Last week Summer asked a question in the Design Solutions class that has gotten me thinking more about the evolution of a tapestry design. After a week of thinking about it, I was still unable to answer Summer’s question and I believe that is because the answer is different for every artist. She wanted to know where people get stuck in the design process and how do they manage to get unstuck.
Silvia Heyden is a wonderful example of someone who created her own system of weaving and managed to stay unstuck and prolific throughout her career.* Silvia took her inspiration largely from nature and her tapestry weaving style was informed by the structure of tapestry. Her work is abstract, colorful, and exciting. She worked with the forms that are easiest to weave and created her own way of expression which is quite unlike other tapestry artists. She was unafraid of color and often would take out whole sections of weaving even when the piece was off the loom and replace them.
Most of us struggle with the experimental approach Silvia had to her work. And without that willingness to experiment, making a tapestry design can bring us to a profoundly stuck-feeling place. I definitely understand where Summer’s question comes from and I do hear it often. Sometimes I hear it from inside my own head. Why does it feel so hard sometimes?
Silvia Heyden, Weaver’s Dance.
What I said in the Q&A in answer to Summer’s question was some version of this:**
Many people feel they can’t start until something is perfect. And it’ll never be perfect. So this means we just never start. We talk ourselves out of it by telling ourselves we’re not good enough, or because we haven’t been to art school we don’t know what we’re doing, or we just have to study 83 more concepts in that stack of design books and then we’ll be ready to start.
But if I’ve learned one thing in my years of weaving and teaching tapestry it is that you can’t learn what works unless you practice. It is so easy for being stuck to become a way of life.
This seems like a super simplistic answer and maybe it even seems a little unkind. But my answer in the end is, weave as much as you can. Weave and weave and weave. Weave the edge of that flower you liked. Weave that yellow color you loved in your daughter’s shirt. Weave the lines on that favorite rock you picked up on your last excursion to Yosemite.*** Just keep weaving. We learn through doing and when the perfectionist that lives in our head stands in the way of something we feel called to do, we’re letting that false voice win.****
I’ll also say that I think the perception that other people don’t struggle with design is false. I think professional artists still make things they don’t like. They’ve just learned better what they do like through doing and they make fewer mistakes because they have had so much practice. It isn’t that they’re more talented, they’ve just woven more tapestries.
And once you’re weaving more and trying out bits of your ideas, this last thing might be the ticket to success:
Allow yourself to become fascinated. Wonder what will happen if you mix these two colors together as you’re weaving that curve. Wonder how wrapping that warp one more time will change the shape of that bunny from your garden you’re weaving today. Let yourself sink into the doing of it and forget about the outcome. The piece will eventually be finished and guess what? When it is, you get to take it off the loom and start another one! Care less about the outcome and more about the moments. I think this matters so much especially right now in the middle of a global pandemic.
Everything I just wrote applies to myself in some measure, both in the past and today. I still use some very successful procrastination techniques to make sure that I don’t have to face the fear of starting a new large project. Never has my studio been cleaner than when I’m avoiding starting again. There are reasons weavers in other traditions have rules about empty looms. If the loom sits empty for too long, it is hard to fill it up again.
Later in the the afternoon of that live Q&A, I was looking at my email and read Seth Godin’s daily blog post and it did seem fitting for visual artists also.
“The simple cure for writer’s block
Write.
People with writer’s block don’t have a problem typing. They have a problem living with bad writing, imperfect writing, writing that might expose something that they fear.
The best way to address this isn’t to wait to be perfect. Because if you wait, you’ll never get there.
The best way to deal with it is to write, and to realize that your bad writing isn’t fatal.
Like all skills, we improve with practice and with feedback.”
*For more about Silvia, please watch the movie about her tapestry life called A Weaverly Path. There is a review of the movie by Lyn Hart HERE and you can see a trailer HERE. If you have a public library that uses Kanopy, you can probably stream it for free.
**Please understand I was not speaking directly to Summer here. I was speaking to the group of design students just wrapping up Design Solutions for the Artist/Weaver, Season 1 in a live Q&A session. If you’d like to take that course, it is available HERE.
***That’s probably illegal. Leave the rock there and take a photo.
****Read Shut Your Monkey by Danny Gregory if you need more help with this!
Header photo is a detail of the tapestry Sinking Leaves by Silvia Heyden.