Tapestry Show

Bhakti Ziek, A Tenuous Thread

Bhakti Ziek, A Tenuous Thread

I had the great joy of seeing Bhakti Ziek’s show at Form & Concept Gallery in Santa Fe this week. The show is a retrospective of over 50 years of her weaving life.

Bhakti’s work is full of narrative. The large installation piece that anchors the show, Wheel of Life: The Passing on of Knowledge was her thesis project at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1989. The work uses various dye techniques and a lampas structure. Each panel is 44 x 33.5 inches. There are many stories behind this work including a reference to her father who was a cello player. The piece’s main narrative about Christian monks in 552 AD who relieved China of some of their silkworms by hiding them in their hollow walking sticks thus ending China’s silk supremacy. The story of this work has a spy-thriller feel to it.

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Unusually spontaneous: Taos, churro fleece, and a textile show

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Unusually spontaneous: Taos, churro fleece, and a textile show

I took a trip to New Mexico on the spur of the moment last weekend. It is unusual for me to decide to take a trip that involves 6-7 hours of driving each way at the last minute, but the stars aligned, and off we went. We had some friends who we wanted to see who were there visiting from Europe and the first weekend of October is Taos Wool Festival weekend. Yes, I know that this festival left Taos and was held in Santa Fe. I didn’t go to the renamed Mountain and Valley Wool Festival partly in disappointment at it leaving Taos, but also because I was tired of driving and didn’t want to go all the way to Santa Fe when Taos was so beautiful.

Instead, I haunted Taos Wool’s pop-up shop and gallery show. One of the highlights of the weekend for me was hearing Connie Taylor speak about churro sheep, wool, and uses for their fleece. Connie is someone I met in 2005 when I was a student at Northern New Mexico Community College in the fibers department. At that time she had a big flock of churro sheep and was making 14 different colors of natural wool. (That fact still astounds me, but I saw it for myself and know it to be true.) I purchased her wool for my saltillo project. In Taos, she had her shade card with her, pictured below, along with a wide range of natural churro yarns.

Renditions: a fascinating show of small format tapestries all visible online

Renditions: a fascinating show of small format tapestries all visible online

I love viewing tapestries in person. I can get a close look at how they were constructed and if I’m lucky enough to be at an opening where the artist is present, I can ask them to show me the back along with peppering them with questions about their work. The small format unjuried tapestry show that the American Tapestry Alliance (ATA) holds every two years is one of my favorite shows because it is full of surprises. There are usually hundreds of tapestries and if I can see them in person, I can have a grand time seeing other people’s ideas and techniques not to mention imagery and color use.

Tapestry Translations: Stories from around the world

Tapestry Translations: Stories from around the world

The American Tapestry Alliance (ATA) puts on an unjuried small format show every two years. It is always displayed alongside the Handweavers Guild of America’s big event, Convergence. In 2020, Convergence will be in Knoxville.

ATA has announced this year’s show. The title is Renditions 2020 and all the information about it can be found HERE.

This is my favorite ATA show just because the diversity of submissions is so outstanding. It is a really fun show to see in person, so make sure if you’re at Convergence in Knoxville in the summer of 2020 that you go and see it! And if you live close enough, it is worth the drive to see this show. You can see some photos I took of the show in Providence, RI in 2016 in THIS blog post.

Travels of one tapestry postcard

Travels of one tapestry postcard

The postcard I wove for the Here and There project did make it to Michigan. I wrote about the adventures of making it HERE.

I love sending real mail. Cards or letters with stamps on them and maybe some artwork. Perhaps tapestry postcards are something I’ll do again.

Here and There online exhibit

The postcard exchange was through the American Tapestry Alliance and you can see the whole online show on the ATA website HERE.

Dorothy Clews (hopefully with a team of helpers!) did a tremendous amount of work to make this postcard exchange happen. In her curators intro she talked about subverting the postal system by sending these pieces of art naked through the mail—sometimes around the world.

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The saga of the tapestry postcard

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The saga of the tapestry postcard

The title of my postcard is Waypoints. I’m including photographs here because I don’t think they’re going to make it into the ATA show which is quite disappointing actually… but entirely my fault.

I started this piece forever ago. With the intention of actually finishing it of course. I was planning ahead, sure I’d get it finished and mailed before the end of the summer, determined not to be the last person in the show to mail their card. Partway in I had an idea I liked better for the theme but I was lucky to get this one done, so the new design will have to wait.

I determined, mostly from photographs I took likely with this very blogpost in mind, that my original intention was to finish this piece that is on my biggest copper pipe loom before starting the postcard for the ATA exchange. I do remember looking at this piece, thinking that I didn’t much want to cut it off but neither did I want to finish it (because I still can’t, after a couple years, decide how to do that), so instead I went to the garage and…

"Can we see all of it?"

"Can we see all of it?"

My tapestry, Displaced: Refugee Blanket has been accepted to the Small Tapestry International 6: Beyond the Edge juried show of the American Tapestry Alliance. I wrote about the piece HERE.

I have so appreciated all the kind words about the work I’ve received thus far. It is a difficult subject. It is never easy to face our humanity and the ways that we are culpable in the displacement of people around the globe.

I’ve had an interesting question crop up repeatedly and I wanted to talk about it. Many people have asked me if they can see the “whole” tapestry. They mean that they would like to see the work unfolded and they want to know if the juror saw it unfolded when she made her decision.