Online Tapestry Class, Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry

I loved this course! Rebecca's thoughtful consideration for her students comes through in all the videos, written materials, and discussion areas...                    --Gina Pruette

  
Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry is my new online beginning tapestry techniques class. I started working on this class almost a year ago when I realized how many requests I was getting for online classes. Taking workshops in person is great fun and an excellent way to learn, but the potential for a longer-term focused learning situation in a format you can access from home is the way to go for some people. 

Below is the trailer for the class. Take a look!

This class is for people who are new to tapestry weaving or who have been away from it for awhile and need a refresher.

Taking this online class is kind of like having a workshop with me... but for four weeks. Plus you get to wear pajamas if you want to. The first part alone has four hours of video in it as well as extensive handouts and practice exercises. But the best part is that you get access to me throughout the four weeks of the class. I am there every week-day to answer questions, look at photos of your work and offer suggestions. I  can also offer solutions if what is presented in the class just isn't making sense to you. You get to learn from the comfort of your own home on your own equipment. (And if you are that learner who doesn't need teacher interaction, I am offering the entire series as a self-paced experience at a lower price point. See my website for details.)

I had a lot of fun creating this course. If it sounds like the right thing for you, I hope to see you in the classroom!

Click here for the class registration page!

Rebecca's online class absolutely exceeded my expectations...                 --Ute Conly

A few details:

• All you need is an internet connection fast enough to stream video, a loom to weave on, some yarn, a few tools, and a little time.
• To register you will be taken to the Pathwright program where the class is hosted. You will have access immediately to a video and some handouts about materials and tools needed for the class.
• The rest of the class material will not be released until April 28th. After that date you will have access to all of the content of the class and can work as quickly as you'd like. Please see full scheduling details on my website HERE.
• You will have access to the material for approximately 14 weeks which means if you choose to take Parts 2 and 3 right after Part 1, you can refer back to all the material until the end of Part 3 plus a two week implementation period.
• You can only register for the first part now but the second and third will be up as soon as my intrepid testers have had finished examining them. They loved the first part and things only get better from there.
• The first part starts April 28th, but if that is not good timing for you, I will offer the classes repeatedly through the rest of 2014.

There is much more information on my website at www.rebeccamezoff.com/online-learning/.
There is also a FAQ page on my website that answers many questions HERE.
And if you have more questions, please don't hesitate to contact me!

PS. I sent out a newsletter last Thursday with information about the class. If you are not on my list or you missed this one, you can see it HERE. Make sure you sign up for your own copy (see SUBSCRIBE link at the top of the sidebar on this blog).

Crushing the butterfly

I had one of those bookstore moments last week where a book on the very bottom of the new releases shelf caught my eye. I picked it up, and it went home with me. (I feel good it was an independent bookstore. Just saying.) The book was

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

by Ann Patchett. It turned out to be well worth my time and money.

I want to share something in my own experience I heard Ann say in the book. It is about art and how it becomes real in our heads and then when we try to put it into a tangible form, it loses its glitter. I know because this happens with every single tapestry I weave.

I design largely in my head.

For a long time.

Little bits of this and that come together over time and an image forms. I can see it in all its beautiful form. I can almost feel the yarn and my muscles know what weaving it would feel like. Then I finally do the hard work of putting that beautiful idea into a cartoon and choosing the colors and yarn for it. And then I start to weave. And that is when it happens. Ann Patchett, who is a writer, puts it this way.

For me it's like this: I make up a novel in my head.... This is the happiest time in the arc of my writing process. The book is my invisible friend, omnipresent, evolving, thrilling. During the months (or years) it takes me to put my ideas together, I don't take notes or make outlines; I'm figuring things out, and all the while the book makes a breeze around my head like an oversized butterfly whose wings were cut from the rose window in Notre Dame. This book I have not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book, and my faith in it as I track its lazy flight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.

And so I do. When I can't think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It's not that I want to kill it, but it's the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing--all the color, the light and movement--is gone. What I'm left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That's my book.

