The final Emergence

Well, the latest tapestry was finished a few weeks ago. It always takes awhile for me to like a new tapestry, no matter what anyone else says or how stunning it is in actuality. The finished work never quite matches what I saw in my head when I started weaving. But once I accept that what emerges is something new that came through me, I can appreciate the new piece.

In the spirit of video blogging, I made this little video. It might give you too much of an idea how much of a geek I am, but there you have it. The wool-fuzzy piece coming off the loom.

My three-year-olds at the hospital would shriek at the sound of that worm gear. I just forgot that you could lift it up and the beam would roll. I guess it has been too long since I took a tapestry off this loom.

This may well be the last tapestry from the Emergence series. I'm not sure I'll do any more of them. The winds of change are blowing and new things are afoot.

Here are photos from the whole series which you can also see on my website HERE.

Emergence I, 48 x 48 inches

Emergence II, 44 x 44 inches

Emergence III, 9 x 44 inches

Emergence IV, 15 x 46 inches

Emergence V: The Center Place, 44 x 44 inches

Emergence VI, 16 x 49 inches

Emergence VII, 44 x 44 inches

These spirals have been fun. I started these pieces when I lived in Velarde, NM on a petroglyph preserve. There were spirals on the mesa all around my house. There were other artifacts scattered about and a lot of evidence of many centuries of human visitation and perhaps occupation. The mesa overlooks the Rio Grande and the beautiful sunny winters when the dark rocks heated in the sun must have been pleasant. At least they were for me!

The spiral form left by Puebloan peoples from centuries ago is thought to be a symbol of emergence from another world. For me it meant change and growth and movement forward. I have done a lot of that in the last 4 years. Perhaps it is time to crawl up through that little hole into the next world. You can bet it will include a lot of tapestry-making!

Tapestry Classes Winter/Spring 2014 (including a new class!)

Well, I've gone and done it. I've committed to another round of tapestry workshops. These two are going to be great fun. They are both in my studio in the Second Street art district of Santa Fe. If you haven't taken a class in my studio before, it is a great place to learn. Maximum number of students is 7 and we have full advantage of my book collection for reference. All classes include use of my hand-dyed weft yarn and numerous handouts.

The first is almost full. I am teaching an extended version of the color gradation class I have taught a lot in the last few years January 19 to 23, 2014. This 5-day class will include learning weaving techniques to create color gradation in tapestry including hachure, hatching, and dye pot/weft bundling techniques as well as some discussion of color theory and design. There is only one spot left, so consider coming to Santa Fe for a little winter fun. (I have no guarantees about the weather, but New Mexico almost always has gloriously sunny winter days.)

The second class is a new one. I am teaching a beginning tapestry techniques class called Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry. This class will be March 24 to 26. We will learn the basics of tapestry technique with an emphasis on the structure of weft-faced weave and how it relates to creating a woven image. Students will complete a technique sampler they can refer to at home as well as begin working on how to incorporate concepts such as bubbling, splicing, joins, and craftsmanship as well as troubleshooting problems. Yep, that troubleshooting problems thing might be the most important of all.

You can find out more and sign up on my website at http://www.rebeccamezoff.com/workshops.
Please feel free to contact me with questions.

And in case you missed it, there is a link to last week's newsletter HERE.

ATA's CODA

The American Tapestry Alliance (with kudos to Dorothy Clews and Margaret Sunday) has finished a synopsis of the 2013 newsletters. It is free for the public and a great thing to take a look at if you're at all interested in art or have a specific interest in tapestry. The newsletter is only available with membership in ATA, but this beautiful recap of some of the articles in the newsletter is free for everyone. So pass it around!
Of course I love the musical reference here, a coda being a final ending in a piece of music played usually after a repeat of some of the prior material.

Click HERE for the link to the document.

I am visiting my in-laws in Mississippi this weekend. The Mississippi Delta is a place where the restaurant hostesses pause a moment when you ask for the gluten free menu and then say they are going to go talk to their manager, there is not a single mountain trail to climb, and it rains a lot. But there is muscadine wine, it is good to see family, and I have gotten a lot of knitting done while watching little girls play.

Also, there are many forms of wildlife around here... and that's just in the house.

