I can pinpoint the moment when I started my practice of sketch tapestry. I had just driven 70 miles from my childhood home in Gallup, NM to Petrified Forest National Park in early November of 2016 through a driving rainstorm. It was the kind of rain that the desert longs for. The rain that fills the arroyos to gushing almost instantly. The rain that makes the desert smell like sage and wet sand.
I arrived at the national park to start my artist residency just as the sun came out. As I was taking my looms and yarn out of my car and settling into the casita I would live in for the month, a rainbow appeared over the painted desert just outside.
Rainbow over the painted desert at Petrified Forest National Park.
The next day as I started my daily wandering around the park to which I had suddenly been given unlimited any-time access, I decided to do a small tapestry weaving every day from something I saw. It became a way to spend time with the events of the day and mark them in a weaving.
Ever since that day in the park, I’ve been taking a notebook and loom with me as I wander outside. Sometimes I weave, sometimes I just sit and watch and scribble a few notes. Some days I take photos of things I might want to weave, other days I don’t document anything at all. The important thing is allowing myself to wander, to look at the marvels of the earth, and to take myself on adventures, short or long to make sure that I get away from my screen-centric everyday life.
I’ve woven many small pieces while backpacking and car camping and while in cars and on airplanes and while relaxing in my room after a day of teaching at a conference or retreat.
I now call the collection my tapestry diary. But the finished product isn’t the point for me. The point is the wandering. It is so important to step away from the lists and the screens and the expectations that my regular job brings and find joy in experiencing new things. The trick is allowing myself to do that. It can help to go with people you love, to laugh, and to take along a ground cloth so you can lay down and watch the clouds (a park bench or a big log would also work fine!).
I’ve shown you some of the work I did this year in this vein in Iceland. The black beach tapestry is my favorite from that trip so far. I wrote about it HERE.
Cameron Peak Fire 2020. Rebecca Mezoff, 3 x 3 inches.
I’ve woven small reflective tapestries at other artist residencies, on camping and backpacking trips, and from my own studio. I wrote a blog post in 2020 that links those projects HERE. The Cameron Peak Fire tapestries are ones I created in this way and I’m still working on this series as the fire scar from 2020 continues to change, impact the watershed, and recover.
Summer of Tapestry
This summer I’m excited to share this practice with all of you. I’ll be exploring my home base of Colorado and southern Wyoming from my front door as well as longer trips to the mountains and I’m inviting you to join me for your own explorations.
In this multi-week workshop I want to encourage you to go on your own adventures and document them through small, informal tapestries. We’ll focus on finding inspiration in our environment, whether that is in your home, out your window, on a trip, or in your neighborhood. Then I’ll give you ideas to translating your experiences into small tapestries. You can weave “in the field” or you can document your adventures with camera or pencil and do the weaving later.
The trailer video for the class is below. If you’re reading this via email, click HERE to view it on YouTube.
There is more information on the course page HERE as well as a registration button. We’ll have a few real-time meet ups which will be recorded and I’ll be giving you four prompts over the course of 6 weeks to help you get started. All you need is some simple tapestry weaving tools, a camera and/or notebook, and a willingness to wander a bit.
Here is the 2 x 2 inch tapestry I wove from that desert rainstorm the first day at Petrified Forest National Park. I didn’t have the rainbow colors of yarn but I did have some dyed fleece, so I spun the yarn before weaving. The blues are weaversbazaar.
Rebecca Mezoff, Petrified Forest tapestry diary, Rainbow tapestry, 2 x 2 inches, hand-dyed and handspun weft, wool weft, cotton