Life in rural New Mexico

Here is a little photo montage of life in rural northern New Mexico.  My question as I look at the photos I take near my home and consider new possibilities in my life is how much environment shapes the art I make.  Could I do the same work that I do if I lived in, say, Australia?  What about England?  I think the work would be different, but I couldn't possibly anticipate in what ways.  I think the big sky of the southwestern United States has a big influence on my thinking and vision in terms of making art, but I have no way of testing that (besides moving to New England or to Germany or perhaps the Himalaya... just kidding on that last one--mostly anyway)...

Here is a collection of signs I see on a regular basis in my travels around northern NM and southern Colorado.

This one has survived since the last election--in Cebolla, NM.

In Espanola, as in other parts of the country, "cokes" can mean many kinds of soda...  Unfortunately I just missed getting the passing low rider in the shot.

This one is certainly a comment on the continuing land grant disagreements in this part of the state.  This sign is near Tierra Amarilla in Rio Arriba county.

This one was actually in the San Luis Valley last fall where you might not be able to get a beer, but you can certainly find a potato!

In Chama, NM-- the rental seems to be missing...

What would New Mexico be without the trail signs?  The Continental Divide Trail runs from the Mexican border to Canada through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana.  This sign is between Ghost Ranch and Tierra Amarilla.

I love this sign-- and it could only have been created by a West Rim Drive resident, Carson, NM (near Taos)...  I like that the word EVOLVE has the word love in it twice when written this way.

And then there are the myriad of cultural influences in NM...

This teepee was across the street from my school housing for most of the year... and regularly used for ceremonies I can attest by the frequent drumming late into the evenings.

The typical lunch selection in small town NM...

This one is from Gallup and every time I see it I think maybe they forgot a "C"...  I guess that would be a different kind of business though!

And some special Durango culture, captured by my partner with an iPhone from the passenger seat...

And on the way home today from southern Colorado I ran into several fairly routine obstacles.

A train to wait for...

A herd of cows and their wranglers (the herding dogs were riding in the back of the four-wheeler to the left of the white horse--this is a busy highway, speed limit here was 65 mph--and we have to keep those dogs safe!)...

15 miles later, the requisite farm equipment...

And a northern NM resident doesn't think twice about a washboarded gravel road without guard rails and at least a 12% grade like this being part of a regular commute...  heck, the canyon is beautiful!

The land of enchantment.

James Koehler's looms for sale

James Koehler's death on March 4th, 2011 still seems a little shocking three months later.  His memorial service has happened, his studio has been emptied, and his apprentices are trying to help each other with the questions we would have asked James.  This is what happens when somebody dies.

James' student looms and most of his studio contents have been sold but there are three of his personal looms left which have to be sold.

This loom is a 56 inch (weaving width) Macomber which is selling for $1800 (there is no need for me to tell a bunch of weavers what a great deal that is!).  I believe the bench (which has a slider) is separate.  This loom is in fantastic shape and if I didn't already have a Macomber (and if I had any more space for looms which I don't unless I take to sleeping under them), I would purchase it myself.  It is an 8 harness loom with a double back beam, one of them sectional.

This is a huge Shannock that James acquired recently.  I don't know the weaving width, but it is somewhere between 80 and 100 inches. James was interested in trying vertical weaving again, but had not used it yet when he died.  I don't know a price for this loom, but I suspect it would be negotiable.

And this loom caused me much angst and indecision.  I very much wanted to purchase this 100 inch (weaving width) Cranbrook, but since it is bigger than my car and my studio is about 180 square feet, eventually I had to decline.  This was James' main loom for many years.  All the tapestries I saw him weaving were on this loom.  It has 6 harnesses though James only has 4 installed.  I believe it comes with several reeds.  There is a long sliding bench which is extra.  It has locking treadles and James wove at it standing up (notice it is up on 2 by 6's). It is in beautiful shape and has the added bonus of being used by a master weaver for at least 20 years. I don't know the final price for this loom, but trust me, it is criminally low.  This particular loom is no longer made (and hasn't been for decades).

If you are seriously interested in purchasing one of these looms (or there is also some of his hand-dyed yarn left), you can contact me at the comments section of this blog or through my website.

I am hoping that someone who loves weaving and will appreciate the master who wove on these looms will purchase one of them and continue to love them for many years to come. And if you buy the Cranbrook, can I come and visit it? (kidding, I'm just kidding on that last bit-- mostly anyway)

Weaving progress... last four days

Sometimes things move along at a very heartening pace...
Here I am after one day beginning a new piece which is 45 inches square.  (There are actually several colors here, you just can't see them in the photo.)

Day 1

6/4/11

Day 2

6/5/11

Note the quick progress here. I decided it would be smart to activate the date stamp on my camera to "prove" how fast I was progressing, though bright and skeptical family members might remind me that it can be easily changed to whatever I want it to be.

