Excellence in Fibers

I have been haunting the mailbox for a week. A friend in Denver got his issue days and days ago. Finally yesterday my under-my-breath-whispered-hope-while-facing-the-mailbox-with-key-in-hand paid off.

My Winter 2015/16 issue of Fiber Art Now was inside.

There was this....

The issue is full of fantastic articles about a wide variety of fiber artists... I am so happy the re-ran my article about Susan Martin Maffei and Archie Brennan. Seeing it again reminded me of the wealth of knowledge those two master tapestry weavers possess and give to the rest of us. Thank you Archie and Susan!

And the best part of this issue is the flip side!

The Excellence in Fibers catalog.
I found the artwork gorgeous and challenging. There are a huge variety of pieces from all over the world including three tapestry artists, Celina Grigore, Julia Mitchell, and Jon Eric Riis. I found it incredibly inspiring.

I'm off to make something.

A conversation about Rebecca Mezoff's tapestry with Fiber Art Now. See the webinar replay.

What a fun thing it is to participate in a conversation in webinar format. If you missed my webinar with Fiber Art Now's FANFare yesterday, you can watch it below.

I have always been a very introverted person, but my 17 years of practice as an occupational therapist forced me to learn to interact with other people quickly and to think on my feet. This is the kind of challenge that made this webinar fun to do. The live format is great and of course we always wish for more time for questions! I certainly can't think of my questions that quickly, so if you have them, put them in the comments below or contact me and maybe I'll do a blog post about it.

As you watch it, here are more images and some further explanation about things I was talking about.

The most important part of the webinar for me was the last third where I was talking about the importance of learning and my philosophy about teaching tapestry. Teaching tapestry in a way that is accessible to people in many different life situations is important to me. Expanding the reach of tapestry in the world both as an art medium and as something that is just fun to make is what it is all about for me.

Here are some more details from the webinar:

I talked some about the Reno Fiber Guild (and I am eternally grateful to these wonderful people) and how I started trying to make images in doubleweave which led me to tapestry. This was the kind of thing I was making just before I returned to New Mexico to study Rio Grande weaving at Northern New Mexico Community College in El Rito, NM.

This was my studio in El Rito, the outside and the inside.

My studio in El Rito, NM. 2004-2007

The walls of that studio were five foot thick adobe. It was heated with a woodstove and since I didn't keep the stove lit all the time, it was freezing in there all winter. Still, the light was great from some huge skylights and I wove many things there at the same time I was taking some classes with James Koehler. I would eventually drop out of the Rio Grande program and became James Koehler's apprentice in Santa Fe.

Here are some images of Northern New Mexico Community College in El Rito. They no longer have the Fiber Arts degree program there, but you can take a continuing education class from Karen Martinez who was my instructor if you are interested. She is an amazing artist.

The first "tapestry" I ever wove on one of the walking looms at NNMCC, 2004. It is now a runner in front of my loom and you might spot it in the webinar replay.

This is an example of some of the first tapestry weavings I did.

I talked about the spiral motif in the Emergence series of tapestries. I lived on Mesa Prieta. It is completely covered with black basalt boulders and a great percentage of those rocks are covered with petroglyphs covering a couple thousand year span of time. The spiral images in my work came from the experience of living on that mesa and hunting the glyphs every day on my walks.

My niece Megan with one of the most spectacular petroglyphs on the mesa. This one was about 50 yards from my house.

The strawbale house on Mesa Prieta.

Coming down the mesa after a petroglyph-searching hike. The road turns to rutted dirt just past this point.

One of the spirals on the mesa. Overlooking the Rio Grande River when the cottonwoods were changing.

If you are interested in the petroglyphs, my landlady, Katherine Wells is the person who has spent much of the last couple decades of her life making sure these amazing petroglyphs are preserved. You can find out more about the place and perhaps schedule a visit HERE.

If you are interested in seeing more about my dyeing, this YouTube video shows some of the process.

I mentioned my teacher James Koehler. He does still have an artist page on the American Tapestry Alliance's website. This is an example of his work.

James Koehler, Harmonic Oscillations LXIII

Cornelia Theimer Gardella, James Koehler, and myself at the opening of our show, Interwoven Traditions: New Mexico and Bauhaus show in Erfurt, Germany, September 2010.

Rebecca Mezoff, Barn Burned Down, 5 x 17 inches

I talked about this tapestry and the inspiration from the old barn in the Austrian alps. What I didn't really say in the webinar was how much stories have a part in my design. This one glimpse of light through the slats of a barn created a whole story in my head about light and fire and things disappearing and making way for new things. This piece and another reference the haiku below.

I talked a little bit here about the show I did in Germany with James Koehler and Cornelia Theimer Gardella. The photo above of the three of us was taken at that opening. THIS blog post has more about that experience.

The discussion about representative tapestry versus abstract work both in my work and in tapestry historically is always interesting to me (and perhaps no one else!). I gave the example of this piece being one of the most representative tapestries I've done.

Rebecca Mezoff,

Cherry Lake,

8 x 13 inches

... and clearly if you don't know the story you wouldn't know what this was. I took a hike to a lake called Cherry Lake in southern Colorado and the blue became the lake and sky and the pick and pick pattern the aspen trees that were changing colors. Many of them were red that year which is unusual.

