Convergence Day 2

Convergence 2010. This is the first Convergence I have been to, and I have to say that I was a little overwhelmed at the beginning. They put a little sticker on your badge that says "First Timer". I guess this is so the other people wandering around with orange HGA bags can help you out if you look too lost.

I got here yesterday and first thing I did was buy a spinning wheel. I wanted to get that task out of the way right away and was glad I did because the inestimable Jim from Yarn Barn of Kansas sold me the only one of these wheels he had and I can take it home Sunday. I have a third of my latest piece left to do and need that wheel to avoid further lateral epicondylitis from trying to ply yarn with my fingers.

James Koehler's book is out and here he is at his book signing with apprentices Sheila Burke and Nancy. I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but it is full of color photos which are nicely printed. It is truly an art book. It is available on his website.

This is what you see when you first walk into the Albuquerque Convention Center--the yardage exhibit. The fabric is beautiful. If you walk up into the balcony you can actually feel swatches of it.

The vendor hall is a treasure trove. I have given myself very very strict instructions about what I can purchase there. I probably should have some sort of technological lock on my credit card. I usually buy many books while at conferences and it has taken a lot of willpower for me not to buy more than one. This time there were only two items on my shopping list, and on the second day, I have purchased both of those items and as they were both pricey, have told myself I can do no further purchasing as much as yarn like this calls to me! This is the Weaving Southwest booth. Their yarn is hand-dyed and gorgeous.

The two items were, as I mentioned above, the spinning wheel (ended up with a Schacht Ladybug which was not at all what I expected. But after trying the other candidates, it seemed to fit my needs and body the best. I hope I like it!) and James Koehler's new autobiography, Woven Color.

I have taken three classes so far. I took a free form knitting class from Adrienne Sloane which was interesting. She was hilarious and I appreciated the less-than-gentle nudge to try knitting without patterns. It is a good lesson in letting go of control... and in creating a mess and knowing how to fix it! I definitely created a mess. But I learned how to short-row and then knit off in another direction AND how to knit backwards. I'm proud of the last one. Not sure when I'll use it, but maybe if I do entrelac one day...

This morning I took a class from a fantastic Brit named Stacey Harvey-Brown about ancient and archival textiles. The description of how to make velvet blew me away--I had no idea. And the stream of photos of fabrics from the last 500 years which she has studied in libraries and museums across Europe was stunning.

This afternoon I took a class about photographing artwork. I am happy to report that I already knew how to do this. I thought maybe there were some magic secrets that I wasn't getting, but really everything I have been doing is right. I just have to put that new camera to use and keep shooting.

This evening I am going to Paisanos for a fantastic Italian gluten free meal (I cannot say enough good about this restaurant. They gave me hope for my gustatory future when I had none) and then to see a tapestry show I have been wanting to see.

Interwoven Traditions: New Mexico and Bauhaus Opening Saturday 7/24

So Convergence is upon us. It snuck up on me... but I am excited to meet many weavers and reconnect with ones I haven't seen in years. I hope to see some of the members of the Reno Fiber Guild who helped start me on my weaving way about a decade ago.

Here is the beautiful rack card Cornelia designed for our show. The photo is hers and the weaving detail is James Koehler's Rhythms of Nature. The show is at Open Space Gallery at the Open Space Visitors Center at 6500 Coors Blvd in Albuquerque. More information and the phone number of the gallery is available on their website here.

The opening is Saturday the 24th of July from 4-8 pm.

Further information about our project is available at the project website here. The show will go to Germany in September and October with the opening in Erfurt on September 5th at St. Michael's church at 5 pm.

Convergence: It begins.