To

A bed, a dog, and a car

You know that thing that happens when you're watching a show on Netflix (does anyone watch network TV now? We watch TV by picking a show and watching an entire season in a weekend) and the Doctor Who episode comes to an end and as the credits of the episode you were watching and were DEFINITELY going to go to bed after seeing roll, they've started the next episode in the other half of the screen. Before 5 seconds have gone by you've been sling-shotted into another 45 minutes just to see what happens. They're damn smart those TV people.

That is kind of how life has felt recently. Flung from one thing to the next. Putting out fires. Ignoring others and hoping they don't do more than smoulder for a bit. Some of it is trying to busy my way through missing my old dog Cassy. Some of it is trying to stay ahead of the metric ton of entries for American Tapestry Biennial 10 for which I am one of the co-chairs (you can still enter! See details HERE). Honestly, I am waiting for my personal server to crash in the last week before the deadline.

I went to the vet today to pick up Cassy's ashes. I was trying valiantly not to cry so the receptionist could actually understand why I was there without a pet in tow. When I left with the surprisingly heavy tin, I was digging in my jeans for a tissue, and my mind ran off again to the car parked next to mine. It was a silver Subaru Crosstrek.

One particular bit of paranoia has surfaced since Cassy died. See, exactly 14 years ago, I bought my first real adult bed (I had just ended a long sleeping-on-the-floor-because-it-was-good for me phase and I was single and hopeful--I bought a queen), adopted my dog Cassy, and bought my first car all within a few months of each other. This past summer the bed was replaced, the dog died two weeks ago, and so it is hard for me not to think that the car with approximately 244,679 miles on it is the next to go. The problem is, I'll need my next 259 paychecks all at once to drive home that little silver AWD hatchback without a car payment (I'm opposed to car payments). Good thing I fixed my bike today.

After flying through the card aisles at Target (baby shower card in Spanish), I have been trying to finish the piece that came off the loom a few days ago. Feeling both blessed to be in my own studio right this moment and also like I am soon to be launched into the next Doctor Who episode and there is nothing I can do about it, I keep sewing in the ends. Practical or not, I am a woman who sews in her ends.

But life can go on just like that. We run from one thing to another so fast we miss the details. I think being an artist probably means you have to pay attention to the details. How can you create if you can't feel? How can you feel if you're watching the next episode before the current one is over? All well and good to say, but how does one simplify it all? And how to pay the rent and still have time to smell the flowers? I'm sure there is a way and in one of these episodes I'll discover it.

Yarn Balance

I've had this little clear plastic box in my collection of weaving stuff for at least a decade. Now, by "collection of weaving stuff", you could perhaps think of boxes of accumulated stuff that "I might need one day" but really never use. Including the tension box for sectional warping (no, I'm not getting rid of that), assorted rolls of velcro and trim (some inherited from people now dead), large long boxes full of various sticks, dowels, raddles, and temples (and no, I never use them), antique weaving bits of this and that salvaged from my grandparents "collection of weaving stuff"... oh heck, the list could go on forever. Just ask my studio-mate. If you bribe her with kaffee und kuchen she might whisper how much stuff I have (and I wouldn't blame her one bit). Nah, I take that back. She is un-bribeable.

Anyway, the clear plastic box. Triumphantly, I finally had a use for it (after scrambling through cabinets for a good 10 minutes looking for it which really makes me cross). I have a two-fer collection of Brown Sheep rug yarn which I have finally come to grips with. (Two-fer meaning it fills two of those large plastic tubs that most people store Christmas decorations in in the garage but I have full of yarn). I can now stand before you and say honestly that yes, I am a yarn hoarder, but I am in recovery and I am getting rid of those two huge tubs of Brown Sheep yarn. The problem is I didn't know exactly which yarn it was. Thus, the yarn balance.

Here it is. A rather simple device actually. The little plastic arm has a small metal rod through it that sits in two divots in the top of the box after you take the lid off.

It is used to figure out how many yards per pound a certain yarn is. I think it is peachy of them to use pounds. They could just as easily have used grams. I don't quite understand why yarn labels are always giving the weight in grams but the length in yards. Isn't that like speaking two languages at once?

