“Weave every darn day.”
The image at the top of this blog post is a snapshot from an interview I did with Tommye Scanlin when we were both residents at Lillian E. Smith Center in Georgia. Tommye encouraged me to apply for that residency among others and I was fortunate not only to be able to spend two weeks in the Georgia woods one April but to find that Tommye herself was at a short residency during part of that time. Tommye’s fierce love of making art and her incredible skill at inspiring and teaching others to do so as well is one of the things I admire most about her. I did the interview as part of my Design Solutions for the Artist Weaver, Season 1 online course and you can watch it there.
The quote above is one that I think about frequently. One of Tommye’s considerable talents is inspiring students to make art. One of her most frequent comments is this one: Weave every darn day. You get better with practice and my own work and teaching have experienced this wisdom from Tommye over and over again.
Tommye has been a friend and mentor to me for many years. She is a dedicated artist now working mostly in tapestry. She is also an author and a committed educator. This review is about her third book.
Marking Time
Marking Time with Fabric and Thread is Tommye Scanlin’s latest book. The subtitle is Calendars, Diaries, and Journals within your Fiber Craft and it was published in late 2024 by Schiffer Publishing.
Table of Contents of Marking Time
This book is an engaging look at the practice of using fiber art and craft to mark time in some way. Tommye is well known for her yearly tapestry diaries and she has taught on and written about this subject for many years now. At the end of the book she does explore her own practice, but before that she lets the work of 30 artists who have used time in their work in some way speak to the variety of ways to note the passing of time using fiber art.
There are sections about calendars, diaries, and journals, data visualization, and using codes. Each of the three sections has 2-4 pages about the work of a particular artist. There is some commentary from Tommye, but most of the writing is in the artist’s voice. The photos are marvelous and support the text well. Some of the artist examples are about diaries that were carried out by making a piece of something every day. Others were about defined projects that lasted over a certain number of days or were carried out on a particular trip or artist residency.* There are images of artists working and images of work installed various places.
A beautiful tapestry example of work by Kay Lawrence in Marking Time.
For example, the pages about Ayesha Barlas describe her 100 days project during the Covid-19 pandemic during which she wove one 6 x 6 cm tapestry every day. There is a close-up image of one subset of the tapestries so we can study the detail and another photo of all 100 tapestries displayed with the artist standing next to them. Those of you who have taken my Design Solutions classes will remember an interview with Ayesha about this project.
Another example of a tapestry weaver’s work is Jennifer Edwards’ wave tapestries. She wove a series of twelve 3 x 3 inch tapestries in response to her feelings placing her mom in a memory care facility. Each tapestry has an image of a wave in it. She says (p 81), “After weaving one or two of the small waves, I realized there were many more to weave, as the waves were always shifting from week to week and sometimes within one day. The practice and focus of weaving these waves soon began to teach me many anchoring truths about or experience of being human.” She wove one 5 x 7 inch tapestry as a culmination of the wave series.
Jennifer Edwards wave tapestries from Marking Time
The section about data visualization discusses marking data in some way. Many people have done temperature projects where data from daily temperatures are recorded in knitting, crocheting, quilting, or some other way. Some of these projects are simply a way of marking data, others are comments on climate change, graphically representing the increasing temperature of the world in a visual way that can be more easily comprehended then a string of numbers.
And who doesn’t like the mystery of a code? The third major section of the book is about people who use codes to create fiber art. Scanlin reminds us that computer codes have a direct link to weaving. Early jacquard punch cards were the precursor to computers. They were also a significant invention for weaving as they allowed less hand manipulation and faster production launching the Industrial Revolution.
This section of the book about codes has information about the language code tapestries of Michael Rohde and Susan Martin Maffei’s use of quipu in her tapestry work alongside other fiber artists.
Michael Rohde, work in progress, Redacted. There are similar images with more about Rohde’s use of codes in Marking Time.
There are examples from many kinds of fiber art besides tapestry weaving. There are quite a few people who do stitch diaries. People making fabric books, mixed media assemblages, quilts, 3 dimensional woven structures, art from plastic packaging, knitting, and knotting. The book’s use of a wide variety of fiber art and practice to illustrate how a practice can evolve is inspiring and really interesting. Every time I pick this book up I have new ideas for my own tapestry work.
There is a chapter near the end of the book about Tommye’s own tapestry diary practice. She has been weaving a tapestry diary every year for almost 20 years now and they are gorgeous. You can see some of them on her website HERE and there are some gorgeous ones represented in the book. She tells her story of practice creating a routine around weaving to help structure her days.
The section of Marking Time about Scanlin’s own work has lovely photos of her process and tapestry diaries.
Tommye ends the book with some suggestions of how you can use time as an organizing principle in your own work. She includes many practical suggestions just in case the stories of 30+ artists weren’t enough to give you ideas!
The foreward is written by Sarah Swett, an artist who tackles time in her work every day in fiber and in her comic diary. Her introduction to this work is a perfect launch into the mysteries of making. “Once upon a time, there is a day. . .”
The book is 194 pages and hardcover. The dust jacket is clever. It has a poster printed on the inside that you could pin up in your work space to remind you of different ways you could use marking time in your own work. The binding is sturdy, the photos are clear and large, and the concepts are well illustrated. There is a clear table of contents and a bibliography and index.
Summary
This book is a joyful romp through the studios of 30 artists using time as an inspiration in their work. The approach for each artist is very different and that gives the book depth and intrigue. Scanlin supports the work of these artists with history, commentary, and her own work.
Tommye taught a 2-month concentration at Penland School of Crafts with Bhakti Ziek in 2017. I was able to visit them there during an artist residency nearby. Her tapestry diary that year was woven on a pipe loom and I think she did that because she knew she was going to be away from home for two months and needed to keep the diary going. A pipe loom is quite portable at least if traveling by car. See photo below.
Tommye Scanlin’s 2017 tapestry diary in progress as seen at Penland School of Craft.
“For me, part of the appeal of tapestry weaving is the slowness of the process. . . . There’s time to think about what has been woven and what is still to come. The empty warp is steadily filled with weft as something much more than the individual threads is created.””
Tommye Scanlin’s 2018 tapestry diary
Tommye Scanlin is an artist, author, and educator. She was a professor of art for decades and since her “retirement” has been teaching mostly tapestry weaving in retreats and workshops around the southern USA. Marking Time is her third book. I recommend all of them.
The Nature of Things (reviewed HERE, you can purchase it HERE)
Tapestry Design Basics and Beyond (reviewed HERE, you can purchase it HERE)
Marking Time with Fabric and Thread (reviewed in this post, you can purchase it HERE)
Note that all three of these books are available widely and if Bookshop.org doesn’t have a copy right now, ask your local bookshop to order you a copy.
Rebecca Mezoff with her copy of Tommye McClure Scanlin’s newest book, Marking Time with Fabric and Thread.
*I was honored that Tommye included some of my work in this book. There is a section about my Iceland residency and work there in the Journals section of the book.