I realized today (with some ferocity) that Convergence is upon us. I realized this as I was "killing" 45 minutes at Village Wools in Albuquerque (more like savoring 45 minutes in a great shop full of yarn). I saw a lovely guild show and then spent some time looking at Kathe Todd-Hooker's show. Suddenly I was talking to two women, one a teacher of doubleweave (who incidently also sells at Weaving Southwest whom I had not yet met), and the other a fiber enthusiast interested in learning tapestry. I was off chatting about weaving and where to learn in NM and suddenly realized the Convergence experience had started. I was in Albuquerque today to bring my family to the airport, but was sucked early into the conference vortex.

Before I can attend the conference for real (and mostly I am looking forward to seeing all the exhibits), I have to spend another marathon weaving day tomorrow. I am about 2/3rds of the way done with this one, but the next 7 inches are going to be intense and likely will take more time than the entire rest of the piece. This one is going to Germany and has to be finished in the next two weeks.

Interwoven Traditions: New Mexico and Bauhaus

Today Cornelia Theimer Gardella and I hung Interwoven Traditions: New Mexico and Bauhaus. Honestly, we had a great time. This was unexpected as I thought it might be difficult to get everything up and looking good. True, it took most of the day, but the results were excellent if I do say so myself.

The show is at the Open Space Gallery on 6500 Coors (between Montano and Paseo del Norte) in Albuquerque. The visitors center is an interesting place in it's own right. I recommend a visit (of course while the show is hanging).


Artwork (photo and design; weaving by James Koehler) below by Cornelia Theimer Gardella.


An empty gallery at 10 am...

And the helpers... These are Cornelia's friends from Germany. Paul and Stefan (probably spelled that wrong, sorry!) kept us laughing and provided some excellent technical skills (turns out Stefan is a stickler for getting things lined up--a real help when I'm tired and just want to get home--especially when associated hilarity is included). The T-shirts were special made for their American adventure. I loved "Bratwurst Abroad", but "Achtung Autobahn Kaputt" was also excellent. As I was wearily driving the two+ hours home, they zipped past me in their rented convertible waving and laughing.

Some peeks at the show... I have not included any photos of Conni's work as I didn't want to give away the best part of the show! Her Tomorrow II piece is worth the trip out to the gallery.

Go see it! The opening will be July 24th from 4-8.

Bauhaus Show Preparation...

It has been a while since I actually hung my own show. I forgot how much preparation time it takes to get a show ready, and I only have 4 pieces in this one!

Here they are ready to go to Albuquerque tomorrow morning to hang in the Open Space Gallery. It is good to finally be at the point where we can put it up!

The show is called Interwoven Traditions: New Mexico and Bauhaus and is the first of two shows; the second in Erfurt, Germany in September and October.

This show is a collaboration with Cornelia Theimer Gardella and James Koehler. See our project website for more information here.

A blue day...

I took a class today with Liesel Orend through Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center (EVFAC) about indigo. Liesel is an amazing natural dye master and a great teacher. I learned a lot about different kinds of indigo vats and thoroughly enjoyed the magic that is indigo. I even finally understood how to balance a vat and how to keep using it continually. I think I see an indigo vat in my future.

We did four different indigo dye vats: a soda/spectralite vat, a fermentation vat, a fresh plant (woad) vat, and an instant indigo vat. We started out picking woad in Liesel's dye garden. It is still very early in the season, and there wasn't much dye in those plants. We did it to see what we would get anyway.

Unfortunately my camera focused on the ground behind my hand, but this blurry yarn was the result of dying with the woad plant, a very light blue-green.

I think this is called the flower on the top of the indigo pot. I believe this was the fermentation vat. I liked the colors from this vat the best, but maintaining one is much more fussy! I doubt that I have the patience to maintain the temperature on the vat at all times, much less to wait a week after the bath is exhausted before I can use it again! Underneath this purple, the liquid is a grassy green.

Yarn coming out of the soda/spectralite bath.

Some of the yarn we dyed. People brought all kinds of fibers, some already dyed to overdye. I liked the results on good-quality wool and silk the best. Poor quality yarn (Clasgens anyone?) still looks bad once dyed in indigo.

