Georgia's mountain

I do a lot of driving for my job.  I try not to take kids in far-flung reaches of the county (and my county is bigger than most eastern states by a lot), but I did take a child who lives right under Peternal--Georgia O'Keefe's self-aclaimed personal mountain.  I love going up to the Piedra Lumbre.  I drove up to see this child this morning and had a few extra moments at Abiquiu Lake.  The water is high, and at 8am on a Tuesday, it is perfectly quiet.

I find myself telling people occasionally that the Piedra Lumbre is my heart place.  I'm not entirely sure what that means even.  We went to Ghost Ranch a lot when I was a kid, so maybe that childhood association has something to do with it.  It is mostly just a feeling I have when I am there... that the place is somehow different and that time doesn't mean anything there among the red rocks and surrounding mesas.  I know many tapestry weavers who have woven images of Peternal.  I've never been drawn to weaving landscapes myself.  All I know is that there is no way I could capture the feeling of the place in a tapestry.  It is too silent, too huge, and too personal.  I'll leave Georgia's mountain for her...  I can't promise I won't climb it again though.  But when I'm on the top I'll say a little prayer of thanks to Georgia for being the woman of the Piedra Lumbre that she was.

Archival or not?

Wow.  It has been a day.  I learned some things today.  Here they are in no particular order:

1.  If you live in northern NM and do home health care, take a vacation from the Friday before to the Monday after Holy Week.  There is a reason they schedule spring break for the kids then.  I had five (that is 5!) no-shows or cancellations today.  I had 5 kids scheduled.  That is 100%... worst day ever in terms of seeing kids.  Remind me to go hiking in Utah next year between Palm Sunday and Easter.  I decided after about the 3rd cancellation that next Friday, which is Good Friday, which I had decided to work, was now a holiday.  I think that is smart.

2.  NM is windy in the spring no matter what.  The kids at the charter school were doing an easter egg hunt and a little kid just got decapitated by a blown door.

3.  Stopping in at the fiber arts center (EVFAC) is always a good way to spend a half an hour when you've just spent your morning standing outside people's houses knocking on doors that don't open.  You can look at the new yarn, chat with the ladies who work there, and maybe have a few moments to sit on the couch and breathe.  This is what I found while sitting on that couch.

From Tapestry Topics (the newsletter of the ATA), Summer 2006, "The Cycle" by Lany Eila.

"...Suddenly I realized that perhaps the medium of tapestry itself is an apt metaphor for our perilous lives.  We spend extravagant quantities of time and energy carefully planning and weaving our lives and work, tucking in the stray threads, guarding against possible dangers, making it all to last--archival.  And yet we are constructing these lives and tapestries from inherently fragile materials; in the former, with bodies and relationships, in the latter, with hair, plant fiber, and color."  She was writing about a piece she did called "The Cycle" in response to catastrophies in her life and the world.

I have spent so much energy in my life making sure the pieces fit together snugly--sewing in the ends so to speak.  And too much time guarding against possible dangers.  My work life is structured and scheduled to the minute.  It is the only way I have found to make enough money in 3 days a week to allow me to weave the rest of the week.  There are days when my meticulous planning pays off and the day goes smoothly.  Then there are days like today.  Can I learn not to make my life so archival?  Probably...  Would that include more chocolate and trips to the hot springs?  We can hope!

I have been designing work lately that seems risky and far from the tapestry I learned in my traditional northern NM teaching.  I have stalled a little at getting any of this work beyond the design table.  It seems so fragile and from some place so far inside me that I am not sure I want it to see the bright light of day.  I am afraid both of what the piece might reveal about me and the possibility that I may never be able to go back

 to what is safe and "acceptable."  Of course, in time, I will move forward.  If we don't grow we grow bored and empty.  It is the waiting for that courage to kick in that is difficult.

More about looms...

