Laura Foster Nicholson

the value of Art

2012-01-08T17:58:00.000-06:00

Last week I posted about the big change in my financial life due to the big change in the art market. Whereas for much of 30 years I had been able to make the majority of my living as a studio artist, primarily by selling works of my fine art through galleries, in the last 3 years, since the crash, I have had to readjust how I spend my time to be sure that my daytime, studio activity is still going to keep my boat afloat. I still do not have what some folks call "a day job", nor do I want one!

My days are now spent more at the computer, working on designs, or making small gift type items, utilizing my ribbon or not, to sell in town as well as at some museum stores around the country. I feel as if I am constantly juggling these identities: artist, designer, craftsperson. I do believe all three points of view are essential in a mature artist of any persuasion, but trying to do well at all 3 in 3 different kinds of applications (as opposed to combining them in the main work of art/design/craft at hand) sometimes feels less integrated and more split than I am accustomed to feeling!

So I am trying to imbue the design and craftmaking activities with the earnest, focused vision of my fine art, while still maintaining a clear, serene and separate studio practice of meditative artmaking which responds only to my own vision, not to the demands of any market.

One of the arguments "against" craft, in the old days, was that it lacked the intellectual power of fine art. We all know that is baloney, as is the idea that "art" appeals to the greater spiritual nature etc. etc. Craft can be an inspiring outpouring of faith, in humanity, in creativity, in spirituality. But the craft that I speak of above, in my case, refers more to making little gift items that people like, maybe love, and hopefully will buy. A different motivation! Nonetheless, I have never hesitated to call myself an artist, even a "fine" artist, and claim the status that may confer. I live an intensely creative life with vision made manifest in my best work, which I call my "fine art". That is enough for me.

So I leave tonight with this question:
How do I begin to imbue the directed design and craft work that I do, such as my new "Eat Well" towel, with the spiritual and intellectual energy that it took to weave "Beatrice"?

quiet time

2012-01-02T21:22:00.001-06:00

There was an editorial in Sunday's New York Times which is high on the most-emailed list, posted frequently to Facebook as well, on The Joy of Quiet. It clearly resonates with a lot of people: in essence the article discusses the various values of going offline, not taking calls, etc.

In a sense I have been doing that, staying quiet and unconnected, in that I have not been posting on either of my blogs for months. I mounted a (personally) important exhibition of my work this year to show in two venues, in the spring and in the fall. The works I made to send were redolent with meaning, dripping with lush color, totally satisfactory to myself, and to those who cared to comment to me, as a strong new body of work. I got a great writeup in Santa Fe's Pasatiempo (hard to get, they say!), 2 pages, 2 big color photos of tapestries. Seems like I did everything right, and I sat back for a little while to rest on my laurels.

But here is the hard truth, friends: I sold exactly one piece, a small one, out of the two shows combined. For those of you who have long since opted out of commercial galleries, proudly disdaining commercializing your art, bully for you. I have been proud, delighted, and extraordinarily fortunate to have made a living for close to 30 years by the sale of my tapestries. I am also proud of my work, itself, as a real expression of my thoughts and vision, as something that people clearly love and respond to. So what happened?

Well, the economy, I guess. I have survived a number of recessions over the years totally intact, hardly missing a beat. But life is different now. It is shocking and jarring to realize, at the age of 57, that in a sense I have been laid off. My artwork is an elite and -- seemingly unnecessary -- luxury few can afford. More on that later.

Join the club, you might say. Of course. A lot of folks who had previously fortunate lives got their pink slips in the last few years! And so -- like many others -- I have been spending a few months trying to reinvent my way of working.

I feel fortunate to be a creative person, to be an artist. I actually don't feel unemployed (my mother, when speaking about the difficulties her family endured during the Great Depression, proudly maintained "my father worked every day. He just didn't get paid for it"). I have been as busy as ever, as optimistic as ever (something about the bottom falling out tends to rally some of us: gets the adrenaline flowing and brings out the survival mode.) I believe that creative people are in the best position to dig themselves out of problems -- as long as we can believe in the value of our ideas.

I used to wonder what in the world I might be able to do if I couldn't make art, and would conclude, nothing. One of my more recent schticks about "the business of being an artist" classes is that I sure wish, back in art school, they had told us what else our extraordinarily creative minds might be good for, in case we needed to make a living! So now, I am looking at what I know, what skills I have, what beliefs I want to share (the role of the artist), to find where I fit now. I plan to re-invent my art making, though I did think about becoming a nurse.

Art has always been essential to culture. To cut it out of budgets as a superfluous, unnecessary expense is a grave mistake. Art-making, and living with art, makes us more human, more articulate in non-verbal modes, more sensitive to the world. So it shouldn't be so hard to make my work essential. That is - essentially -- what I have been musing about for the last 3 months.

I have made 3 new year's resolutions, and they are all absolutely vital, and absolutely terrifying for me to undertake. They are

READ
WRITE
DRAW

Frightening because now I must take responsibility for my thoughts -- again.

I would really welcome your comments!

more as it happens,

Laura

Being Here at Patina Gallery in Santa Fe

2011-09-29T09:23:00.000-05:00

I am so excited -- the show and all, but next week I will be THERE, in marvelous Santa Fe, surounded by friends, family and a totally supportive gallery! All the work I have been writing about this year will be on display, in my show, Being Here.

The work was more emotional than much of my work has been in a very long time, and I used the making of it to transition from a deep sadness to a feeling of transcendant expectation of a new future. Beatrice, the strange lady about whom I wrote last month, a culmination of a personal journey: the inspired artist, or the muse herself, smiling through her tears toward a new day. (It is a good thing I am a visual artist rather than a poet, as I cringe at the inadequacy of my words here!)

After Beatrice came a floating cloud of bees, freedom of spirit, entitled Being Here.

Here is the handsome card Patina has prepared.

the Housewife of Monticello

2011-09-09T14:52:00.001-05:00

I am happy to report that the sewing kits (housewives) I designed & made for Monticello are now available online: http://www.monticellocatalog.org/205433.html for the adult version with fine scissors (below)

http://www.monticellocatalog.org/205432.html for the young adult version, with folding scissors.

Being There

2011-09-08T09:56:00.000-05:00

I have completed the last tapestry in this cycle of Bee thought. All of this new work is going off to Patina Gallery in Santa Fe next week for my show there, opening October 7.

This piece, "Being Here", just flew off the loom, as opposed to the earlier piece on the same warp, now named "Beatrice" (after Dante's muse), who worried me to death all summer (so much for the power of a Muse!). I felt that a cloud of energy, diffusing upward, was a good and fitting point to rest this inner search. It feels good and peaceful and there is more than a promise of joy to come.

Being Here, 2011. 41" x 34", wool with silk & metallic

strange lady

2011-08-22T16:43:00.000-05:00

Having finished blocking and hemming this piece, I finally got her on the wall, the only way I can actually evaluate everything about the composition, proportions, and aura. I have to say, she is growing on me! She feels like Buddha, like a fairy, like a serene and happy lady. Floating. As yet, untitled.

children

2011-08-18T09:54:00.001-05:00

People always like to compare one's artwork to children. "How can you sell that? It must be like your child!" I am thinking about this comparison today as I gaze at the completed tapestry I wrote about yesterday -- as yet, un-named.

Like your children, your art is part of you. You created it: without you it would have no life. But what I am thinking today is that, like with your children, it is impossible to be objective. You love it to pieces; you are overly critical. You learn to speak less critically, to give pure love, then you worry you will spoil it. And it is now about to gain its own independent life, your work with it is complete and you have to let it go. But it is easier to do that if you understand it first.

So I look at this piece which seems incredibly flawed (no photos today!!) and wonder what I have wrought, was it worth all the anxiety? All the loving care & time lavished on it? And I have to learn to look at it with love before I can actually see what -- who -- it is. (I will tell you this: she is really odd! that might be good.)

how to weave a smile

2011-08-17T15:29:00.001-05:00

I am working on another large figurative tapestry. I should point out here that before last fall, when I began this current series, the last figurative piece I wove was in approximately 1974 when I was ridiculed at Kansas City Art Institute for using textile to depict something which should be painted. This was the era of fiber for fiber's sake, large expressive textural and NON-OBJECTIVE weavings were de rigeur.

I spent my time at Cranbrook Academy of Art, working on my MFA in Fiber, trying to justify weaving at all, making sure that my subject matter had a direct relationship with the means of execution. I spent years making tapestries of garden and architectural subjects, both of which used the woven grid as a common language. Pattern, grid and surface texture were the language of textiles I became most fluent in.

So last fall when I conceived this body of work I was so aware of this old argument in my head. I set out to make weavings where the thread was as important as the image; the overall simplicity and bluntness of the compositions and spatial relationships were consistent, I felt, with my woven directive of producing textiles which need to be textiles, not paintings. The most difficult piece to date was last spring's "In My Mind's Eye I am Fine" a nearly full size woven silhouette of a figure. It was nerve wracking to weave, row by row, bottom to top, as I worried continually about how I could control the form, how expressive my lines might be, whether my lack of skill in rendering this form would become a part of the expression. It took me months, as worry is the thing that slows me down the most.

