contemplating weaving again

It has been a really long time since I have done any weaving -- I cut the last tapestry off in September last year, shipped them all out to Patina Gallery, and heaved a sigh of relief at the close of a cycle of work.

Most times when I do cycles of work, they are focused on something external: a historic garden, perhaps, or the contents of my kitchen.  When the sequence makes sense,when the story has been told, it is over.  The last body of work was different in that it recorded an internal state of personal transformation.  What marks the end?  It was not a deliberated logical sequence, so much as an intuitive one.  When I finished Beatrice, my muse, the work was complete.

So the remnants of specific warps -- with enough left to weave more! -- have hung limply from my looms' reeds, chiding me that it is wasteful not to weave them off, while I have busied myself with projects of an entirely different nature: reading about climate change, working toward bringing local food to our tiny rural town, learning to screen print and using that to make direct statements about these issues in terms of household items.  All the while wondering, Will I ever weave again?

Bee Nice hand printed Linen towels, 2012

Weaving to me is a centering process essential to my well being.  I don't make useful things, witty things, toys on my looms (all of which I love to make in other craft media): I reserve it for my alpha state work, when my hands and heart and head are connected in a way that still the chatter of thought and manifests deeper realities.  I now that sounds hyperbolic, but that is how I define the art-making state, and it deserves the highest respect in my own chain of work: the weaving studio is uncluttered with any of the other things that crowd my work day: no sewing, no paperwork, no computer, nothing but yarn, space, and my looms.  When I set foot in there it is like entering the yoga studio: no shoes, mind stilling.

I haven't been there much lately so the mind is clamoring.

I have been distilling thoughts, though, about how the art end of my work can begin to confront the same ideas I have been so absorbed with in the rest of my activities.  I have the idea, but not the visual yet.  Often a body of work begins when I see something out there which might as well have a halo around it: I see it and it marks me and demands I do something with it.  The last cycle was without the exterior stimulus, but most other things are clearly about a place.  Genius loci, is that the phrase?

"Cold Frames & Fruit Trees" from the English Garden Series, 1989

Now I have been thinking about gardening as not just a metaphor for life, but as central to a new sustainability, and I am re-discovering old thought (such as my English Kitchen Garden series) and combining them with exciting new ideas being tested in the world, such as the zero-waste urban farm I saw in Chicago a few weeks ago.  I have the ideas spilling out, but have found no centering visual focus yet.  Nearly there!  Watch this space.

all images copyright Laura Foster Nicholson

Chicago Garden Tour

I was in Chicago twice over the past couple of weeks, once on a visit for a few days and then passing through O'Hare Airport with an hour to kill between flights.  Both times I saw the face of the New Garden, fascinating and not always beautiful, but intensely uplifting.

Aquaponic Arugula bed, watered from tilapia tanks, at The Plant

Two weeks ago my son & I had enough time together to spend a Saturday afternoon touring The Plant, a vertical urban farm on the south side at 47th and Ashland.  It is in the middle of the old Stockyards of fame, housed in a 93,000 square foot concrete former meat packing plant.  The interior of this building had been kept at below freezing for over 100 years -- imagine that! -- and on that chilly April day it seemed to have retained much of its coldness.


A completely visionary and masterful project,  The Plant is midway in its plan to become totally functional by 2015.  I will quote their "About" page here as they can explain things better than I:


What is The Plant? A Farm for the Future.
From its beginnings as a 93,500 s.f. meatpacking facility, The Plant is being repurposed into a net-zero energy vertical farm and food business operation. A complex and highly interrelated system, one-third of The Plant will hold aquaponic growing systems and the other two-thirds will incubate sustainable food businesses by offering low rent, low energy costs, and (eventually) a licensed shared kitchen. The Plant will create 125 jobs in Chicago’s economically distressed Back of the Yards neighborhood – but, remarkably, these jobs will require no fossil fuel use. Instead, The Plant will install a renewable energy system that will eventually divert over 10,000 tons of food waste from landfills each year to meet all of its heat and power needs.

Aeroponic  Garden in Terminal 2 at O'Hare Airport

I had been told by a friend that another urban miracle -- or at least, curiosity -- had opened at O'Hare Airport last fall, so when I was changing planes there last week I had time to go find it in terminal 2 at the rotunda, where several wings converge.  This garden has been dubbed "Aeroponic", no doubt in reference to its location, and it was a bright (really bright) and uplifting place to spend an hour -- comfortable armchairs around a glowing, cordoned off growing area of 26 tubular columns with plants inserted regularly along their length and water flowing throughout a piped in, closed system.  Not sure about the nutrient source, but the plants grown were to be used at some of the more elite restaurants at the airport (sadly, none of which were close to my gate) such as Rick Bayless' Frontera outpost there.

Having just visited the grubby, hardworking, and not for profit vision of The Plant 10 days before, this seemed definitely upscale and glam.  Without the tilapia nutrient feed loop, I couldn't figure out what is feeding those plants: one of the criticisms of hydroponic farming is the expensive nutrients which must be pumped into the water, hence making it less sustainable than the newly coined "aquaponic" culture used at The Plant.

But I can say that the visit was uplifting for me, and provided the sweet frisson of seeing airplanes out the big windows while sitting and watching lettuce grow.

HIbberd/McGrath Gallery

Following on the heels of the loss of the gallerist, Martha Hibberd, early this spring, I received a sad phone call from Terry McGrath, partner in the gallery Hibberd/McGrath in Breckinridge CO, that she was closing the gallery for various reasons. 

Marty & Terry were fabulous gallerists and warm, embracing people.  Although I had never set foot in the gallery, I had visited them at SOFA Chicago year after year and we struck up a professional and friendly relationship.  I had two solo shows there and was in a few group shows, and the work was beautifully displayed and then sold to discerning collectors. I have rarely had such a comfortable and honest relationship with a gallery as I had with H/M.

So today the long parcels arrived, carrying my "inventory" home to me.  It has been rather like a birthday unwrapping them all:  over a decade's worth of old friends up to the most recent body of work which I had shown there last April.  As I have not woven anything significant since shipping the balance of that work to Patina Gallery last fall, it was a redemption to see it all: some of my best work, all beautifully packaged interleaved with acid free tissue, carefully and lovingly preserved and sent off.

After 6 months of questioning my art and my purpose, it is reassuring to have them here for the moment, so I am going to show them all to you right here.

And then, please comment:  I need another gallery now! Any ideas?

Bemused, 29” x 28”,  wool with metallic 

Haven 17” x 29”, wool with metallic

Butterflies & Caterpillars, 2005, 43" x 17"

Small Orange Barn, 2007,  wool, cotton & metallic, 26.5” x 17.5”

Bee Swarm, 2009, 32” x 30”wool with metallic, silk and cotton

Pink Cakes, 2004, 23.5” x 27”

Bee Hives & Lavender, 2006, wool, cotton, metallic  

Green Jug at the Lake, 2005, 63.5” x 35”

Jelly Beans, 2004, 26” x 28.5”, wool with cotton

Study for Burning Barn 20” x 18”, wool with nylon, cotton

Cakes  2000  95” x 22”, wool with cotton

Bread Bins,  2001, 27” x 38”, wool with cotton

Spinning Oranges 74” x 17”, wool with cotton

Purple Loosestrife, 2006, 24” x 34”, wool with cotton

Horror Vacui: Brush & Spoon  1998, 50.5” x 8.5”, wool & cotton

Tomatoes  (detail), wool & cotton  2000    108” x 20”