I sold my Gilmore.  You may remember this post from last year about my beloved Gilmore loom which I was forced to sell due to the sheer number of looms that were falling from the sky into my lap (all from my grandparents who had to move to Connecticut and abandon their weaving equipment to their ecstatic granddaughter).  I had that loom posted for sale on the internet for a very long time and had resigned myself to visiting it now and then in my storage shed and reassuring it that I would find it a good home--that really I still loved it but just didn't have room for it in my little house.  A very nice woman named Nancy and her husband rented a truck and drove all the way from Oklahoma (a state I have paid little attention to as it has no mountains) to pick up my sweet loom.  The fact that they rented a truck and drove all that way reassured me that the loom was going to a good owner, and frankly, what with tripping over the other two looms in my house (and I'm not even going to talk about the other three looms in the storage shed--no wait, there are four plus two inkle looms--oh geez I need an intervention here), I really haven't missed the Gilmore much.  I hope she has a long and lovely life weaving beautiful fabric in Nancy's studio.  Thanks for coming to get her Nancy!

And in a completely random switch in thought, I finally got around to looking up Saint Maurice on Wikipedia.  Lyn alerted me to the existence of this particular saint after my fumbling invocations surrounding the death of my computer.  Saint Maurice's history is full of a lot of Roman Emperors, bloodshed, martyrdom and a lot of other things that make me squirm, but if you're looking for someone to pray to, he is, according to Wikipedia, "the patron saint of soldiers, swordsmiths, and armies.  He is also inexplicably the patron saint of weavers, dyers, and invoked against menstrual cramps."  I have to agree with Lyn that he could be one useful guy!

And here is my progress on the 48 inch square tapestry (which I'm not revealing the name of it yet mostly because I don't have one--but you can pretend I'm trying to be mysterious.)  That is 20 inches baby!!!  Only 28 inches to go.  The color here is completely blown out and it looks like I just gave away my sneaky warp-tension fixing device (called a T pin).  I'm rolling along at the average rate of 2.5 inches a day.  Most excellent.  There was a frightening moment earlier this week where my teacher suggested that I consider tearing out 3 inches to change a color.  I was praying to Saint Maurice and swearing under my breath at the same time.  We finally decided that leaving the color as it was fit with my intentions for the piece.  The truth is nothing could have made me back out 3 inches on a 48 inch piece anyway.  I know weavers who would have (my teacher is one), but I just can't do it.  I have a lot of patience, but not that much.

Brother-in-law to the rescue

I posted awhile back about the death of my trusted Mac Powerbook G4.  I had pretty much given up getting the data back, and stoically refused to think about the loss of all those little bits and bites of data I generated over several years that were gone in a puff of electronic whimsey.  BUT I have an absolutely amazing brother-in-law who despite my frequent abuse of his incredible brain power, continues to help me out with fixing just about anything that could possibly be fixed (and I believe he lives by the mantra that anything can be fixed somehow).  Seriously, this man can make anything run again.  For goodness sake, he replaced the head gasket on my sister's aging Ford Escort (incongruously named Red even though it is bright blue in color) TWICE!  He can fix everything from cars to washing machines to plumbing.  So it wasn't too far off to think maybe he could fix my defunct computer.  He volunteered to give it a go, really he did.  The thing is, it looks like he actually might recover that data for me.  Now it is clear that I worshiped the ground he walked on before this feat, but if he actually hands me a DVD with the contents of my hard drive on it, he will have earned a place in my pantheon of worshiped beings--or at least a whole truckload of bribery beer.  Here are the photos of the gutting of my Powerbook.  I couldn't look.  We started by nesting my computer with my sister's identical computer in the hopes that some sort of electronic synthesis would take place and jump start the ailing computer.  No dice.  So Luke started doing what he does best--he took the whole thing apart.  And there is my hard drive.  Turns out there was probably some electronic glitch in the thing and he actually did get it to spin again... lets hope it spins again long enough to transfer my photos to a DVD.