I am now nearly done with the next step in that battle. A few months ago a close friend related her dream to me: that she saw me lying on a bier, as if dead, but I was weeping continuously and smiling. I was also wearing a fabulous suzani dress, as it happened (my friend is a textile person too). What an image! I set about immediately making the warp for this piece, made scale drawings, threaded the loom, embarked on the project.

First issue: was I going to weave the suzani flowers? Was this about making my own suzani? (very appealing! but I was concerned it would not do justice to the embroidered reference) Or was it about the narrative? Would making an awkwardly woven suzani distract from the real story, the smiling-and-weeping self? I saw this story as my next step: I am sad but I am fine! So the flowers were left behind.

Then there was the form itself. More difficult hands! that stopped me for weeks. Got them done and then unrolled and saw a comically distorted body. That threatened to stop the project, but I finally sat down, made a full scale drawing, and got back on the horse. And today's work, at last, is to weave the very important smile. One might have noted, my earlier heads have had ears but no faces. Here we go. So it is woven, she is my Mona Lisa with, I hope, an ambiguous smile. I took a break to write this, and now I am off to weave the top of her head.

Natural Dye Workshop with Michele Wipplinger

2011-08-04T14:26:00.002-05:00

I have been off line so long you all must think I drowned in all of the spring rains I was complaining of! It has been a summer devoted more to design than to art, and I write slightly more frequently about that work on my other blog, http://lfntextiles.blogspot.com. However, with a show scheduled at Patina Gallery in Santa Fe this October I am beginning to weave again in earnest and will begin posting about that soon.

Earlier in June, however, we did have the natural dye workshop with Michele Wipplinger that I had posted about. It was fascinating to be able to produce such a broad range of colors from her natural dye extracts. We had participants from New York, Nepal, and Senegal, Docey Lewis having brought in colleagues from these places to catch up on dye technology. Keith Recker, editor in chief of Hand/Eye magazine was among us too. We worked in the lovely little Sarah Campbell Blaffer pottery studio in New Harmony, well lit and surprisingly well suited to our task. We had some glorious cool sunny days and were able to spread out yarns out under a shade tree to dry. And I want to point out the great fashion statement in the long red & yellow gloves!

rescuing the beehives

2011-05-02T23:00:00.001-05:00

Another day that makes me think that it might be smart to start building an ark. Instead I wound a warp and spent a wet afternoon dip-dying it, then got wetter inspecting my various basements and making sure the sump pumps were working. Rain kept pouring down all day, so at the end of the day I went over to my old house to check the beehives, as Ben is out of town and I am worried about those bees. Yesterday the water had been approaching them (The land they are on is five feet higher than the level of the field they sit next to) and water was lapping at the bases. The brood (eggs) are usually in the lower chamber so if the hives flooded even a little it, the next generation would have no chance.

I found a very strong man to move them to higher ground. He was amazing, and like a gentle giant lifted each heavy hive off its base and relocated it to the new area. It was too wet for many bees even to bother coming out under all this commotion, but some did. I got stung only once and Steve, who performed all of this gloveless even though I insisted he wear a veil to protect his face, caught only one sting. He isa natural with them.

Here are the before & after photos - -we finished up just before nightfall.

three-quarters sick of rain.

2011-05-01T19:50:00.000-05:00

http://laurafosternicholson.blogspot.com/2010/05/peonies.htmlLast year at this time I wrote about New Harmony's glorious peony fields. Today I walked over -- with wellington boots, raincoat and umbrella in a downpour -- to see them. The buds, just ready to burst, are in fear of their lives as the water rises. It is predicted that it will crest tomorrow or Monday so perhaps not too much harm will be done. The crops in the fields may be a literal washout, and my (old) beehives are being threatened as well.

Half Sick of Rain

2011-04-28T09:32:00.002-05:00

Life has been complicated this spring, and now it is raining, raining, raining. I don't even know how many inches have fallen in the last 7 days -- and many many trees have fallen too. The National Guard have been here and sandbagged along the river. The river is now an ocean surrounding our beautiful buildings in many places, but it has not (yet) seeped in. It breeds a sort of malaise.

My dear friend Sandra Brownlee just told me about this painting -- in reference to my own work? -- and I can't resist posting it. By the artist John William Waterhouse, it is titled "I am half-sick of shadows, said the Lady of Shalott", and her posture at her loom says it all.

"I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shallot"

Dyeing as if the Earth Mattered with Michele Wipplinger

2011-04-18T14:46:00.001-05:00

http://naturaldyeworkshopnewharmony.blogspot.com

I am so lucky to live in this marvelous, creative and inspired Utopian community. We are graced with restaurants, art galleries, antique shops, world class architecture, important social history, a fine Inn, and TWO textile designers, among our 900 residents. Docey Lewis and myself have a great time sitting around coming up with creative ideas for spreading our textile wealth, and our latest idea is to begin a series of textile-based workshops led by prominent artists to bring new visitors to our magical town.

The first workshop will feature reknowned dyer Michele Wipplinger of Earthues. Here's the information, or you can go online to http://naturaldyeworkshopnewharmony.blogspot.com

Where:      Sara Campbell Blaffer Potter’s House, New Harmony, Indiana

Cost: $500 ( includes tuition and materials fee); $680 (includes tuition, materials fee, and 3 nights double-occupancy + breakfast at the New Harmony Inn)

This workshop focuses on an ecological approach to natural dyeing by creating multiple color combinations in one dyebath. Using diverse fiber types such as wool, silk and cellulose substrates, in combination with Earthues’ natural dye extracts, four artful color combinations are possible, including an indigo overdye. This method uses one dye pot per team of two and two indigo vats. From this simple, low water and low heat method, a multitude of hues emerge, creating a unique and diverse color palette.

Sponsor: New Harmony Artists Guild

Contact: Docey Lewis doceyDLD@aol.com 812-682-3868 or
Laura Nicholson lfntextiles@sbcglobal.net 812-781-1348

Register online: http://naturaldyeworkshopnewharmony.blogsp ot.com/

For room reservations contact the New Harmony Inn http://www.newharmonyinn.com/

T: 800-782-8605 (Six double rooms have been reserved. Mention Natural Dye Workshop)

This workshop is limited to the first 15 registrants.

Make checks payable to: New Harmony Artists Guild

Mail to: Docey Lewis, Workshop Coordinator
             P.O. Box 6
             New Harmony, Indiana 47631

In My Mind's Eye I am Fine

2011-03-22T15:24:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I finished shipping out all of the tapestries for my upcoming show at Hibberd McGrath Gallery, opening April 2. What a feeling of accomplishment! This was a big body of work, full of feeling, and the last piece was compounded in difficulty by my breaking my arm 4 weeks ago. I went to the loom as soon as I could and managed to squeak out some of the weaving, but this was the largest piece, topping out at 65" tall, and it wasn't until my cast came off last week that I could really attack the bees and get it finished. So here are the last 2 pieces off the loom, both woven on the same dip-dyed red warp.

In My Mind'sEye I am fine, 2011, 65" x 29"

Swarm, 2011, 31" x 29"

planting cycles

2011-03-18T08:59:00.001-05:00

I love vegetables -- I love to eat them, I love to grow them, I love to draw them. When I first saw the vegetable garden at Monticello, first designed by Thomas Jefferson in the late 18th century, restored under Peter Hatch at Monticello in the 1980s, I was mesmerized by its beauty and its long, ribbon-like proportions. At about 80 fet wide by a thousand feet long, it seemed like a giant, patterned textile just unfurled from the loom. So I set about making a series of tapestries trying to describe the scope of the garden, from seed-sprouting and seed saving, through a woven catalogue of dozens of vegetables planted there.

the vegetable garden at Monticello

detail, "Harvest, 1992". 1993, hand woven. copyright Laura Foster Nicholson

This last piece, "Harvest 1992" (1992 was the planting year I referenced, it was woven in 1993) became a lexicon for me of woven form which I have referred to over and over again ever since. Long after the tapestries had been exhibited and sold, I designed a ribbon with some of the vegetables which we still produce' Crate & barrel licensed that design for kitchen towels for several seasons too. And most recently I was contacted by The Battery Park Conservancy, who have now licensed the design for use in fund raising efforts for their Urban Garden, due to open this spring.

From their website,
"The Battery Conservancy presents the first Urban Farm at the Battery since the Dutch planted their cottage gardens in New Amsterdam in 1625.
This innovative project began with a request from students of Millennium
High School’s Environmental Club to plant a vegetable garden in the park.
Saying YES launched a farming initiative that now includes EIGHT schools with over 450 students (K-12).
The Battery Conservancy is expanding the program to include community groups, residents, and the neighboring workforce who long to give their hands and hearts to cultivating and harvesting home-grown food." How cool is that ?