I know that sounds kind of stark, but it really is kind of like that. I have a beautiful image in my head and it is perfect. And I know it is going to be the best tapestry ever. The design has evolved over months and I have tweaked it endlessly until it is just perfect. But in the translation to a real, tangible piece of art, it becomes something that does not bear a great resemblance to the thing that I saw in my head.

Ann goes on to talk about how "art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art you must master the craft" and then to talk about forgiveness.

Somewhere in all my years of practice, I don't know where exactly, I arrived at the art. I never learned how to take the beautiful thing in my imagination and put it on paper without feeling I killed it along the way. I did, however, learn how to weather the death, and I learned how to forgive myself for it.

Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book [...] that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and home to birds), I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.

Forgiveness for ourselves. Practice. Continue.

Reference: Patchett, A. (2013).

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage.

New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. p. 24-25, 29-30.

"Tapestry weaving is like cooking"

I had a lovely trio of visitors to my studio last weekend. They were picking up some yarn for their mother/mother-in-law/grandmother who is a student of mine in Colorado. They were the kind of studio visitor you always hope for when people call up wanting to visit. They were so cheerful and full of joy. They loved the tapestries, excused the mess I was in the middle of cleaning up, and asked some lovely questions.

And at one point I started talking to the mom of the group about creativity. And she said that what her mother-in-law does when creating with yarn is what she does with cooking. She talked about cooking being a creative outlet and said that people would tell her she doesn't have to cook when she gets home from work and is tired. But she says, and this is the thing that got me, she said that she has to. Cooking is her creative outlet and it helps her work through the things that have to be worked out.

This is true of tapestry for me. When there are long stretches of time when I don't get to the loom, I get cranky. And I think that is because I am not spending the time working through the life lessons that have to be figured out through doing meaningful things. So if your thing is cooking, make sure you do it. And if your thing is tapestry, then you have to do that. There just isn't any other choice.

Tapestry Five

Friday was the opening show for a new New Mexico-based tapestry group, Tapestry Five. Their premier show opened at LaDonna Mayer's Studio 17 in Santa Fe.

The artists are:
Heather Gallegos-Rex
Nancy Lane
LaDonna Mayer
Letitia Roller
Janice Peters
Pat Dozier

The opening was busy and photographs there did not do justice to the work. So thanks to the artists, I can show you these images from the show. If you're in Santa Fe, make sure to go and see all of the work.

Heather Gallegos-Rex, After the Edge of Night, 32 x 32 inches

Pat Dozier, Shards III, 60 x 20 inches

Nancy Lane, On the Sea, 24 x 14 inches

Janice Peters, New Mexico Waits for Rain, 20.5 x 20.5 inches

LaDonna Mayer, Southern Crab Nebula, 30 x 30 inches, back-lit

This piece of LaDonna Mayer's uses an interesting technique I've never seen anywhere else in tapestry. She creates tiny little slits that you can't see in normal front light and then creates dark frames for the work and puts LED lighting behind them to create the effect of stars. These pieces are quite engaging and very different!

This show is open until April 27, 2014 and I highly recommend a visit to the gallery if you get a chance. Gallery hours are Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday from 12 to 4.

Studio 17
835 W. San Mateo
Santa Fe, NM  87501

Visit their website at http://www.tapestryfive.com/ for details.

What came in the mail today...

I came home today to find this in front of my door. I live in a condo in Santa Fe, and my patio is very small. It was completely full.

That is almost 500 pounds of Harrisville Designs yarn. Fortunately, most of it is not for me (though I will admit more than one of these boxes is mine). Also fortuitously, most of the new owners of this yarn are picking it up in the next few days. I don't know where the box and a half that belongs to me is going to go, but I suspect I had better start dyeing and weaving it soon because tapestries can be sold and yarn is just going to take up space in my dye studio (which is really just my garage but "garage" sounds way less sexy than "dye studio").