As I was talking about the American Tapestry Alliance, I mentioned Mary Lane (an indispensable part of the organization!) in response to Cami's statement about their Facebook tapestry of the day. And I noticed fleetingly that someone noted who actually does this for ATA. I missed who that was, but please put it in the comments below for me!

Partway through we had a few technical difficulties and Victoria had up the Kasala Gallery page. I didn't think quickly enough to comment on this, but it is my new gallery in Crested Butte, CO.

Cami mentioned my newsletter. You can sign up HERE.

I referenced my YouTube channel which has many videos about tapestry. I was talking about how much better my video-making abilities have gotten. That is true... and more to learn every day.

Leave comments below or

contact me

with what was interesting to you about this webinar. I'd love to have your input and help in growing the community of tapestry artist/weavers all over the world.

Have questions about running a tapestry studio?

Fiber Art Now has a monthly webinar program where they interview artists called FANFare. I'm their artist this Sunday, April 12th at 3pm EST. You'll be able to ask questions during the live broadcast.

I have greatly enjoyed past episodes and am looking forward to participating in my own show. We'll talk about my creative process, tapestry production in general, and the joys and challengings of running a small fiber-based business.
I'm off to clean my studio a bit so you can actually see the work in progress! Please join me Sunday if you can.

You can register here (it is free): http://fiberartnow.net/fiberartfanfare/#.VSfnaWYgrW4
And if you miss the episode, go to that link and you can watch the replay.

Wherein Rebecca gets an article published in Fiber Art Now... and goes a little nuts with the yarn.

If you are not a Fiber Art Now subscriber, I highly recommend becoming one! And you'll want to get a copy of the current issue because it has an article by yours truly.

Remember this video?

This is what a week of intense dyeing does to you:

You mistake wool for a cool dip in a puppy pool.
That is my article:

It is called American Tapestry Biennial 10: The Humble Value of Concentration. The subtitle is not mine. The editor added it. It is a great title, but the credit belongs to Dr. Jessica Hemmings who wrote the essay by that name for the show. You can read Dr. Hemmings wonderful essay in the ATB10 catalog which you can get from the American Tapestry Alliance. (Highly recommended because guess what? The catalog is also full of amazing photos of, well, tapestries!)

What came in the mail today...

I came home today to find this in front of my door. I live in a condo in Santa Fe, and my patio is very small. It was completely full.

That is almost 500 pounds of Harrisville Designs yarn. Fortunately, most of it is not for me (though I will admit more than one of these boxes is mine). Also fortuitously, most of the new owners of this yarn are picking it up in the next few days. I don't know where the box and a half that belongs to me is going to go, but I suspect I had better start dyeing and weaving it soon because tapestries can be sold and yarn is just going to take up space in my dye studio (which is really just my garage but "garage" sounds way less sexy than "dye studio").

And in other exciting mail-related news, my new issue of Fiber Art Now showed up today. I did a little jig all the way from the mailbox. I love getting a new issue of this magazine. And though I have only flipped through it briefly thus far, I noted an exciting article about one of my tapestry heroes, Sarah Swett. I adore her work and her vivid imagination. Her story-telling ability is wonderful and I so wish I could just curl up with a cup of tea in the corner of her studio and watch her weave for a few days. Check out her website and definitely read the article in FAN.

Another article features a fellow Santa Fe tapestry artist and friend, LaDonna Mayer. (You should check out this blog post about her series after you read the article in FAN.) From the Fiber Art Now article (Spring 2014, Volume 3, Issue 3, page 33):

LaDonna's images serve to capture themes of America life. She likes to contrast the old with the new, the secular with the religious, the peaceful landscape with the bustle of city life. To LaDonna, the series as a whole represents America....

All I have to say is, can you imagine weaving a city from every state in the US and Washington D.C.? The series is called 51 American Cities and it is quite impressive to see the whole show at once.

At the risk of sounding a bit too gushy, this issue of Fiber Art Now is completely gorgeous. I highly recommend it!

And one last thing before I sign off for the night, being quite tired from lifting 50 pound boxes of wool. I have big news coming soon about my new online class, so if you don't get my newsletter, now would be a great time to add your name to my mailing list. You can do that by clicking HERE. Thanks so much! I promise I won't send you more than two a month unless there is a dire fiber-related emergency that just has to be announced.

Fiber Art Now, Spring 2013

I was happy have a very small contribution to the Spring 2013 issue of Fiber Art Now. The question was, "How does your environment impact your artistic process?"

I happened to be driving through Pueblo, CO this weekend which has a Barnes & Noble right off the freeway. I knew that Fiber Art Now was carried on the B&N newsstand and pulled over to get an extra copy. I started scanning the crafting magazines for it--you know, the spot where you find 25 knitting magazines, Handwoven, and the magazines with photos of beautiful studios and/or scrapbooks. And I didn't see it and I jumped right to the conclusion that this particular B&N didn't carry it, and then I thought, well maybe they sold out! And then I looked a little farther to my right. And there it was with the art magazines. Right where it should be.