Valentine Red, color of the month

2011-02-25T14:10:00.001-06:00

February certainly was a memorable and eventful month. Mostly memories of events I would prefer not to remember. I wrote about red a few times recently, including about weaving on this dazzling red warp. I had to abandon it for a while due to moving into my new home and various other activities (that sounds light!), culminating in a week with my family in Virginia. The last night there, I managed to fall down the stairs and break my right wrist, so I am now sporting a lovely RED cast and yesterday I took it over to the loom to see how it works.

I am so relieved to tell you that I can weave! The brocading part is a piece of cake, as my fingers are totally free and relatively nimble, if stiff & swollen. Throwing the shuttle is trickier. I can manage it but must watch how I pull my arm back -- can't twist the wrist, and don't want to throw wrong and break threads. Fortunately, with brocading work, the motion is slow & interrupted anyway and the real facility lies in the fingers' work, so all will proceed smoothly, albeit more slowly than usual. When I finish this piece -- which is "In My Mind's Eye I am Fine", I have one left to do before shipping all of them out to Hibberd McGrath Gallery in Colorado, where I have a one-person show opening April 2.

burned and done

2011-02-01T17:18:00.004-06:00

As I have written recently it has been hard to stay on task at the studio due to complications in my life. Last week, I moved out of the home my husband & I had made together, and into a beautiful little Harmonist house built in 1820. The day before I was to close & move I suddenly needed to weave, went to the loom I had tied up (See "Burning On", January 21), and wove most of the tapestry -- up through the roof of the barn -- in a heat before having to leave to go home & finish packing. I realize that the passion to get it done was the reality leaving one life behind. Though I knew when I planned it what this piece is a metaphor for, I still can't believe the direct line to the heart artmaking follows. I think it is a strong piece. I feel stronger having made it.

This afternoon I finished weaving the Burning Barn. It is now washed and pressed and waiting to be hemmed but I was excited enough to begin writing about it before I completely wrap it up. This photo shows a detail, the overall size will be roughly 32" x 30".

burning on

2011-01-21T15:44:00.002-06:00

The life that inspires me also conspires to keep me from making my art. This burning barn, my life, is flaming on, sometimes smoldering sometimes raging full force, and there is not always enough energy left to get over to the loom and interpret it.

Nonetheless after experiencing an immensely frustrating delay yesterday on something rather large in my life, I am able to go to the loom now and begin winding on the yellow warp I wrote about several weeks ago (meanwhile the red warp languishes, bound at the feet of the forthcoming figure). The sun is shining in my 8 foot windows and the colors are alight.

a new exhibition

2011-01-13T19:59:00.003-06:00

I was recently invited to show a group of tapestries at the art galleries at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, as part of a group of 3 textile shows: “Quilts from the Collection of Judy and Tom Morton”, and “Stitches in Time: Samplers from Private Collections” flank my show, “Stone Tapestries”. In selecting a group of tapestries for the show, Katherine Waters and I decided to focus on my Stones series which spans two decades It is always helpful to stop and view a group of works together, and to formulate a synopsis of the ideas which one was attempting to express. Here is the statement I wrote for the show.

"I have long used a recurring motif of stones in my work. It began as a way of making an equivalent of soil in the garden tapestries I was weaving many years ago. I found I enjoyed making the many small, multicolored ovals which, at the time, I viewed as pebbles. Much of my work is grounded in recognizable imagery and I viewed – still view – the woven marks I made as an equivalent, or approximation, of something which actually existed in the world. In other words, most of my woven work is created with the intention of making a recognizable equivalent of something which I have witnessed in the real world.
One day, as I realized how much I enjoy making those colorful little oval marks, I asked myself if they could hold enough interest in and of themselves to cover a field with no other visual reference. From that day my Stones work has become a way of exploring space, color, depth of field, and surface in textiles. When I make a tapestry which is simply a field of stones, I become mesmerized by the process of laying in the colored threads. Every detail counts. I might choose a red thread for a space and decide it has totally thrown the direction I was going in, as all color relates to the colors it is surrounded by. I watch as a field of color evolves incrementally and every color choice I make is spontaneous and critical. The resulting work, I feel, has great depth, movement, texture, and an emotion which have been made thread by thread in a meditative and intimate conversation between myself and my loom."

The Red & the Black

2010-12-21T17:18:00.004-06:00

Very Stendhal. I have to leave the loom every 30 minutes or so to rest my eyes!

It puts me in mind of my new Sheila's Roses ribbon, in a very uncharacteristic red-and-black damask. Where is all this leading? Now I wonder if it influenced my choice of warp...

Color & Metaphor

2010-12-20T10:34:00.002-06:00

Most of my color use in my weaving has been, admittedly, tied to a limited palette of landscape & architecture and fairly literal. I won't say it is not inspired or even lyrical, as I often begin in my inspiration for work with the color that comes into my line of vision. But it is dictated by some grounding in an exterior place.

My most recent work has been tied to an inner, metaphoric landscape of emotion that is linked to reality by a figurative silhouette and animated by bees, which have always been the animators of all of my landscapes. In this time of pain I have found my bees to be the language of engagement that works for me. Surrounded by bees when I am safely zipped inside a bee suit, the air is alive with their language and they crawl with great energy all over me. This would be threatening without my protective clothing, but inside the suit I can enjoy their nearness and not worry about imminent pain. My woven bees are, similarly, simultaneously benign and threatening, my protectors and my adversaries.

But the color now can be informed by an interior dialogue of emotion and metaphor. So in winding warps last week for 4 new tapestries in the series, I thought, hmmm, what color? I looked at the yarn shelves in my studio and intuiutively chose carmine reds and sulphur yellows. Out of these will come these stories:

The Burning Barn ( I wove the study two weeks ago)
In My mind's Eye I am Fine
The Bees Always Swarmed When We Argued (working title)
and Breathing.

Here is the photo of the warps as threaded through the reeds. More as it happens.

migration

2010-12-07T14:43:00.002-06:00

I am afraid my average photo skills simply can't capture the number of birds in the air. Zoom on these, and you will have some idea.

Glory be. When I stepped out of the cabin this morning, I heard a sound like a mighty wind, and looked up to see millions of black birds swirling through the clear blue sky sky. The cabin is just a field away from the Wabash river, and 15 miles from the confluence of the Wabash and the Ohio, so it is on a flightpath which frequently provides waves of birds on their seasonal migrations. The sight was thrilling and the sound was everywhere. Each branch of every tree was articulated with a line of perching birds, then they would whoosh up again and off they would go to the next treeline. I love to see flocks of birds head in waves in one direction, settle into the trees, then swirl up and off in an arc in the opposite direction. It was a gift, I felt, of joy and fullness to savor throughout the rest of this cold December day.

slow work

2010-11-30T17:40:00.002-06:00

Have faith, I am still working! but slowly. I am happy to say that I like what is creeping off my loom, and hopefully things will calm down shortly -- I have been traveling a lot, and then of course there was Thanksgiving -- and I will get to the Barn on Fire tapestry that is in my head. But for now, here is the second in the set of three portraits I have made this fall of my inner state. (you may see "Beset" here)

Bemused, 2010, wool with metallic & rayon

Art Institute of Chicago Textile Collection Opening

2010-11-01T15:17:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I am going up to Chicago to attend the re-opening of the Department of Textiles at the Art Institute. The department has been closed for five years to repair structural problems. There are two exhibitions featured in the re-opening: June Wayne's Narrative Tapestries, and Contemporary Fiber Art: A selection from the Permanent Collection. The latter exhibition includes my Grey Stones weaving, which AIC acquired two years ago. I am so honored to be included in this happy show, and was delighted to learn that Grey Stones is pictured in the current AIC magazine article about the exhibition.

Art Institute of Chicago publication, 2010

cheering color

2010-10-18T08:37:00.000-05:00

One of the few things still blooming in the garden are the marigolds, which I do love. Something about their peculiar scent, but also the color. I am not a yellow person per se, though all of my preferred colors are yellow-based and yellow is the first toner color to run out on my printer...

But this morning I began ruthlessly harvesting all the bright yellow blooms as I am going to try natural dyeing once again. I have been using a few more dye processes in my weaving lately, and had thought it would be nice to use natural dyes from my land rather than acid dyes from a bottle. What tipped the scales for me was Dominique Cardon's lecture last week at the Textile Society of America conference. Her talk was titled Natural Dyes: Our Global Heritage of Colors (she gave a site seminar and a natural dye workshop as well, neither of which I was able to attend) and she spoke compellingly of the role of natural dyes both as traditional pollutants and as a way to bring textiles in to a new greener industrial process. Of course just because a dye is plant based, does not mean it is safe to ingest; the effluent from dyeing has long been a serious environmental problem, largely because of the metal salts used as mordants. As industry looks toward reinvesting in the old technologies and finds mordants that are safer (alum, for one that I know about) the question also comes out about overuse of plant materials-- for example, brazilwood which is now very scarce. The answer has been to example industrial processes involving agricultural products and lumber by products to find new dyestuffs that are actually by products of other industries. All fascinating.

