I have had my work at Taos Wools in Arroyo Seco for much of this year now and three pieces have sold this fall. Both of the Inscription pieces went home with new owners and Emergence VII went to one of my long-time students.
Below is a photo of Inscription I as I was packaging it up to bring to the gallery in Taos earlier this year. This tapestry was about words and about losing them a piece at a time. I really enjoyed the color gradation and that bright pink. The yarns are hand-dyed by me. The ideas here came from the work of Anni Albers and it is something I’d like to return to in future.
Rebecca Mezoff, Inscription I (detail), 50 × 15 inches, hand-dyed wool and cotton
I wove this piece in 2009 (according to my own blog which functions better than my memory). This is what I wrote about it back then:
The title of the piece is "Inscription." The piece was inspired by Anni Alber's thoughts about thread as text. "Through her continuous investigation of thread as a carrier of meaning, not simply as a utilitarian product, she was able to create art that functions as a visual language..." (Anni Albers by Nicholas Fox Weber and Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi: Thread as Text: The Woven Work of Anni Albers, Virginia Gardner Troy, pg 28)…. As a big reader and a worshiper of the written word (as well as a person with a large book tumor growing in her home), I loved the idea of creating a weaving that the viewer scanned for meaning somewhat like one would read text. This piece was the result.
The Bauhaus project I mentioned did happen and culminated in two group shows with Cornelia Theimer Gardella and James Koehler.
Inscription II was a companion piece to Inscription I and they were often displayed together. The photo of the whole piece is pretty horrible. The colors are as you see in the detail next to it. That piece was the first one to sell at Taos Wools.
Rebecca Mezoff, Inscription II, 13 × 37 inches, hand-dyed wool and cotton
Rebecca Mezoff, Inscription II (detail), 13 × 37 inches, hand-dyed wool and cotton
While I was teaching in Taos in October, Emergence VII went to a new home and I was able to grab some photos of it before it was packed and shipped.
Emergence VII is the piece to the left next and Emergence I is to the right. Emergence I is still available at Taos Wools.
Rebecca Mezoff, Emergence VII, 45 × 45 inches, hand-dyed wool and cotton
The Emergence series had to do with time and finding new ways of living for me personally. The spiral design came from petroglyphs near my then-home in Velarde, NM. I spent years wandering Black Mesa searching for petroglyphs which are everywhere there. You can find out more about them and maybe even visit by going to Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project.
Rebecca Mezoff, Emergence VII, 45 x 45 inches, hand-dyed wool, cotton; photo by Cornelia Theimer Gardella
Of course there will be more tapestries! Taos Wools has a few more for sale and I’m prepping the next big one on the loom right now. It is likely I won’t have anything else large for sale until about a year from now for “secret reasons,” but if you’d like to add a currently-available big tapestry to your collection for the holidays, reach out to Taos Wools.
The quote below frequently runs through my head. Sometimes you can say what is coming up and sometimes you just don’t want to. I’ll let you in on the tapestry weaving secrets sometime next year. Until then, keep watching Change the Shed where clues will undoubtedly leak out.
“ I must decline, for secret reasons.”
If you’re looking for some support with a tapestry project right now, I’m doing a weave-along on Change the Shed. You can find all the details in my last blog post here: https://rebeccamezoff.com/blog/2024/11/13/winter-trees-weave-along