Fuller Lodge Report

Here I am last night at the Fuller Lodge show in Los Alamos (Espanola Valley Fiber Arts show).  This piece is called Awakenings III and it was woven probably in 2005.  People there seemed to like it.  The show was well done especially considering the small space.  They had adequate lighting, snacks (one woman had gluten free chocolate chip cookies!! which made my day), name tags, and some really nice people making sure it all turned out well.  The work in the show (which was juried) was very nice.

And I can report that the staff at the Starbucks across the street is quick and friendly.  I haven't been in one of those since I lived in Seattle, but if you live in Los Alamos, things are a little different than the rest of rural New Mexico.  (For example they have a REAL grocery store--meaning the produce is edible and they even have some organic stuff.  I have to stop there before I get overly expressive about the benefits of living in Los Alamos vs Espanola.)

Fuller Lodge Show

I am a member of the Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center.  I can't say enough good things about this organization.  The people who work there are amazingly helpful and the variety of classes and services for weavers and other fiber people are wonderful.  I think the fact that a place like this exists at all in a small town like Espanola is a miracle.  If you're ever in the area, go and visit. EVFAC has a couple shows a year and I think this is the first time for them to have a show at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos.  I haven't been to Fuller Lodge yet, but I'm going tonight for the opening.  Fuller Lodge has a website where they actually post photos of the work.  Unfortunately the photos aren't fabulous, but I think the fact that they do this for their shows, which go up frequently, is quite amazing.  The website is www.artfulnm.org.  Click on the EVFAC exhibit link.  The pieces I submitted to this show are old ones for me.  I like the piece with two panels and the large green circles the best.  That piece is called Meridians and it hung at my sister's wedding at Quarai (an old ruined adobe church south of Albuquerque).  The newer pieces I have I am saving for some juried shows and for the Bauhaus show which may hang before the end of this calendar year.  So it will be odd to go to a show where I have work hanging that I don't really connect with that much any more, but I suppose that happens for most artists at some point.  I feel like I have moved so far beyond those pieces that I'll have trouble talking about them.

Here is a photo which I am including mostly to mark my progress.  This is the piece that I'm weaving at James Koehler's studio and I realize that you can't tell what it is at all yet, but I just want to remind myself that I am making progress!  When that tape

 measure says 48 inches I'll be really happy.  :)  It says just over 14 if you can't read that.

And I went hiking last Saturday north of Taos at Cebolla Mesa.  It was hot down on the Rio Grande river.  There were pasque flowers

 out along the trail (at least I think this is what these flowers are... I'm not a botanist though and could just be really wrong).  Last night we got a couple inches of snow and the school I work at on Fridays was cancelled.  I never tire of getting snow days as an adult... reminds me of the glee of getting them as a child (oh so very infrequently in Gallup, NM).

Walking on the Rim

A lot of my inspiration for making art comes from being outside.  I'm a big walker.  My yellow lab Cassy is getting older and I'm watching her slow down and wondering what will happen to our daily walks?  We love to clamber over mesas for miles every day (or at least I love to do this and she humors me).  But she is approaching 10 years old and is not as thrilled to just peek around this or that corner or over that rise any more.  Will I have to leave her behind?  I will have to continue walking and probably to get another dog when she is gone because there is no better motivation to walk than a dog's begging for some exercise.  I've been plying her with glucosamine and even lift her out of the back of the truck to save her joints (her vet recommended it--I'm not completely nuts!)  The big skies of New Mexico just seem to help me forget all the details that clog my mind day to day and that lets me feel possibilities for art--and other things in life.

Here are some photos of me out on the west rim trail of the Rio Grande Gorge.  That is Wheeler Peak in the background near Taos.  Mostly I think I'm thinking about how I'm going to redo my website completely--and how much this needs doing--and how I don't have the time to do it right now or the money to pay someone to do it for me.  And then I saw the sunset and the alpineglow on the mountain, and I realized how fabulous it was just to be outside and able to walk.  The website can wait a little bit... at least for today.