So I have denuded the plants of their brilliant plumage -- they may yet bloom once more after this heavy deadheading -- and now am spreading the blossoms out to dry on a screen in the warm October sunshine. I would much prefer to throw them in a pot and boil them up now -- I like this process as it is another form of cooking, after all -- but I have a heavy workload in the studio right now that can't be derailed by a new investigation. So I hope that the yellow from dried blossoms will be as good as from fresh.

separating paths

2010-10-11T07:11:00.005-05:00

I am going to talk today about something more personal than I usually like to do on this blog. My husband and I have decided, after 30 years together, that it is time to part. Outside the obvious pain and the mundane why's of it all, I was thinking today in more metaphoric terms to try to explain this dissolution.

I can't quite remember what year Ben found labyrinths. He had been writing a large & scholarly book on sacred geometry wrapped around the geometry of the pavement in Michelangelo's Laurentian library, and in his thorough and polymathic way, Ben looked into every kind of geometry and sacred practice he could find until he walked into the idea of labyrinths. What was meant to be a chapter wound its way around into a lifelong journey. Ben began drawing and analyzing every imaginable kind of labyrinth, devising methods of generating them and writing extensively about the meanings inherent in the path one chooses to walk. Each labyrinth of necessity offers a different approach to the center; one might take you spirally ever closer to the center while another might flirt back & forth, into the middle and back out, quadrant by quadrant, before delivering you home to the center. All of it has been a profound practice of finding one's way, metaphorically and literally. I have watched Ben literally travel this path over the years, becoming a leader of other walkers, a kind of mesmerizing shaman. Labyrinths have become the central practice to his teaching: his favorite thing is to take a studio full of architects to the beach and draw labyrinths in the sand. People come to our cabin to pace their paths in a simple dirt circle in the back, following Ben on his shuffle labyrinth. It has been lovely to watch, but a practice I have remained on the outside of.

(from Ben Nicholson's series of hundreds of labyrinth study drawings, colored pencil on vellum)

Meanwhile my own path has remained that of the shuttle: back and forth, back & forth, looping at the selvedge, traveling a known path towards the unknown of the art I was making on the loom, the path itself simple, slow, clear, but the journey equally mystical. I understand this journey, it keeps me calm and open and is such a perfect meditation that I have needed no other. Because of this weaving process I can completely empathize with the journey that labyrinth people speak about, but I am not on that particular journey. This has proven to be a separating stance. I feel slow, simple, grounded while Ben has been a gloriously whirling dervish. Now he is whirling away.

"Beset", 2010, wool with rayon, silk, metallic & cotton

Some couples do everything together. Some couples, when they are both architects, practice together: they are together all day and together at night. I don't know how they do this, although it is remarkable and some of our friends have lives like this. I don't want to indicate that something as large as the end of a marriage can be reduced to a simple story like I tell here. It certainly is only tangentially to do with labyrinths. I simply say this, we have discovered we are on separate paths, and I needed to write about it in the open.

prairie pillow is done!

2010-09-09T15:45:00.000-05:00

This afternoon I completed sewing up the Prairie pillow. I had to make a time equation that was really interesting. When I lived in Chicago, I would have shopped for the backing fabric & trim and easily found something that would enhance the tapestry face. Here in southern Indiana, I realized I could easily spend a day looking for fabric, and not find it; also it takes 45 minutes each way to drive into Evansville to begin the search! So I hand-wove the backing as well as the fabric for the welting, and came out about the same in time, with superior results. So here you have it: wool twill brocade pillow face, wool twill backing & handmade welting. Voila!

weaving a prairie

2010-09-03T18:06:00.000-05:00

I was commissioned recently to produce a very special tapestry pillow based on prairie flowers. I cut it off the loom today, and will weave the backing fabric on Monday. Here's how it looked on the loom; the second photo is after cutting it off and blocking it. The finished pillow will be 16" square.

white on white, finished

2010-09-01T16:05:00.001-05:00

I did finish those beautiful white-on-white pillows and the designer was kind enough to send photos of the room with the pillows plumply in place. The high contrast here doesn't really show off the weave, so I am including a photo from the workroom for detail. The set was six 22" square pillows for a very sleek, modern room which needed only subtle interest in the sofas. Lovely work by Dirk Denison Architects of Chicago.

visiting Beta Verde

2010-08-23T10:22:00.002-05:00

I am happily in North Carolina today visitng my dear friend Margaret Norfleet Neff, who, with her daughter Salem, hosts Beta Verde, an energetic & unique enterprise in growing , cooking & sharing slow food.

Although I have been canning plenty this summer, as usual Margaret & Salem's energy puts me in the amateur category. Tomorrow they are taking the pickles & jams they have put up this summer to Winston-Salem's Krankie's Farmer's Market to sell -- and what a sight their labor is to behold! They have a room filled with boxes of gallon, quart, pint, half pint, and itty bitty jams of the most fascinating pickles and jams I have beheld. I will have to hit the stove again when I get home! Not to mention the loom -- I adore making tapestries of bottled preserves.

more hearts

2010-07-11T11:40:00.007-05:00

http://handeyemagazine.com/

I am in Santa Fe New Mexico this morning, having come here with my friend Docey Lewis. She is deeply involved with Haitian artisans, many of whom have lost the workshops she helped them to establish over the years, so Hand/Eye Fund (related to the sumptuous Hand/Eye Magazine, which you absolutely MUST subscribe to if you love textiles and fine crafts from around the world) is sponsoring A Million Hearts for Haiti to raise needed money for rebuilding.

Santa Fe has grown so much over the years -- as everyone comments upon -- that the hustle & bustle seem comparable to New York to me after the peacefulness of my home in New Harmony. Fun and stimulating for a few days, but I am ready to quiet down again.

In addition to the market -- which I have described in a bit more detail on my other blog -- we went up to Abiquiu for a night to see Ghost Ranch (the famed home of Georgia O'Keefe) and also our friends Philip and Ali Newell, who are doing their annual 3 week spiritual residency at Casa del Sol there. The tranquility and sheer beauty of the region were unsurpassed. We have had long conversations about the importance of place -- both New Harmony and Abiquiu are "thin" places where one is closer to God (or if you prefer, to your own center). Docey and I were so struck that we have begun making plans to get back there for a retreat ASAP.

I have written several times about labyrinths in this space so it seems fitting to show you the simple heart labyrinth that has been made at Casa del Sol. And above that, a lovely prayer tree next to the labyrinth where prayers are written on strips of cloth and tied to the branches of the tree to be whispered to the passing winds. Below, the heart stone at the center of the labyrinth.

Tonight we move along to Albuquerque to spend the night at Los Poblanos Inn, an organic lavender farm with a bed and breakfast. Should be heaven. More soon!.

tractor!

2010-06-27T11:53:00.004-05:00

I still wonder at the transformation that continues to manifest itself in my life. After moving to this rural community 4 years ago, we revelled in the garden and it has grown (thanks far more to Ben's efforts than my own: I am the harvester-cook, not the digger-planter) to a satisfyingly grand scale. But the "back 40", as I like to call the wild portion of our 1.4 acres beyond the vegetable garden, has slowly gotten out of control. The first two years we hired in someone to disc & plant it for us, so we had beautiful buckwheat one summer with sunflowers mixed in, then winter wheat the following spring. But that was expensive and somewhat unpredictable as we depended upon our neighbors with farming equipment to do this for us. So we gave up the last couple of years and watched it go to weeds.

Last week Ben took the plunge and, after doing his typically meticulous research, bought a secondhand 1950 Ford tractor -- beautifully maintained and restored -- and several huge attachments including a bush hog. Who would have thought how utterly exciting I would find this addition! It means we can now begin to truly shape the land, take control of our own property and make something really wonderful. I can even imagine learning how to drive it myself. It is so beautifully simple and straightforward! It all makes clear sense. And it is so beautiful. I drove in yesterday from a week away and saw it sitting in the drive next to Ben's Subaru and was jsut thrilled. You might remember my earlier posts about tractor ribbons and the tractor parade, so to have a sweet machine of our own like this is fabulous.

This morning in a short space of time Ben jumped on it and bush-hogged (what a word) the weeds in back, and though it is scruffy and ugly at the moment it is now a ripe slate for our visions. Ben wants to build a labyrinth suitable for riding horses in (something he has been working toward with his sister Cordelia , for the Labyrinth Society Gathering this fall). I would love to see a field of lavender out there some day. We are this much closer to those visions now.