Anyhow, the way the thing works is you cut a piece of the yarn in question and loop it over the notch in the yarn balance. Then you snip off little pieces until the arm is level.

Then you measure the piece and multiple by 100 to get yards per pound. (The photo below is deceiving. After a few trials the yarn averaged out to 660 yards/pound.)

As long as I use the yarn balance at least once a decade I can keep it, right?

PS. If you're interested in the large whack of Brown Sheep yarn on ebay, go HERE. The current auction ends Thursday 10/24.

Connie Enzmann-Forneris, Double-Woven Rugs

Canyon Road in Santa Fe is something of a tourist destination. Perhaps that is why I don't go there often enough. I live here.

Canyon Road is almost completely lined with galleries of all sort. This past week I finally found a little time to go to Marigold Arts and see Connie Enzmann-Forneris' show of rugs. It definitely made me realize I need to spend more time wandering up and down Canyon Road.

Connie's work is amazing. I very much wished I could have come home with this piece:

Cross Plains, 44 x 58 inches

Here is a detail:

Cross Plains, detail

I was really captivated by Connie's use of ikat. Her colors were gorgeous and designs so simple but engaging. Here are a few more photos.

Hawk of the Wind, 44 x 75 inches

Hawk of the Wind, detail

The piece below grabs you when you come through the front door. I don't know if it will still be there when you go and see the show as I can only image these rugs are selling quickly. But the glowing feeling of this piece is stunning.

Angel Fire, 44 x 76 inches

Step to the Sky, 32 x 61 inches

Eagle Nest, 32 x 63 inches

I love Connie's use of pick and pick in conjunction with ikat. She had some marvelous printed books which showed her technique. And in one of them she was weaving on a Harrisville Rug Loom just like mine! The pick and pick technique with the colors of the ikat mixing across the rugs are just so enchanting. Go and see this show if you possibly can! It is up until November 4th at Marigold Arts, 424 Canyon Road, Santa Fe.

A note on the photography: These photographs are just snapshots. These weavings are of the highest craftsmanship. They are all perfectly square with gorgeous edges and a heavy hand. Sometimes the photographs are taken at an angle and make the work look off-kilter. Believe me, they are not. They are perfect.

What is precious in your life?

I have had the privilege of spending the last 14 years with a sweet even-tempered yellow labrador that I named Cassiopeia when she came to live with me at 8 weeks old. She has been my best buddy in so many ways for a very long time.

Last week she started having more trouble breathing and walking and we returned to the vet for better pain control. A simple x-ray told us that she has cancer and a huge mass in her chest which was impeding her breathing. She probably also had bone metastasis which was causing nerve pain. Very suddenly, my dog who is always wagging her tail and ready to catch a frisbee or ride in the car, was not happy. She wouldn't eat an apple core, her favorite, (though she did accept a McDonalds quarter pounder with cheese--but who can blame her) and needed help to get up to go to the bathroom. Never in her life had she refused an apple core (or any food really except sometimes spinach) and I knew that things were getting rough for her.

It is hard to lose such a good friend. She loved the most to lay under my loom bench while I was weaving. The photo above was taken last week on her last visit to the studio. She lay there all day only getting up once to greet some visitors before laying down again.

This is the dog that hiked the entire Colorado Trail with me in 2003, Denver to Durango. She walked 500 miles with a pack on and while she did need some encouragement to get going in the morning for the last 200 miles, she still wanted to play frisbee at the end of the day. She carried her own gear the whole way.

Here we are at the end of the trail in Durango. I think we all lost about 10 pounds. This is my sister and I and Cassy who was mighty glad to be done walking.

 I knew which photo album had the pictures of her as a puppy because the corner is chewed.

She grew quickly! Learning to heel was a tough one. But for her entire life she loved to go hiking with me. We walked miles almost every single day of her life and I credit this exercise to her long life and good health (and hopefully mine).

She was lucky to get to spend her later years with Emily who lavished her with attention (and salad). Emily is a veteran dog-lover and Cassy was her star recipient.

We had a good run. I miss her horribly. I keep thinking I hear her in the house.
But I am glad she isn't in pain anymore and the lessons I learned from having her in my life are innumerable.

Buen Viaje Cassiopia.