I’m home from my two week residency at the Lillian E. Smith Center near Clayton, Georgia. I learned a lot about an amazing author and civil rights activist (Lillian herself, author of Strange Fruit) and I learned some things about myself. I also had some fun adventures. Let’s stick to the adventure part of the story for today.

I had some yarn adventures while in this part of the country. They include:

a stop at Penland School of Crafts
a visit to the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair (SAFF) in Asheville
two interviews with tapestry weavers from the area
exploring Black Rock Mountain State Park
my own work during the residency.

Penland School of Crafts

I was invited to visit Bhakti Ziek’s Penland fibers concentration while I was in the area. I love visiting Penland and I love even more picking the brain of the amazing Bhakti Ziek. She is a master of woven structures and has done a lot of work in jacquard weaving including some large and gorgeous commissions. She is teaching an 8-week class at Penland right now and wanted her students to get a little taste of tapestry. So Tommye Scanlin and I made a visit and tried to entice the students to consider tapestry as a woven structure that is worthy of their attention. I’m not sure we were at all successful, but maybe we drew their brains away from overshot and ikat patterns for a few hours.

Tommye Scanlin was there before me doing some demonstration. The weaving at the very top of the image on her pipe loom was what she was doing for demonstration. I saw her working on this piece later and she had taken that bit out and gone back to work on a new trajectory she is exploring. You can see more about her work on this project HERE and posts following. I suspect she’ll write a blog post about this process at some point and you can find her blog HERE.

Bhakti is the most versatile of weaving teachers. Her skills are so broad, encompassing everything from natural dyeing to a full catalog of weave structures, that she can pull ideas about just about anything out of her brain at a moment’s notice. Her students were working on a wide range of woven projects. There was a little tapestry and a lot of overshot and a lot of other experiments in between. For more images of what they were working on, see the Penland Textiles Instagram feed.

SAFF

Could there be any doubt in your mind that once I found out the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair was going to be in Asheville the weekend I was visiting that I would go? No doubt at all. How could I resist a fiber fair? I wandered through the vendor hall and bought just a couple things: sheep earrings (of course), a spinning braid made from local fiber, and two braids of Polworth/silk from Ewephoric Fibers. The dyer was standing in the aisle handing out pieces of this fiber mix and once it was in my hands, there was no way I was walking away without one braid. I couldn’t decide between the white and dyed, so I ended up with two.

Aren’t these old sock machines beautiful?

The one booth I was looking for specifically in the vendor hall was that of Bobbin Boy, specifically Milissa Ellison Dewey. And I found her. She was demonstrating sock knitting machines and just about to go and teach a class about using them. Milissa is another vastly talented woman. She makes some of my favorite tapestry bobbins—she can really run a lathe. She also restores antique spinning and weaving equipment and is an expert in the history of these crafts and their equipment. And she knows more than a thing or two about sock knitting machines. She had a selection of old machines that she had restored at the festival. If you’re looking for someone to get you up to speed with sock knitting on a machine, Milissa is your gal.

The video below shows Milissa demonstrating a sock knitter for a few seconds and then I threw in some clips of the animals just for fun. You can see it here or on my YouTube channel HERE.

And of course there were animals. I saw a lot of angora goats and Jacob sheep. All were fun to observe. I sat and watched the Jacob sheep judging for a little bit. There were a lot of pretty young kids out there managing sheep that undoubtedly weighed more than they did. Jacob sheep are not the easiest creatures to get to do what you want! But only a few times did I see an adult have to step in to help a youngster regain control.

I found some nice Icelandic fleeces in the fleece show. And I wanted to buy one. And I did NOT! When it came right down to it, I didn’t want to separate the fibers even though Kate Larson recently taught me how to do it.

And any time you’re at a fiber festival where there are animals, don’t forget to look for the sheep dog demonstrations. These border collies are simply fantastic. I watched a couple different dogs herd 5 sheep around an arena and then herd these two ducks back into their crate all with whistle commands from the handler across the ring. See the video above.

Sheep dog herding a couple ducks very successfully at SAFF, 2019

The influence of Tommye Scanlin

I can’t actually summarize in words the influence of Tommye Scanlin on my work, teaching, and tapestry world in general. Her quiet presence through her mentoring, blog, and the times we’ve been able to spend together has helped me grow as a teacher and artist. It is at her urging that I applied for the Lillian E. Smith artist residency and I was pleased to receive the McClure-Scanlin Residency Award for my stay there. (Though her name is on the award, it should be noted that she has no influence on who it is given to.)

Tommye was staying at LES for a few days while I was there and she showed me some of her favorite haunts. We talked some about tapestry design, her recent work on TWO books about tapestry design and her own work, and I was able to see a little more about how she develops her designs. (Those books of hers will be out in 2020. You’re going to want to read both of them, so watch for them starting next summer.) I found that it was really helpful to see the environment through another artist’s eyes. Thank you Tommye.

Wedge weave and some waterfalls

The next week I had a marvelous day with Connie Lippert. We’ve had some interactions through the American Tapestry Alliance over the years. We were co-chairs of American Tapestry Biennial 10 and supported each other through the steep learning curve of that volunteer job. So I was thrilled when I realized the residency was only about 40 miles from where she lived. She agreed to let me take up an entire day with an interview about her work and then some hiking. I had so much fun watching her weave, talking about her tapestry practice, and then of course seeing some of the beauty of South Carolina. If you’d like to learn more about wedge weave and Connie’s practice of it, I recommend her biography, Connie Lippert: A Wedge Weaver’s Storied Cloth by Carole Greene.

Connie Lippert’s signature wedge weave, demonstrated on her Macomber floor loom.

A hike at Black Mountain State Park

I had a great time exploring the woods in this beautiful state park just outside of Clayton, GA. The Tennessee Rock Trail is fairly short and has fantastic views of the Appalachians. The day I was there was very clear and I could see well into North Carolina. I enjoyed following the guidebook, learning about different kinds of trees, and enjoying the views. The leaves were changing slowly and I love how the colors make little bubbles of red and gold across the landscape.

Black Mountain State Park, Clayton, GA. Photo: Rebecca Mezoff

Some of my own work at the residency

I’ll start off by saying that I did have to work on my book quite a bit while there. Timing wise, there wasn’t any choice, but I did have some time playing with paint and fiber. Much of what I worked on is in-process tapestry designs which will take awhile to see the light of day. But I did play around a lot with color, fiber, and some small weavings.

If you follow Tommye Scanlin’s blog, you’ll recognize this door from her time working at this center. I will admit that there is something about it! I sat down one night to see if I could match the color in watercolor and then in fiber. It started as just an exercise—seeing if I could remember the color and then compare it to a photograph. But it just didn’t seem right, so I took the fiber and painted paper outside to see them next to the actual door. They were pretty close. I wouldn’t call this color red, but neither would I call it purple or even red-violet. Our words for color are not very accurate.

From there I made some yarn out of that fleece, carding together the two colors to the right (of three) from the photo where I’m holding it against the door. The yarn is fairly close to the color of the door and now I think I’ll just weave a door for my tapestry diary.

I have not yet finished that little door tapestry diary piece, but it is next up in the queue. I’m currently finishing a small memory of the red leaves at LES. I think these are Sourwood leaves, but I’m not especially knowledgeable about such things. What I know comes from following signs and guidebooks at places like Black Mountain State Park and some identifications by Tommye.