I should note that Ben is particularly in his element here -- a lifelong connection satisfied. His family was in the farm machinery business as Nicholson's of Newark, for a century, winning gold medals at the Great Exhibition for their innovative equipment. Ben was raised in the expectation that he would take over the business, but in the 1970's the business went under in the dire British economy and Ben went on to architecture school instead. I hope he will mount the Nicholson's tractor seat (which currently hangs over the front door) on his new baby.

joy

2010-06-22T07:51:00.008-05:00

I have found myself tremendously gifted with friends, many of whom have helped me to understand the real meaning of the word "joy". Today I am inspired to write about this, because of the passing of a dear woman whom I feel privileged to refer to as a my friend, Jane Blaffer Owen, who left us last night, during the summer solstice. Two months ago, another friend, Claudia Elliott, passed at dawn on Easter morning. The timeliness for each is metaphoric, and helps me to accept these losses with a sense of happiness at the rightness of the larger plan.

Both of these women were inspirations not only to myself but to many, many others, particularly in my new home of New Harmony. Claudia grew up in New Harmony, left it for more dynamic places while her mother Josephine Elliott was busy archiving the town's history, and returned here as her parents faded. She and her husband John were deeply involved in the town's creative musical life, as well as in the profound social network in this tiny place. As I got to know Claudia, and her brilliantly transparent, all-seeing eyes, she helped guide me through extremely difficult emotional times. Claudia was ill: disabled by the time I met her and living her rich life out of the confines of a broken body and a wheelchair, but her exceptional tenacity and creative exuberance never left her and I was deeply inspired by this gift of life & joy she gave to all around her. When her spirit left her body at dawn on Easter, the town made a collective, deep sigh of loss, but her memorial service was joyous and we all felt she had been set free. I was left to savor my good fortune in having known her, and to try to incorporate some of the insights she gave me into my own life.

Jane Owen is to be credited for bringing Ben and me here: yes, it was our own decision to change our busy urban lives in for rural peace, but she was the catalyst, the muse, perhaps the siren as I often jokingly said, who lured us here with glimpses of the joy and wonder of this Utopia we now endeavor to maintain.

Last night, a group of faithful friends and new acquaintances were walking the Cathedral Labyrinth in New Harmony -- one of her many spiritual gifts to the town --bringing in the Summer Solstice. Mrs Owen's dear friend, Phillip Newell, recited prayers and chimes were rung as the sun set. In Houston, Mrs Owen passed on, no doubt aware of the love and prayers being felt for her all over New Harmony.

For me, she was an example of the possibility of real joy. We all strive for "happiness", success; I left Chicago looking for something else, for peace. We had met Jane Owen in visits to New Harmony -- a fascinating place made more so by her myriad cultural and architectural projects -- and she kindly assisted us in every imaginable way to make first the decision, and then the transition. She included us frequently at her table, where we met literary and spiritual lights, and her air of serenity and deep joie de vivre floated over us all like a magical charm. She honored me by endorsing my artwork, often climbing the 23 steps to my studio (at the age of 95!) and sending visitors and friends there frequently. She showed her trust in me by sharing the draft of her memoir with me, from which I learned her story in her own words, and some of the real difficulties as well as the triumphs she had faced in her life. I felt by hearing her voice in those pages I knew her much better, and could imagine her as a dynamic younger woman, in her prime (at my age!) and working with great architects & artists to shape New Harmony.

There has been conversation for years about what might happen to New Harmony when she passed, as she has been so benficent here. My view has always been that she has been carefully building a generation of cultural successors who will be able to maintain, and more importantly add to, the town she so loved. I know Ben and I are deeply congnizant of wanting to make a lasting contribution here, and in our own ways we devote tremendous amounts of time & creative energy to the life here. We endeavor to bring people here -- professional friends, close friends, students, colleagues -- to show the world what is possible in a small rural town when imagination is set loose. I know I have huge ideas about what a creative Utopia means, and my friends & I regularly have long discussions about how our own activities might work to manifest good and make this town of 850 more self sustaining as well as more nurturing. To Mrs Owen, I pledge now to continue the joy and the generosity she has shown to me, and to try to share my own humble version of it wherever I go.

quilting!

2010-06-16T07:44:00.016-05:00

I have never pretended tp be a quilter -- last quilts I made were in high school out of dressmaking scraps. They were pieced simply of squares but the colors were carefully chosen. I made one of pale fabrics, one of blue fabrics, one of red fabrics, then I learned to weave and never devoted much time to quilting again.

However I did leap forward last fall when it was announced that the annual Labyrinth Society Gathering would be held here in New Harmony (and that my husband Ben, and his sister Cordelia Rose, would be co-chairs of the event) and suggested that a community quilt be made from one of Ben's square labyrinth drawings (see the page from his most fabulous sketchbook, above).

It seemed straightforward enough: I imagined a strip-pieced quilt with a few right angle turns. So I proposed it as a silent auction item and we invited the membership of TLS to come forward and help make it. 14 quilters + myself + Cordelia (who had not sewn since the 1970s, presumably when she left her position assisting in the Textile Department at the V&A -- now there's a recommendation!), have each received a section to make. Ben since converted the process into an intellectually simple, but physically somewhat challenging, method of using one, diagonally striped, square to piece the entire quilt. Elegant in its thought, but a bit tricky in execution as it makes nearly all seams on the bias.

I chose some fabulous fabrics from one of my favorite websites (www.contemporarycloth.com)
and after Ben had an architecture student draft the pattern, I cut the fabric up and sent it out. The blocks are beginnign to come back. They are gorgeous. Cordelia got together with her friend Sam Stineburg last week (an expert quilter who has tested the pattern for us and given us priceless advice) and she triumphantly wrote that their blocks are in the mail to me and here are photos of their process. Thanks to all of you quilters who are helping us achieve this!

white on white

2010-05-31T13:17:00.004-05:00

I have been commissioned by a Chicago architect to weave a set of six pillow faces, white on white. "...I have the constraints of all white and no image, so I know it is not your signature work, but I do want the weave to have character," he wrote. I have had so much fun! luxury yarns which I ordinarily don't employ in wall hangings, (bamboo, silk/merino, and linen on worsted wool) and the subtlety and restraint of expression with out resorting to color, such a nice change of pace.

Three have brocaded faces based on my Alders weaving of a few posts ago (we are calling it the Birch design); the other three are all over textural weaves. Woven in my signature 3 harness twill with simple variations in weight and treadling, they have been a pleasure to weave.

Peonies

2010-05-14T07:39:00.007-05:00

It's May, which in my corner of Utopia means peonies. We have the great good fortune of living on the corner of Fragrant Farms, who grow peonies for market -- blooms and plants to ship around the country. So on one side of my cabin are corn or soy fields, and the other side, acres of peonies. In May, they are ablaze and the colors and scents are staggering. We are repeatedly invited by Mrs Jane Owen, the owner of this glory, to pick as many full blown blooms as we please (the buds are shipped out, the full blooms are past that) and so the house, as I write this, is delicious with the un-reproducible scent of pure peony. Bouquets everywhere. When I say un-reproducible, I so wish that you could have peony-in-a-bottle for November, but of course that would make it less sublime when May rolled around again.

As I am a rather pathetic photographer, I have only shown you the deep pink peonies as the white ones don't perform so well for my camera. So just as there are fields of this magenta, there are other blocks of palest pink, white, and candy pink. Heaven.

slow cloth, slower camera

2010-04-23T14:44:00.007-05:00

I really dislike photographing artwork, which explains why these posts are so few & far between. Either I have to find someone with the equipment to do it right -- which usually means having a few pieces ready to photograph! -- or I do it myself with sad results.

But it is Friday, Fridays are for finishing things up! Last Friday I cut Cloud off the loom and today I will finish it for you by posting this little photo by me. Also here is Alders, which I wrote about in the post Slow Cloth a couple of months ago. Both are woven on the same warp, of wool and curly mohair. Alders was woven with wool ground weft and linen floss, along with a gorgeous japanese chenille. Cloud is made with linen ground weft, rayon, and cotton floss.

just for fun

2010-04-23T14:01:00.006-05:00

I have been fascinated with doilies for the last couple of years -- I have designed lots of things with them, some of which will be coming out later this year, but I decided that I wanted to try my hand at some surface design techniques for a change. I am really rusty here -- the last time I remember doing anything like this with textile paints or printing techniques -- outside of teaching them -- was at KCAI when I was student there in the 70's! But I have been frustrated with the limitations of my abilities recently, and my friend Christine Tarkowski visited a couple of weeks ago and she is always great at challenging me. (Chris has a terrific show at the Chicago Cultural Center right now, closing on May 2 with a concert with Jon Langford, but go if you can and see her kick-ass prints!) So these frilly doilies are for you, Christine!
(above, textile paints on cotton batiste, Laura Foster Nicholson; below, Last Things Will be First and First Things will be Last, Christine Tarkowski, 2010)

big moths

2010-04-20T19:06:00.010-05:00

I stepped out the door this morning and saw at my feet a gorgeous and huge moth clinging to the lower edge of the door. Look at those eyes! Made me want to go in an put on more eyeliner, just to keep up. He must have been 4" across. I love moths -- except for bread moths, which are hatching again right now, and clothing moths, who make little bites across my wool threads. So I weave moths into my tapestries as talismans and protection. This fellow's eyes will protect him!
The Moths tapestry is at Hibberd McGrath Gallery, Breckinridge, CO.

