Tales of a Traveling Weaver continued....

I don't feel exactly like I am traveling any more because I am living in a house with furniture some of which actually belongs to me and because my family is here... and also because I used to live in the San Luis Valley. So here I am again.

I made a few trips down to my storage locker in Northern NM to pick up some furniture and especially, the LeClerc loom. My adventures warping that loom are following shortly. This mural is in Espanola on a construction dumpster.

Alamosa has a small college, Adams State, who hosted one of my favorite bands on March 30th, Driftwood Fire. It was my niece's first concert. If you want to see a great video of one of their beautiful songs, check out this video of Appalachian Hills.

Rhonda Mouser opened for Driftwood Fire.

I hope not to be in traveling mode forever, but while I am, experiencing new things is fun and broadening. Take for example, this horse which belongs to one of my current patients who lives just a couple miles from me. My patient's land and barn was burned in a recent fire. Her neighbor was burning his fields (they do this a lot this time of year apparently--and when the wind whips up to 50mph it doesn't seem the smartest thing to me, but I'm not a farmer with a blow torch) and a gust of wind spread the fire burning at least a square mile including her barn. Her renter saved the horse and the rental house and now this old guy is living in her front yard. This horse is 35 years old and I can't help but wonder what sort of biomechanical nightmare his spine is.

There was a spring trip to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Medano Creek flows only part of the year and it was just reaching the visitor's center the weekend we were there. Locally this creek is called "the Alamosa beach" because the water is warm and the sand is fun to dig in, even if you are a bit older than the diapered kids with sand pails.

The end of the water. Eventually the creek will flow wide and strong all the way around the dunes to the Blanca wetlands where the water supports many species.

The pattern is important. Sometimes a life looks like chaos from the outside, but the pattern is steady underneath.

The Cask of Amontillado

I grew up with a father who loves the likes of Robert Service, Garrison Keillor, and Edgar Allan Poe. While other kids were watching Sesame Street and the Electric Company, I did not have the pleasure of a television to rot my brain away, but instead listened to my father making up stories (he is especially good at ghost stories), quoting The Cremation of Sam McGee (by Robert Service: Alaska has a special mystery to the Mezoffs), or reading the likes of The Pit and the Pendulum or The Telltale Heart (Poe of course).

So you can get some of the flavor of my upbringing, here is part of Robert Service's The Cremation of Sam McGee:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see,
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee. 

I can't remember the multitude of Bible verses I was required to memorize in the conservative Christian elementary school I attended, but I could recite this verse in my sleep. Good stuff. Thanks Dad.

One particular sequence of events in the last month reminds me of the Poe tale, The Cask of Amontillado.

If you don't remember the tale from when your father read it to you, it is a typically gruesome tale of retribution, wine, and catacombs:

No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick - on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last stone into its position ; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. 

This particular story comes to mind due to some recent work I did in the backyard involving a certain skunk hole:

This is the hole that has plagued my life of late--the most popular entrance to the space under the house where the skunks seem to want to set up permanent residence.  This hole needed to be plugged... which I proposed to do, though I had never worked with it before, with the use of this material which I found in my landlord's junky and luckily for me, unlockable shed:

...with this material I planned to make it impossible for the skunks to access the space under my house and to wake me up with their cloying, neurology-impairing stench. And the gradual cementing of the access hole is what brought to mind The Cask of Amontillado in which Fortunato meets an unfortunate end behind a brick wall.

Yes, I learned to mix concrete... and built the base of an impenetrable skunk barrier (skunks turn out to be right good little diggers when given the impetus--see the LAST skunk post if you dare HERE).

And then I spread some flour (gluten free!) over the concrete and I waited. I got up at night and I checked that flour. I put down more flour to make sure I wasn't missing tracks.

And nothing happened. For nights and nights, which was of course making me cranky as I hate being woken up in the middle of the night and that skunk just wasn't cooperating.  Then one night, I saw this:

There were tracks heading out of the hole.  And from there I sprang into action.

