Blog
I have two pieces in the show, Interwoven: Art Meets Nature at Highfield Hall in Falmouth, MA right now. The show was curated by Marcia Young, editor of Fiber Art Now.
An online student, Cindy Gimbert, was able to visit the show and sent me the photos you see in this post. Thank you Cindy!
Eclipse.
A total eclipse of the sun is something I haven't seen before. Well, really I still haven't. We had 95% totality in northern Colorado. I had planned to drive to Wyoming to see the sun completely disappear and the planets come out, but we just returned from a long road trip last night and the Colorado Department of Transportation was warning of 8-12 hour traffic jams on I-25 this afternoon as everyone comes home from viewing. I wasn't up for it.
So the collage of images below is what I could see from my backyard.
The second Colorado retreat went well. It was different from the first (details here) but also a great deal of fun with lots of adventuring and creativity. It is always fascinating to me to observe how a different mix of people changes the dynamic of a particular workshop. I've taught a lot of workshops in the last six years and every one is different. Even when the material I am teaching is very similar, the outcomes can be wildly different.
I wove a pair of tapestries several years ago now which I liked a great deal. They were inspired by a moment hiking in the Austrian Alps with some good friends (how often do you get to say "hiking in the Austrian alps"?)...
I wove these two pieces titled after the Japanese haiku by Mizuta Masahide (1657-1723):
Barn's burnt down--
now
I can see the moon.
We had an amazing time in the July retreat at CSU Mountain Campus. What a group! We laughed, learned from each other, shared ideas, hiked some trails, watched the hummingbirds, looked for moose (no luck), searched out flowers, watched the clouds, and saw the brilliant stars.
Here is a bit of a photo essay from the week.
A few weeks ago I did a Facebook Live post about Creativity. Since many of you don't use Facebook, I wanted to put that video here. I'd love to hear what you think about some of the things I said. I was pretty honest about my own practice and am curious whether anyone has similar experiences or feelings about the act of designing for tapestry specifically or in other art or craft mediums.
In November of 2016 I was the artist in residence at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona for a month. For that month, nothing was expected of me except that I give two public programs at the vistor's center and that I go about the business of making art. I didn't have to produce anything during the month and I had pretty much full access to the park as long as I asked permission. I was given a casita right in the park to stay in--the only person staying behind the gates after dark. And I was able to experience the wonder of the painted desert alone at sunrise and sunset.
I wanted to do a sort of tapestry diary while I was there. I thought I would try to weave a 2 x 2 inch tapestry every day though at the beginning I wasn't sure I would stick with it as it took about 3 hours a night to do the weaving. But a few days in, I loved the process and I ended up weaving 27 tapestries, one for each day I was in the park.
I found that the process of doing that project in that place was very helpful to my creativity.