And in other exciting mail-related news, my new issue of Fiber Art Now showed up today. I did a little jig all the way from the mailbox. I love getting a new issue of this magazine. And though I have only flipped through it briefly thus far, I noted an exciting article about one of my tapestry heroes, Sarah Swett. I adore her work and her vivid imagination. Her story-telling ability is wonderful and I so wish I could just curl up with a cup of tea in the corner of her studio and watch her weave for a few days. Check out her website and definitely read the article in FAN.

Another article features a fellow Santa Fe tapestry artist and friend, LaDonna Mayer. (You should check out this blog post about her series after you read the article in FAN.) From the Fiber Art Now article (Spring 2014, Volume 3, Issue 3, page 33):

LaDonna's images serve to capture themes of America life. She likes to contrast the old with the new, the secular with the religious, the peaceful landscape with the bustle of city life. To LaDonna, the series as a whole represents America....

All I have to say is, can you imagine weaving a city from every state in the US and Washington D.C.? The series is called 51 American Cities and it is quite impressive to see the whole show at once.

At the risk of sounding a bit too gushy, this issue of Fiber Art Now is completely gorgeous. I highly recommend it!

And one last thing before I sign off for the night, being quite tired from lifting 50 pound boxes of wool. I have big news coming soon about my new online class, so if you don't get my newsletter, now would be a great time to add your name to my mailing list. You can do that by clicking HERE. Thanks so much! I promise I won't send you more than two a month unless there is a dire fiber-related emergency that just has to be announced.

Kristin Sæterdal's web exhibition at Nordic Textile Art Gallery

I strongly recommend a visit to Kristin Sæterdal's web exhibition The Tale of Three Tapestries at http://ntagallery.nordictextileart.net/. There are many photos and three videos in this exhibition and they are all fascinating.

She begins by talking about a project she worked on while she was an artist-in-residence at the Australian Tapestry Workshop. Force Field is a large tapestry commission for a primary school in Norway which takes the form of a capsule. Her explanation of the tapestry in the first video is wonderful.

The second section of the exhibition talks about Remembrance of the Sun, another large-scale tapestry with some exhibition photos that are stunning. Imagine a large tapestry of an underground space with light bouncing off cave-like walls hung in the middle of a large gallery space painted black. I know. Go look at the photos. The video about this piece has great details of her loom and shows her cutting it off.

The third section talks about The Red Capsule, a tapestry that addresses matters of technology and choices. Kristin Sæterdal says:

The Red Capsule expresses a world without nature, everything is artificial. The panels displays many options, and it all comes down to pushing the right one.

The consequence of pushing the button is unknown.

In her depiction of alien worlds, she opens up a lot of questions for us earthlings. Don't miss this online exhibition. And you can see her piece, Scared of the Dark in the American Tapestry Alliance's tenth biennial this year. Her website is HERE.

Her artist statement at the top of her website says this:

I make tapestries with motifs inspired by sci-fi scenography and computer games. I am searching to express archetypical human situations and states of mind. My works are commenting on different aspects of society today. For example: Is Technology our new religion? Can it save humanity from an environmental catastrophe?

Tapestry is anti-superficial and anti-collage. The work is consistent all the way through; the front is identical to the back. It is constructed thread after thread by hand. I find this disciplinary process fruitful for expressing essential insight.

I find this work inspiring. Don't miss this web exhibition and make sure to watch the videos.

Crazy Monkey! A new skein winder arrives.

I ordered something new for the studio in January. Crazy Monkey Creations made me this awesome skein winder. I have wanted one of these for quite awhile. I have been using a niddy noddy to skein yarn and I can tell you that it is just tendonitis waiting to happen... plus it is way too slow.

Here is how it showed up...

And once I got it all put together, the mounds of skeined yarn appear faster than I thought possible.

It has a counter so I no longer have to guess when I have reached a certain number of ounces. It counts for me. The arms are adjustable so I can make different sized skeins and it does three at a time. All beautifully hand-made in Loveland, Colorado.

Here is a little video blog that shows this baby in action.

Seriously, yarn flying around the room.