Day 3

Then things slowed down a little...

This photo was taken after a 4 mile, 3,000 foot climb.  That be some steep hiking (and we took the wussy trail).

Wheeler Peak from Lobo Peak (New Mexico Sangre de Cristos)

Cassy loves spring snow on a hot belly.

Day 4

And here is today's progress...  I think it was three sequences.

But I did work in the studio all day.  It was just that I had to figure out what I was doing once I finished the border, and it took this to do it.  

Those are various color combinations I was trying out for one aspect of the tapestry.  I just hope they work out once I put them in the actual piece or it is more sampling for me.  I often don't take the time to do a sample of something, but do realize that it really does help figure out what is going to work and what is going to be a colossal mistake.

A new tapestry teacher emerges...

I always thought I would teach tapestry "someday".  After all, I have been a teacher since I was an undergraduate, teaching piano to preschoolers, then running my own piano studio in graduate school, teaching a couple sections of 200 undergraduates medical terminology as a graduate teaching assistant, and then pretty much my entire subsequent career as an occupational therapist (teaching is teaching whether you're showing someone where middle C is or how to wipe their butt after a spinal surgery--just sayin').

Until my own teacher died three months ago today, I hadn't thought I would teach tapestry for a few more years.  But here I am and I am very excited about this new journey.  I have things to say and my own voice to say them in, so what better way to spend my time then showing people how exciting tapestry can be?  Teaching was incredibly important to James and I still feel that he would want me to teach now that he cannot do it himself anymore.  I hope I'm right about that James!

I'm starting out with a workshop at Intermountain Weaver's Conference in Durango in July.  IWC has been a great conference for me.  I love Durango and have enjoyed the atmosphere there studying on the Fort Lewis College campus.  I'll be teaching a class about color gradation for tapestry.  My work is full of this kind of color shifting as I find it fascinating, so I am looking forward to showing other weavers how to do this.  I am also looking forward to the learning that I know I will do as part of this process.  I know there will be questions that I hadn't considered.  Perhaps that is the best thing about being a teacher--the way it pushes you to learn more yourself.

Contemplative Garden, 30 x 48 inches, hand-dyed wool tapestry

Emergence II, 44 x 44 inches, hand-dyed wool tapestry

So today marks the day when I start a summer of tapestry focus.  My school year is completed (I buy groceries mostly with my paycheck as an occupational therapist working in the public schools) and I am ready to begin.  I have a multitude of projects to complete in the next 6 weeks and I'm so excited about each of them I don't know where to start today--probably that is why I'm blogging instead!  In the next week or so I'll be dyeing pounds and pounds of student yarn, beginning a big tapestry for an upcoming show, completing a sampler for one of the classes I'll be teaching this summer, working on powerpoint presentations for the classes, helping a friend put on a sectional warp, and finishing a design for a commission I hope to weave later this summer.  Okay, perhaps that is more than anyone can do in a week...

And for those of you in one of my upcoming classes on color gradation for tapestry, check out this online article by Kathe Todd-Hooker about ways to achieve optical blending with yarn.  Kathe is a brilliant woman and successful tapestry weaver who has published several books and runs her own fiber art company.  This article contains a lot of information that is similar to what we will be practicing in the class.

My best weaving buddy Cassy who is going to help me decide which project to start with today... or perhaps just snore.

And as a random post-script to this post:
I just returned from a trip to Michigan for my grandmother's funeral.  I had to check out the local yarn shop, Threadbender.  It was a great place.  There was a weaving class going on--but the shop is so full of yarn that the looms are tucked into corners.  You're looking for Mini Mochi for a hat and you round a corner to find a woman working on summer and winter on a Baby Wolf.

And this last photo is for my Grandmother Thelma who died Friday May 27th.  Thank you for living an inspired life Grandma.  We'll miss you!

Eldorado Studio Tour

I was able to take a few hours and see part of the Eldorado Studio Tour the 15th of May.  This studio tour is impressive.  Their brochure was beautiful with good photos of some work so you could start forming some plan of attack.  There were 75 studios to visit, so seeing all of them was definitely not possible.  There was a preview gallery which was very helpful as I could tell right away what art I wanted to see more of and what I wanted to skip.

Eldorado Studio Tour preview gallery

This is Sheila Burke, tapestry artist.  She has just finished this beautiful studio (of which admittedly I was very jealous).

And a beautiful doubleweave shawl by Jennifer Moore.

 

NM Fiber Arts Trails in Texas!

This is what I saw in a rack card display at a Ramada Inn in Dallas, Texas last weekend.  I wasn't supposed to be in a Ramada Inn in Texas, but I was interested to see how far afield the NM Fiber Arts Trails brochures had made it.  Unfortunately it was 5am on the day I was already supposed to be in Gulfport, MS for a wedding.  Through a series of travel mishaps involving thunderstorms and perhaps bad luck, I got to spend a night in Dallas (and fortunately not on one of those piles of cots I saw in the airport the next morning!).  Could be worse I suppose--I did make it to the wedding in time.