I brought two skeins of Brown Sheep Worsted and a half pound skein of Harrisville singles. I dipped the Harrisville into the soda/spectralite vat three times. I did one skein of the Brown Sheep twice in the fermentation bath and the other once in the instant indigo bath. I will probably use the Brown Sheep yarn for a small knitting project. I liked the fermentation bath colors the best, but was also very pleased with the Harrisville. It dyed evenly and was quite dark. See the photo at the top of this post for those yarns.

A big thanks to Liesel for all her help, for sharing her beautiful studio and dye plants, and for answering my completely unrelated natural dye questions for an upcoming project. It was a stellar day.

Validation

I have loved all the comments on my last post about getting an MFA (master of fine arts). Thank you all for your thoughtful responses.

I like Juliet's suggestion of doing an ATA Tapestry Topics issue on this topic. I think there are probably a lot of fiber artists out there with opinions on the subject.

(I have also found out lately that there are a lot of fiber artists out there with opinions on spinning wheels. Thanks to the people who said, "Try out lots of wheels." I am going to do just that at Convergence. And thanks to EVFAC for loaning me this "emergency" Louet wheel until then! And yes, my lateral epicondylitis is feeling much better partly thanks to the hand therapist living in my head. Whew--sometimes my writing "style" is exhausting.)

How do we (people-who-define-ourselves-as-artists-sometimes) fill that need to "feel like an artist" when we don't have a degree in art? Work in fiber has traditionally been considered craft, not fine art. Having a tapestry of your painting woven was once considered a great honor and a mark of how good your art was (and places like the Victorian Tapestry Workshop in Australia still do this)--and these tapestries are fabulous, but those weavers are not the artists, they are the technicians. If we both design and weave a tapestry perhaps we are both an artist and a technician. Or is the act of weaving the tapestry any different than the act of painting a painting? Painters also need skill in craft and are also "technicians".

I do not believe, as some artists seem to, that craft is a dirty word. Craft has been a unifying force in our country in so many eras in history. My job-that-pays-the-bills, occupational therapy, started as a mental health profession that did crafts with soldiers returning from WWI to facilitate return to normal mental functioning. (About here I am wondering if I was born in the wrong era.)

Lyn asked how we fill the need to become "more" of an artist? And I think many of us wonder why we should feel we need to validate our art in the first place.

I love all the ideas about stimulating creativity: artist residencies, classes in other media, books, taking college classes but not necessarily in a degree-seeking program... I read something not long ago about a practice of carrying around a small sketch book/journal for ideas and making much of your day about creative process. I have found that when I do this, it really works. I do pull the little moleskine out of my jeans pocket and scribble something down and that gets me thinking and before I know it I have three more ideas. Most of these ideas will never make it into a tapestry, but it gets my creativity flowing and that is what is most important.

Some new questions I am mulling over tonight:

Is tapestry weaving an art form or a decorative art? In what way is it each or both? The word craft comes into play there also. I am finishing the Bauhaus Tapestry Project this summer and fall with shows in Albuquerque, NM and Erfurt, Germany. My study of the Bauhaus also brings up some of these questions. Initially, the Bauhaus had a master of form and a master of craft in each workshop. The master of form, perhaps unsurprisingly, got paid better than the master of craft. The idea however, was that the student had to learn both the craftsmanship of making something and the artistic design skills to make it a piece of art. The Bauhaus had the added intellectual goal of relating each kind of art to it's place in architecture.

All of these questions are murky and my thoughts about them are not at all clear--which is undoubtedly evident in this post. It is good to wonder about them however.

And finally, at least for tonight, thanks to Renee for saying, "You don't need a degree to have validation in the art world. Your work is your validation."

I agree Renee. I don't think I need an MFA to make me a "real" artist. But I do think that the work in a collaborative setting is extremely valuable, sometimes frustrating, and mostly fruitful. I will continue to look for ways to interact with other artists and teachers from my seat right here for now.