Historic Preservation

2010-04-01T11:08:00.007-05:00

Next week, there will be a statewide historic preservation conference here in New Harmony -- perfect place for it! --and the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art is hosting a reception for it on Wednesday April 7, 5-7 pm. We are mounting a series of my rural architecture tapestries for the event. I think it will be a great audience for my work.

a different slow pace

2010-02-18T10:03:00.003-06:00

So, having run out of the linen floss in the tree piece, I went back to a tapestry I began earlier in January, of burr comb (which is the free-form comb honeybees make when not restricted to a bee frame). This piece required a real change of mental gears to get back to, as each honey cell, though made exactly like its neighbor, requires attention to shaping and counting threads to keep the circles round (I WILL NOT weave hexagons, you mathematical people out there who think weavers can do just any old geometry they like on their grids). The trees, on the other hand, allow me to apply the moss detail at whim, intuitively.

I would guess I am about 1/3 of the way up. When I can leave this seductive computer I will go over to the loom today and keep going. Yesterday afternoon I wove 4 rows of cells. The space heater is by me feet to keep me rooted to the spot in my chilly, high-ceilinged studio.

slow cloth

2010-02-18T09:39:00.005-06:00

I have not had a consistently disciplined weaving practice for the last year and a half, a habit which I am now trying to re-instill. Being the intuitive artistic type (!) I am of course following the path that the inner muse is telling me to follow, which involves images and processes which are highly meditative and slow to achieve. As opposed to, say, images like the barn series of 2-3 years ago, when a weaving would take a record short time to achieve because of the extremely simple subject matter (whoa -- before you call that "easy" remember that the simpler it is, the more it needs to be dead-on in color or composition. You can't hide misjudgments in a flurry of detail in weavings like those!) I am working on landscape images which are amorphous but require a level of detail and suspended attention that shaping form, as in the more image-oriented work, does not.

I set off inspired to weave a line of trees I had seen in Washington state, lovely and serene, and also a waterline in my head. As I often do I merged the subjects in a way that one warp will serve both. Warp winding can be a highly creative time: it is when decisions about color and thread, which are unchangeable, are made, which set the tone of the work to be woven. I felt optimistic that day and reached for curly mohair -- I always use smooth 2/18s worsted for my warps but I felt courageous and thought this mohair would change the surface of the work in a positive way and add to the content immeasurably. I also used a random striping method rather than the measured, counted stripes I usually employ, which meant dropping and picking up fine color threads as I wound, and paying total attention rather than letting my mind wander while merely keeping count.

Then over to the loom. Here you go, experienced weavers, you can roll your eyes now, as I warp front to back and let the reed comb out the warp, dispensing with the fuss of lease sticks & raddles. It is a slow and painstaking process but it is what I do. But those of you with experience would shriek at the idea of working with CURLY mohair this way. It took me four days to wind on -- days when I employed every yogic meditative zone I could to keep focus without freaking out. I also used an aerosol shine spray for hair to reduce tangling, clever me!

So, like all difficult patches in life, the memory of the pain is receding and I am weaving away at last -- though I ran out of the linen floss I was using and now have to wait for more to arrive -- and I have precious little to post in the way of photos, just one poor shot of the mess as I wound it on without any real details to show you my fabulous patience. But when these 2 pieces are done I will be very happy and perhaps they will be worth the effort expended.

goldenrod

2010-01-08T21:31:00.006-06:00

I spent this quiet, cold, snowy day washing, pressing and hemming the last tapestry from fall. I have always loved goldenrod; I made a dye from it when I was at Cranbrook long ago (the last time I fussed with natural dyes) which made the most memorable, vibrant yellow I have ever used. I also made a pale yellow with it. Two tapestries resulted from that dyebath: Angel's Walk, with the pale yellow, and Ornamental Garden, with the thrilling yellow. Sadly, the latter yellow has lost its thrill over the years and has faded. As this piece belongs to an important mentor of mine, Gerhardt Knodel, I will no doubt re-weave it for him. I am actually looking forward to that process -- imagine re-making as carefully as possible something one made 30 years ago! That was a time of radiant discovery in my artwork: I wonder if the re-making would stir that sense again.

This current goldenrod tapestry came out of a startled observation one day as to how it grew. Having plucked if over & over for years, made dye from it, and thought about its color, I had never actually looked at how it grows -- which is vaselike, originating from a single stem and branching out. Between the sturcture and the color I had to weave it.

bees

2010-01-08T17:15:00.005-06:00

I made two Bee tapestries in 2009; the first is of our hives over by the flooded Wabash river (the river is one field away from us, but in the spring the field floods up to our property line, where the hives live). The second came later, begun after watching in admiration and dismay as we lost 3 swarms of bees in May last year ("come back! come back! what did we do wrong?"). Swarming is a breathtakingly beautiful sight, when the air is filled with a vibrant buzzing audible from a long way away as the bees leave the hive and hover over it for a while, in a cloud, waiting for the next command from their queen. They then move up into a nearby tree and hang in a quivering mass as the scouts go out -- for hours or sometimes for days -- to find a new home. In our case, it took about 2 hours, during which we wrung our hands and wondered how to get a ladder high enough to reach them and get them down (Ben has experience with capturing swarms, but not a long ladder!). The as we watched, they suddenly let loose and flew in a huge mass across the field toward the river, never to be seen again. ("come home! come home!")

an ecstatic tree-hugger

2009-11-01T08:07:00.008-06:00

What better activity for all-hallow's eve and all saint's day than to rake more leaf labyrinths? Ben created this sublime piece of work yesterday, Halloween, at the base of the most beautiful maple tree in New Harmony, on the grounds of our Granary building. Ben worked several hours simply determining where to position the entrance. The tree's arms receive the visitor and the labyrinth echoes its embrace in a joyful dance.

The Granary was built by the Harmonists to store grain, and was lovingly restored ten years ago by the Rapp Owen Granary Foundation to become the most glorious interior space in town. Happy weddings take place there, along with concerts of all kinds during our winter nights. The acoustics are nearly perfect. Two weeks ago I had the intense pleasure of listing to the chamber music ensemble of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra play 3 of Bach's Brandenburg concerti there one golden October afternoon. It brought me to tears. As does Ben's work here.

Ben will continue work on this and maybe a new labyrinth all day today. Please come visit if you are in town!

pine needle labyrinth

2009-10-28T11:16:00.004-05:00

Later in the day on Saturday, Ben made a labyrinth by raking the pine needles at the Harmonist Cemetery. These have withstood several days of wind & rain and still look fresh today. The leaf labyrinth has now been overlaid with a glimmering blanket of yellow leaves as the maple shed nearly everything in yesterday's rain. It is still visible as a subtle raised pattern below the blanket of yellow.

Tomorrow Ben will resume raking meditatively for the three days he is home between teaching stints in Chicago.

temporal labyrinths in leaves

2009-10-26T13:19:00.008-05:00

This past weekend my husband Ben spent the entire 2 days outside in the warm October sun, raking leaves into a beautiful labyrinth at the base of a brilliant sugar maple in the Harmonist Cemetery. He made a second labyrinth nearby by raking pine needles. These are temporal works of art, maintained by constant Zen-like raking, beautiful to walk and to gaze up through the boughs of the generous tree-host.

A Needle Case

2009-10-26T10:46:00.005-05:00

I am participating in the Print Invitational Exhibition at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art this month (through November 15th). The show is an ingenious fundraiser for the gallery: each artist donates an edition of 20 prints, which are sold for $20 each.

It was fun to be included as I don't consider myself even remotely to be a printmaker, but in fact I realized I have been making digital editions -- both woven and printed -- for some time now. I had particularly been looking for a more serious application for the digital fabrics I have been investigating, so I jumped at the chance to participate.

My edition consists of 20 hand sewn needle books. The interior page is a digital print of a pseudo antique textile sample book, and there are wool felt pages sewn in to realize the sample swatch image and, practically, to fill with pins & needles for a traveling pincushion. I invented my own sample page when I was inspired by seeing the old sample books of wool fabrics manufactured by the Harmonists, here in New Harmony, circa 1815. The fabric names I used in my pages come from old names for woolen fabrics such as that which were produced here: as we might speak of worsted or gabardine, the old names were things like "Bombazine" and "Druggett". The names took my fancy (thanks to the book Textiles in America: 1650-1870, by Florence M. Montgomery)

Here is the book, interior & exterior.
Also shown is the original Harmonist sample book (from Old Economy PA, where the Harmonists settled after leaving New Harmony)
My prints are available for sale ($20 each) at New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, 812-682-3156.

