to do a bit of weaving on their own, & cut off & finish their samplers on the last day of class.

sat, 3-1-08
This morning all of the students arrived with big smiles on their faces & eager to get back into the weaving so I must be doing something right! Good progress was made today & I noticed that everyone's dexterity handling warp & weft was improving as the day progressed. We managed to cover all of the techniques I had planned except for eccentric weft, so we will start with that in the morning. Then they will have the rest of the day to weave on their own & hopefully we will be able to cut off & finish the samplers as well.

After all of the students left at the end of class & I had packed things up, I headed out to walk around town & grab a bite to eat at a little café I had noticed driving back to the cottage yesterday. Across the street from the café I had also been noticing a building with a big hand painted sign advertising a musical comedy play, Annie Get Your Gun, being presented by the local actor’s troupe. I had been thinking it would be fun to go see it & in the café I saw a flyer that gave the time it would run. Dennis & I have driven up to a small town north of Tucson to see plays put on by the actor's troupe there, so I knew how good & fun a small town production could be. After finishing my meal at the café, I walked around, found a place to get a small espresso so I wouldn't be too tired, & headed back to get tickets & a good seat. The play was good & funny. It was so enjoyable to watch it on my own, just sitting quietly & absorbing it all without having to talk to anyone after having been talking all day during class!


I am looking forward to tomorrow... I can't wait to see what everyone chooses to weave when they are turned loose to weave on their own!

mon, 3-3-08
Too tired to write last night! Luckily I had already anticipated how I would feel & had planned to spend last night in Bisbee. Everyone arrived yesterday for the last day of class tired, but still smiling. We quickly covered the last technique, eccentric weft, & they all got down to the business of weaving. It was very apparent that everyone was intently enjoying finally being able to weave on their own & I was so very proud that they did so with minimal assistance from me. I walked around & observed, giving out reminders & prompts when necessary. Everyone also had a chance to at least quickly review the books I had brought so they could think about which one appealed to them most if they ended up acquiring one for themselves. Throughout the workshop they were also requesting that I come back soon & teach them more, expressing much interest in learning to design on their own, learning how to prepare a continuous warp, & learning to use a cartoon. I encouraged them to get together, decide what they would like in a next class as far as length & content, & to approach their education coordinator with a proposal. I would love to come back to teach them more!

As the day neared the end of the workshop time, several of the students decided for themselves they were ready to stop weaving & finish their samplers off so they could make the drive home to the nearby towns where they lived. Everyone was able to weave as much as they wanted & to cut off & finish their samplers which made me extremely happy. Several who actually live in Bisbee were already making plans to meet today at the guild's studio to help each other warp the looms for their next piece... wow! My encouragements to continue weaving & practice their newly learned techniques must have made quite an impression!

After all of the samplers were finished, the wool returned to its place in the fiber room, & the looms put away, 3 of the students & I went out for a drink & dinner. For most of the time we continued talking about tapestry, & I discovered they were quite passionate about soaking up more experiences... we ended the workshop & the evening as new cherished friends with a great idea to plan a trip to Alpine to have a "tapestry retreat" at Janie Hoffman's place on the Blue River.

Charla

Randy

Jan

Shirley, Lynn, Darquise, Joy

Since the workshop, two of the students, Shirley & Lynn, came over to Tucson to do a little shopping at the Desert Weaving Workshop; I met them there & we went for lunch together & then to the Land, Art, & Sacred exhibit. During that time, we decided we would definitely try to plan a tapestry retreat at Janie's... since they are both "snowbirds" who come to Bisbee for the winter months-- Shirley from Alaska & Lynn from Seattle, they both had to see about adjusting their travel schedules. Now the date is set for early May, and Darquise has also decided to come along. Janie & I had started contemplating the idea last year of having an informal retreat at her place but until now we hadn't found anyone who wanted to make concrete plans. I am so thrilled that it is finally going to happen!

The two exhibits I recently had work in at Tohono Chul have come down...my earth & sky tapestry was sold so it went home with someone else. I felt a startling bittersweet pang when I learned of the sale. I was surprised it had sold; I had begun to feel it was my favorite that I have woven so far, & in the original photo I had used, the image included Dennis & Roux because I took the photo when we were hiking, & it is one of the last tapestries I wove while Roux was still alive. But, the feeling has passed, mostly because I think the person who purchased it must have been very moved by it & will treasure having it in their home. I am beginning to learn just how closely a tapestry can be connected to the weaver's life, a wonderful, if a bit unsettling, discovery.

During all of this wonderful madness, our new dog Roger has settled in nicely, no longer has separation anxiety attacks when I leave, enjoys hanging out in the studio all day (with an occasional cookie to break the routine), & loves our daily 3 mile walks which have helped shrink both of our waistlines! Dennis & Roger walk on weekends when Dennis is home from work, those "guy walks" being a bit more hard core & good for them both!

Now I have my small Shannock loom warped up & a tapestry under way for another Tohono Chul exhibit, Artful Insects. It will depict a pinacate beetle crossing the sand, leaving a wake of footprints-- as soon as I chose the image I christened it pinacate shuffle. So far I've gotten the header woven & when I've completed more I'll post again with photos. The deadline is early April, but I have incentive to finish it much sooner because in early April is also the Arizona Federation of Weavers & Spinners biannual conference, Fibers Through Time. I will need the Shannock for a workshop I'm taking to learn the Helena Hernmarck technique of weaving being taught with her permission by Diane Wolf, a weaver who has studied extensively with Helena & has been her assistant during workshops at HGA's Convergence. After the workshop, the Shannock will be put to work again... I've been invited to create a piece for an upcoming Tohono Chul exhibit, Please Touch Again !, being held specifically for the visually impaired so that they may feel & touch the items on display.

March is well underway... fiddlenecks, mallows, & desert marigolds are beginning to bloom, our windows are thrown open to warming temps & birdsong, the light is taking on the rarefied & luminous quality inherent to desert spring & fall. I've been sharing my tapestry passion not only through my blog, but in real life. Life is feeling very good again.