I closed up the hole with rocks.  Very heavy rocks.  Rocks weighing more than skunks... even if they were working as a team and had their own block and tackle. They were not moving these rocks. And I added wire mesh through which a skunk of average size could not fit.

And then I concreted the rocks in place and covered them with gravel which skunks clearly don't like to dig through.  And I thought that I had won.

But a few weeks later, I found that I had not. In the middle of the night I woke to a noxious smell and a sinking feeling in my heart. The skunk was back. Unbelievably, the skunk was back. I couldn't find the entrance and I have been forced to believe that I walled a skunk under there that has been subsisting on mice (yes, we have those too) and perhaps water from the washer which drains into the yard and more mice... and that perhaps that skunk had died under there and I was in for a long unpleasant smelling experience. The holes are all plugged, but the smell continues. Actually, it sounds kind of like the ending of an Edgar Allan Poe tale after all. Poor Fortunato.  

In pace requiescat !

Emergence VI

Meet the newest piece in the Emergence series, Emergence VI. It is 16 x 49 inches and was a commission for a home in Phoenix.

A couple of details:

A sense of accomplishment

I think what I really do as an occupational therapist is try to give people a sense of accomplishment--that they are doing something meaningful with the present moment. At least I think that is what might be the most important thing about my OT job... not so much the talking and the gait belts and the planning and the paperwork and the productivity and the weights and the suspended equipment (that is for sensory integration with kids for those of you who have gutter heads) and the therapy balls, the details the details the details.

Making art is where I feel that sense of accomplishment myself--not that I'm getting anywhere, just that I like what I am doing when I am lost in the studio. I feel like the moment is as it should be despite the details. So my OT professors were right all those years ago when they said that meaningful occupation is important (and it has been more years than I want to admit since I finished graduate school... a child born when I finished would be getting close to graduating from high school now just for some perspective). Humans need to do something that has meaning in their lives and that goes for pretty much everyone. I have found that to be true for my patients in the clinics, schools, homes, nursing homes, and hospitals, and I find it to be true for myself in my studio. Do what you love. Do something that means something to you... I like to believe we'll all be better off for it.

April is Occupational Therapy month. Do something that is meaningful to you. And then hug an OT.

Teaching in New Mexico in June

I will be teaching a three day class at Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center (EVFAC) June 15-17, 2012. Many of you have been asking when I'm teaching in New Mexico this year, and this is your chance to take a new class from me and support a great organization at the same time.

The class I am teaching is Symbols of the Southwest. Here is the class description:

The southwestern United States is a place rich in culture, landscape, and weaving traditions. Tapestry weaving here is practiced by Navajo, Hispanic, and Puebloan weavers with traditions that reach back hundreds or thousands of years. In this class we will explore questions about the influence of traditional southwestern weaving on contemporary tapestry practice and how symbols are important in Native and Hispanic weaving practice over the last centuries and today. Most importantly, we will consider how we can use symbols from our own experience to inform our design process and investigate the essential pieces of ourselves that lead us to art making. We will use symbol as a design tool, create several tapestry cartoons, and weave either a small tapestry or a study for a larger work.

More information about this class is listed on the EVFAC website under Classes: http://www.evfac.org/classes.html 
and on my website here: http://www.rebeccamezoff.com/teaching/

This class is going to be a lot of fun. I believe that making art is about finding what is essential in ourselves and expressing that in some way. This class uses symbol as a place to start designing for tapestry. We will struggle with what is and isn't weaveable, what sorts of symbols traditional weavers in the American Southwest use, and how we can use symbol and visual imagery from our own lives to inform our tapestry designs. I will provide hand-dyed tapestry yarn as well as a wide range of resources from which students can experiment with different sorts of symbols. Bring your pencils, tracing paper, and your loom (or borrow one from EVFAC) and lets get weaving!