I was a little afraid that my pilot would be raptured while we were in the air, but apparently he was enough of a sinner that he was able to land the plane safely.

After my 5:30am arrival at the airport for a 9am flight (I was hoping to get an earlier flight or perhaps just hedging against more bad luck as most people hadn't been lucky enough to get a confirmed seat on a flight to the coast) I decided to check out the art in terminal D.  There was a descriptive brochure to show me around...  This thing made music when you walked through it.

But mostly I just knitted.  This photo reminds me of the last time I flew--a similar photo in the Frankfurt airport sometime in the middle of the night...

Dallas Fort-Worth May 2011

Frankfurt, Germany September 2010

Eventually after reading a National Geographic article on climbing in Yosemite I moved on to the People magazine's issue about the Royal Wedding... at this point I felt my intelligence leaking into the sticky vinyl seats and had to talk sternly to myself to keep from moving on to the Enquirer.  I was afraid if I sunk that far the white-coated people would find me under the yogurt cart rocking and mumbling.

I wondered many times what the point of all that self-imposed torture was, but of course we want to get places quickly these days and can't stand it when we are delayed by hours or days.  Perhaps a little Buddhist perspective might get me through the next one... increase compassion, try to talk to fellow travelers (if absolutely necessary), and let the little wheelchair ladies go in front of you in line.  Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and get to sit by a guide dog.

I am looking down the mouth of another airplane trip (I'll be carbon off-setting these flights forever) and I really hope the next blog post doesn't include a photo with knitting and a sleeping guy in the Detroit or Chicago airports.

Guess what-- coming home I couldn't get out of Gulfport and finally got a flight from Memphis to ABQ (a day and 8 hours of driving later) which stopped in, you guessed it, Dallas. Joining the throngs of cranky air travel people in Dallas for another terminal tour and then I finally made it home.

But, despite the flying difficulties, I had a fantastic weekend... here are some highlights.

Osprey nest seen from Papa John's boat tour.  See the baby?

Alligator, also on the boat tour.  We didn't feed any of the kids to this old lady.

And because of the drive north to Memphis I got to see Clark play baseball.  He was awesome.

Walking on the beach in Gulfport.

 

And this is Jiggy.  He should be my mascot.  He was chewed up by a Rottweiler and put together by Emily's brother-in-law (who is actually a veterinarian fortunately).  He is one tough little dude.  Sometimes his eyeballs still pop out, but Dr. J just pops them back in.  Sometimes you've gotta be tough.

Young artists and occupational therapy

This is Megan.  I wrote another post about her here when she wove this watermelon tapestry last summer.  Megan is now 11 years old (and definitely smarter than me if you go by IQ scores) and I'm hoping she is going to come here again this summer to weave another tapestry.  (Oh wait, that last part might just be my goal not hers.)

I work in a rural New Mexico school system, and as I wrote on that post last summer about Megan, I was hoping to do some weaving with the kids this year.  I was not able to pull together a tapestry weaving project due to my heavy caseload, but I did pull out an inkle loom and interested a few kids in weaving inkle bands.  Some kids who tried this had a great deal of difficulty sequencing raising and lowering the warp, putting the shuttle through in the correct direction, and then beating before going the other way.  I found that it was a great exercise in so many ways: fine motor skills, visual-perception, cognition, attention, self-regulation...  a great task for an occupational therapy session.  I think my older kids could handle a small tapestry or something on the cardboard looms in Sarah Swett's book Kid's Weaving.  Hopefully next year.

This child did the best of any child who tried it, but she is also the one who doesn't qualify for OT!

This is another amazing young lady I had the privilege of meeting last weekend (see blog post here).  Railynn is a natural artist who jumped right into our art journaling retreat.  Quite frankly, some of her work looked much better than mine.  I think that is thanks to lack of inhibition and no fear of failure.  I think most adults should take a page from the kids book of life... especially artists.

This is an art piece I saw hanging in the elementary grade 3-5 hall last year sometime.  I was never able to find out who the artist was, but it is one of my favorite pieces of art ever.  I want to weave it just like this, but fear that plagiarizing a 10 year old is probably not going to increase my karma any.

Kids are amazing (and I don't have any of my own, so maybe that is partly why I feel that way).  They will often tell you their bottom line without any prompting--oh how I wish sometimes adults would do that.  When it comes to being an artist, children have no inhibitions (until we implant them) and they believe in what they can do.  My preschool, kindergarten, and first graders have great opinions of their abilities as artists.  It is when I start asking 4th and 5th graders that I hear how they are "bad at art" or "can't draw".  I think the world would be a better place if we never taught children things like that.  If every kid graduated from high school thinking they were creative or artistic in some way, we would have given them the greatest gift possible.