Labyrinth Society of America

2009-10-15T07:20:00.009-05:00

It it exciting to report that the Labyrinth Society of America (TLS) has decided to hold its 2010 Annual Gathering here in New Harmony, Indiana. It wasn't a hard sell -- New Harmony has 2 labyrinths which attract thousands of visitors, and my husband, Ben Nicholson, is a well-known labyrinth expert, and also an expert persuader. He just returned from the 2009 TLS annual Gathering in Portland, OR, full of ideas and anticipation for next year.

We have already hatched plans for making equine labyrinths, guided by Ben's sister Cordelia Rose, of Whitewater Mesa labyrinths in Glenwood NM. Cordelia has built several labyrinths out on her land and trains horses to walk them, something which both increases the animal's agility and calms him. She came out here in August and worked with a number of horse owners to convince them to participate with their horses in the TLS gathering next year.

Ben is excited about making new, temporary labyrinths all over town, including the dirt "shuffle labyrinth" he keeps cleared at the back of our land.

more from colloquy 2007

2009-09-17T13:37:00.009-05:00

I was writing this morning about Bhakti Ziek's upcoming visit, and her participation in Colloquy 2009 at St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana. Here are a few photos I took two years ago when Br. Kim Malloy took our group into the vestry to examine some of the real treasury of vestments, old and new, collected there. I won't go into detail about the fabric constructions; some are brocaded, some are embroidered, some are perhaps lampas or takete. Bhakti would know!
The photo of Br. Kim is in the area with the more contemporary vestments, all hand woven.

Bhakti Ziek

2009-09-17T08:06:00.010-05:00

My very dear friend, Bhakti Ziek, is coming to visit me here in a couple of weeks, her second trip to New Harmony. A consummate weaver, and a renowned teacher, Bhakti will be the featured speaker at the upcoming Weaver's Colloquy at St Meinrad Archabbey, in nearby St Meinrad IN.

Colloquy originated with a group of complex weavers in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, where they met regularly to converse about their passion for weaving and the tools of weaving. Eventually they moved the meetings down to St Meinrad, where Brother Kim Malloy, a textile enthusiast and quite a raconteur, hosts everyone for a week in its beautiful surroundings in Southern Indiana. When I presented there two years ago, Br. Kim delighted us with several hours spent poring over the jaw-droppingly elaborate textiles in the vestry, an experience I will not soon forget.

Bhakti currently lives in Randolph, Vermont, where she weaves in a beautiful old house she shares with her husband, Mark Goodwin, a formidably talented sculptor. Bhakti takes in students for advanced tutorials in dobby and jacquard weaving. She keeps a TC1 loom along with various other hand & dobby looms in her studio.

Colloquy 2009

October 12-15, 2009

St. Meinrad Archabby, IN

Bhakti Ziek will be the

featured presenter

Contact Kathy O'Neal for

info: kfoneal@sbcglobal.net

or call 219-938-2936

Bhakti Ziek and Alice Schlein's book,
The Woven Pixel: Designing for Jacquard and Dobby Looms Using Photoshop ©

Co-authored by Alice Schlein and Bhakti Ziek. 362 pages, many illustrations. Includes a CD with over 1400 weave structures.

(shown here, 2 lampas weavings by Bhakti Ziek, "Chaos & Order 3" and "Natural Dyes 2"; Bhakti weaving at her TC-1 loom, and a drawing by Mark Goodwin. Note the relationship to Bhakti's weavings!)

World of Interiors

2009-08-06T15:39:00.003-05:00

My favorite magazine in the world, The World of Interiors, has just included my Dandelion ribbon and my Big Green Barn tapestry in their antennae column, August 2009.

serendipity

2009-08-05T10:02:00.005-05:00

I love living in New Harmony: there is a magical sense of serendipity often at play. Because of our fascinating heritage we have lots of visitors -- tourists of the intellectual who come to find out about history or the spiritual nature of the place. So I often meet really interesting folks and sometimes bump into someone I actually know, or who is at least known to me by reputation.

Yesterday afternoon my studio doorbell rang, and at the base of the stairs stood an elegant man who asked if I were the person who made the marvelous textiles he had seen around town. He introduced himself as Glen Kaufman, and I nearly fell over.

Glen Kaufman, of course, is a pre-eminent fiber artist who for many years ran the textile department at the Univerisity of Georgia, training many textile designers and artists whose work we see everywhere. In addition, he had both studied and taught at Cranbrook, where I later took my own MFA. In addition to that, he had taught Pat Campbell, who was my studio teacher when I earned my BFA at Kansas City Art Institute. Pat was fresh out of Georgia when she came to KCAI. I often heard about Glen Kaufman from her and later in my time at Cranbrook, and here he was, coming up the stairs into my studio! In an academic sense he is a grandfather to me.

We spent an hour getting acquainted, and then I invited him to join me & Ben for dinner at our cabin where the stories continued into the evening. We had a lovely time. Only in a tiny town like New Harmony could a chance encounter like this take place. Glen was passing through on a long road trip through the midwest: his recent host had insisted that he must visit New Harmony. He saw my ribbons in the shops, he sought me out, and we met. So much simpler to accomplish than in a big city!

Here is one of Glen Kaufman's weavings which I have borrowed from the Brown Grotta Gallery website. When looking at my recent Indiana barn tapestries, he remarked that we share a love of place, which he called Topophilia.

PULGUK-SA,
KYONG-JU
silk damask, silver leaf; screenprint, impressed metal leaf
48” x 24” x 1”, 1990

lavender harvest

2009-07-01T20:20:00.004-05:00

For years, I lived in Chicago, where I could not find a lavender variety which could withstand the winter. I have always loved lavender; I have made tapestries about it, filled sachets with it, kept it in my pocket to sniff at odd times. It is highly soothing, as well as cheering.

So now that we live in Southern Indiana -- zone 7, I think! -- we have been able to plant lavender in abundance. So far it just edges the porch, but I would love to see a field of it beyond the vegetable garden. For the last 3 nights I have been harvesting it, so that it will have a chance at a second flowering. The Provence Lavender came first, with 4 fat bunches; then the English lavender, (which Ben declares to be the finest scent, but then he is nationalistic to a fault), and tonight, the Grosso lavender. It might be the best.

The house is full of its scent; bunches are hanging from a line above the dining table to dry. It is sublime.

(The tapestry shown is called "Lavender" from 2003.)

kitchen ideas

2009-06-11T14:42:00.007-05:00

I love making things from out of the garden, and so often these processes have later made their way into my artwork. The last few days have been inspired -- first the harvest of our first successful broad beans (also known as fava beans) which have provided several delicious meals so far.
The plants are very architectural, and very different from runner beans or green beans we normally grow. I spent the other morning drawing the plant and the beans, and know this will work its way into a tapestry or a printed textile.
Then last night we went out on a country road where Ben had spotted masses of elderberry bushes growing. The flowers were at peak, and we both are very into a lovely syrup made from them called Elderflower Cordial. This isn't alcoholic -- though you might choose to mix it with gin! -- you mix it with fizzy water and ice. It is a big hit with guests who prefer not to drink alcohol. So we picked 60 large umbels, as directed, and boiled a sugar syrup with 3 liters of water and loads of sugar & sliced lemons. Now this mixture is steeping for a few days, then we will strain it & bottle it. Ben looked at the contents of the pot and announced "Now that looks like the beginnings of a tapestry!".

May in Chicago

2009-05-21T07:04:00.009-05:00

I've been writing a lot about rural bliss, but this past weekend in Chicago was one of those times when urban culture was at its most vibrant. The day was gloriously sunny & cool and all of Chicago seemed to be celebrating the opening of the new Modern Wing at the Art Institute. We were there to celebrate the graduation of our son Will from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and this event was timed to engage the opening fesitivites at the Museum. Set in the Frank Gehry-designed titanium pavilion at Millennium Park, we were across a bustling, pulsing street (how Monroe has changed!) from Piano's stunning building, and the face-to-face between the park and the museum were perfect and thrilling.

Will and his fellow BFA and MFA recipients marched across the stage as music echoed against the glimmering surface. Renzo Piano, who gave the commencement address, spoke of the values of stubbornness, "soft" intelligence, and listening without necessarily obeying. I sat in the sun feeling so lucky lucky lucky to be a part of this magnificence.

Then we were all invited to join the throngs at the opening of the new wing. I thought it too was thrilling. The ceilings are scrim, above that fabric is lovely gridwork of hanging devices I should by now know the names of, above all of that, glass. The effect of the light was softened but pure and white. And I loved it as a large, 3-D textile.