About EVFAC: Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center is a non-profit center that serves fiber enthusiasts throughout northern New Mexico. The facility has a large collection of looms that can be rented or used for classes. The staff is friendly and knowledgeable and membership to the center brings great benefits. They are expanding their stash of knitting yarns (yeah!) and also carry weaving supplies. They have a dye kitchen and a members library. I recommend a visit and membership if you are in the area! Espanola is 25 miles north of Santa Fe, NM and 45 miles south of Taos.


Here is another post I wrote about EVFAC with more photos: /rebeccamezoff/2011/06/espanola-valley-fiber-arts-center.html

Why skunks are not smarter than I am...

I am only supposing that skunks don't have the cognitive capacity of your average human due to the number I pass dead on the road every day. Sadly, I am not able to get close enough to one to complete a mini mental to test this theory.

Unfortunately, my particular skunk made a reappearance last night. I spent the day making pilgrimage to my storage locker. I promised Emily I would keep my phone in my pocket in case something heavy fell on top of me, but all that happened was that some guy called me twice from a "private" number and said, "Hey (deep silence)". Twice. I hope it was a wrong number.  Anyway, I did manage to find my dye sample book which was the chief reason for driving to Taos today as well as a list of other items plucked from various boxes including the reed I need to warp the LeClerc.

Cassy happy I left room for her in the car between the loom bench, boxes of yarn, and the rolls of cartoon paper and mylar

As I was relaxing last evening with a great new book about tapestry (Tapestry Weaving: Design and Technique by Joanne Soroka--and yes, my copy came from the Brits as it isn't published in the US yet and sometimes you just can't wait especially when it is free shipping from the UK), I heard some suspicious scrabbling at the wall behind the couch--the "back door" hole so to speak. And when my skunk-loving dog Cassy wanted to go out, she was way too happy about the back yard. Her insistent sniffing in the area of the "front door" hole-turned-big-pile-of-rocks (see this post) made my heart sink. I retrieved a flashlight and confirmed a new hole and very recent skunk activity judging by the excitement of one elderly labrador. Whoever said that skunks are lazy and don't like to dig too far hasn't met my high-achieving skunk. She just started digging at the edge of the rocks and busted her way in.

The "back door" hole attempt which apparently was quickly given up on as the skunk moved on to the "front door" hole.

That rock she moved is bigger than a grapefruit and probably weighs half of what the skunk does.

I wonder whether heavy construction, a wheelbarrow of cement, or a meet-and-greet should be my next approach. I do feel that I need to be prepared for the inevitable skunk-meets-dog encounter. This will involve a trip to town to get large quantities of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and dish soap. When these three things are mixed, the glop goes a long way to neutralize the noxious odor. But THIS time I am going to be prepared with a garden hose, elbow-level rubber gloves, and preferably a hazmat suit. I wonder if I can find one of those at my local feed store.

Why I knit

Sometimes I just need a break from the whirlwind of trying to hold down two jobs (which, admittedly is my choice)--my "real" job as an artist and my "moonlighting" job as an OT (and honestly some days those labels are flipped)... and like most sane humans, when it gets to be too much, I knit.

One day not so long ago, I suggested a field trip to Buena Vista, a town 110 miles north of here which just happens to have a fantastic yarn store. When you live in a very rural area and you depend on fiber like I do, it doesn't seem crazy to drive 110 miles on a whim to visit a yarn store when you already have a closet full of yarn (as Emily tried hard not to point out too strongly). It didn't take much bribing beyond mentioning Amicas, the favored pizza place in Salida (they have GF crusts!) to get not only Emily, but my sister, brother-in-law, and 12 day old baby to agree to the outing.

I found some beautiful yarn, and felt a whole lot better after an hour of feeling and sniffing the wool.

She got milk, I got pizza. (Her hat was another knitting project of mine. It says, "Got Milk?" Pattern by Smoothfox and available on Ravelry HERE)

Sheep mural at Amicas... which is also a microbrewery though unfortunately the beer is not gluten free.

So if you ever see a crazed look in my eye and my hands feverishly gripping a pair of knitting needles, take a step back and please remember this:

bumper sticker soon to be added to my car's collection...

It works too.