The art looked scrumptious. It reminded me in many ways of why I live to be an artist. The work that is staying with me after that day in the galleries are Cy Twombly's large paintings of peonies. Made me want to work LARGE. And after reveling in their lushness, I was brought home at the end of the weekend to the still-blooming, deeply perfumed peony fields of Fragrant Farms, just east of my home.

more on Villa Farsetti

2009-05-08T09:58:00.008-05:00

Writing about the past has made me think more about that glorious time in 1985 when I was Queen for a Day. I won a prize in the Third Venice Biennale of Architecture for a set of weavings based on the Villa Farsetti in Santa Maria di Sala. A heady time: my career was just getting off the ground then, and the publicity from the prize was extraordinary and rocketed me into the next level of notariety.

I entered the competition because my husband Ben Nicholson (who has now participated in the Biennale 3 times!) was deeply involved in his own projects (at the urging of his former teacher, Daniel Libeskind, who had been invited to participate) and he thought it would fit my interests as well. I had been making weavings which were exploring gardens & architecture as subject matter, and so the idea of making a set of weavings like a set of architectural plans, about a specific place appealed greatly to me. It gave me a new method of working too, which held for many years, making cycles of work about historic places, usually with gardens, and working from plan overview into intimate detail as a kind of storytelling.

There were 9 tapestries, including the 4 shown here of the front gardens & reflecting pool; a guest wing; a green house (see earlier post); hedgerows; stables; more gardens.

The magazine article is from American Craft Magazine, Feb/March 1986, published at the time of the birth of my son, William, who is getting his BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago on May 16!

ps: going digital

2009-05-06T20:59:00.010-05:00

I am probably not the first person to complain about the transition from slides to digital. On the one hand, fantastic! No more slide duplicating! No more boxes & drawers full of the slippery things that I always mis-filed and had to flip through to find the ones to send out to every person requesting information. Come to think of that, talk about freedom of information! Now you can send images free over the internet -- remember sending out slide sheets valued at approx. $20 apiece into the world, unsolicited, destined for trashbins? This is less painful.

But the downside is accessing images older than your digital history. I am an old person now -- really. Got my MFA (high slide era) in 1982 for heaven's sake. So when I want to put up a picture of a piece I no longer own, which I took a slide of in 1985 (like in the previous post) it's a bit dodgy. I took a bunch of slides into Gamma, a big Chicago photo place, a number of years ago, and paid something like $1-$2 each to digitally scan them. Ouch. I have made, let's say, a real LOT of work over the years, and it was hard enough to pay the photographer the first time around to document them.

And then I move to a small town of 850 people, and still don't have a photographer (but at least I finally found a good doctor -- today.) Hard to stay current. Which is the long way around of explaining the questionable qualtiy of the images you find here. But the Dr. seems to think I will live, so that is a start.

(you always want a picture. So here is a picture that started out the usual way, in a film camera, and may have found its way into my computer as a scan from a magazine article. The image is a detail of the Thousand Foot Garden: Harvest 1992, a set of 68 6" square tapestry panels depicting some of the plants growing in Thomas Jefferson's vegetable garden at Monticello, restored, in 1992)

Racine Art Museum and the Orange Show

2009-05-06T20:03:00.018-05:00

Last year I had the odd experience of bidding on one of my older tapestries at auction. I let the other guy win. Lately I found that the other guy (gal? don't know the identity!) has gallantly offered the work to the Racine Art Museum, a longtime supporter of mine (I sell ribbons in their shop, too!). It is still working its way through the accessions process but they told me it is safe to add it to the resume.

The piece is from the 1980's, from a series about a wonderful folk art environment in Houston (where I lived for several years), called The Orange Show. It is worth a visit.
These tapestries came on the heels of my Italian-villa series that I sent to the Venice Bienale of Architecture in 1985, and were as different from the Tuscan theme as they could be. Sadly, most of the Orange Show pieces died in a fire at Van Straaten Gallery in 1989 in Chicago (the great gallery fire!) but this one made it out alive beforehand and now has made its way north to Racine.

(The tapestry shown here is a detail of "Villa Farsetti: The Greenhouse #1", which is in a private collection in Houston. Great piece, approx 10" tall x 110" across. The beginnings of thinking about ribbon as an art form!)

more buzz

2009-04-27T07:23:00.006-05:00

I am gratified by a few lovely responses to my last post about bees. I have always loved them -- OK, at first for their looks, I admit -- and have frequently populated my tapestries with bees. They keep the surface lively and we know that they have deeply important lives, as we humans assume we have as well.

Last week Ben successfully installed a new queen. Unlike our own political elections, the hive is a matriarchal monarchy, but inserting a new queen when the old one has died is a tricky business. I am still astonished that you receive bees through the US mail! She arrives in a little box with a wire screen lid and four attendants. The exit door is blocked by a sugar cube which provides nourishment. They help her eat through that to freedom once installed the hive, and presumably they escort and defend her on arrival. It takes a while for her subjects to accept her. (A good topic for Obama's first 100 days!) The first new queen didn't get out of the box: t hey all tragically died inside, but queenie #2 (#3 if you count the first queen who died) is happily installed & laying her 2000 eggs per diem now. What a job!

Summer arrived abruptly this week and I have summer fever -- the air is wonderful! and a fresh desire to get to the loom. First I must go to install some tapestries for an exhibition at St Meinrad's Archabbey in southeastern Indiana, tomorrow. A very interesting place. More soon.
(the tapestry shown is Big Sunflowers from a number of years ago; it is a good example of bees in my work)

more on inspiration

2009-04-13T07:46:00.016-05:00

I usually hesitate to speak about what I am ruminating about, in terms of new art projects. I feel that the first articulation needs to be visual before the discussion (others' input?) and expectations freeze the idea into a less malleable form. Nonetheless, I will tell you that last week was pretty exciting for my husband Ben, and also for me, when we together cut the first honeycombs out of frames from his four hives.

Ben is new-ish beekeeper, and it is not so easy to learn. He is learning from a local beekeeper, Dennis Hermann, who has an established family of hives and sells honey & beeswax candles at our local farmer's market. They have brought a couple of swarms over here, introduced first to hives on loan and then to hives Ben bought. Tragically the first few swarms died -- it is horrible to watch the bees struggling out, half dead! Finally last summer, with new hives, the bees stayed and have seemed to prosper. A few weeks ago we both suited up and went over to inspect the hives, and were able to harvest a few frames of honey (now we find it might have been too early in the season! Oh no!) and last week we cut them up.

Lexie Holeman designed the labels, I contributed the ribbon (and yes, as the ribbon was an afterthought we will re-calibrate the labels so the ribbon doesn't cover the labyrinth) and we proudly took the first 10 boxes over to the New Harmony Coffee House where Ben sells honey from around the world.

Those of you who know my tapestries will remember that bees have populated my work since the early 1980s, so you can imagine what resonance all this has for me. Add to it the dimensions of harvest, cooking, and nurturing that all of this implies and you might understand the satisfactions of having one's own bees. But, bee architecture....!

It is raining this morning and so I took this picture from the cabin porch, but here are Ben's hives, set against the edge of our property. The neighboring field is in spring flood (the Wabash river is on the other side of the field). I have been weaving large moths lately but will switch insects in a few weeks and move into hive housing on the loom, I do believe. There, I have said it! let's hope it is not a jinx.

(the photo of the beekeepers in suits is from this weekend: Ben, our son Will, and Christine)

purple haze in the spring

2009-04-12T19:25:00.009-05:00

It has been a while since I posted here; my weaving work has been curtailed a bit by what I suppose must come down to a frame of mind that simply has not been present enough to make good work. When I used to teach, I would rail against the idea of inspiration; Thomas Edison's comment about success consisting of 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration needs to be reinforced when one is beginning the practice of studio discipline. I have usually found that the way out of a block is simply to start making something and while the hands became active, the mind will begin to work in its old creative pattern again. My recent history would indicate that the 90% perspiration is useless without the initial 10% of inspiration.

But getting out the the studio can provide a jolt of, yes, inspiration. Last week a number of fallow fields in the area were shockingly PURPLE with a weed called dead nettle. It is scraggly and you would never want it in a bouquet, but masses of it seen from a distance blurs to intense purple for a short period. My friend Sally who knows everything about plants says it is dead nettle -- dead meaning that it doesn't sting -- and I have also been told that it grows particularly well in fields where the other weeds have been killed off by RoundUp. Yikes. Anyway, an amazing sight!

where I work

2009-02-11T18:12:00.005-06:00

I was writing to someone today describing the wonderful place where I live & work and I thought, I should post this on the blog. So here is my beautiful studio building in New Harmony. I am smack dab in the middle of Main Street, and my studio comprises the second floor of what is actually two buildings. I painted the building last summer (when I say "I" I mean the wonderful Rodney Wade) in a striking chartreuse green which I somehow got past the historic committee.

The building on the left houses the gallery shop of the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art. I sold ribbon here long before I moved to New Harmony: I was bemused by the number of people, who when seeing my ribbons, would comment "you know, I bought some of these ribbons in a small town in Indiana ..."

The building on the right ensconces the venerable Main Cafe, which has been noted in a column by Jane & Michael Stern (who write about good regional food on the road). They are open from 5:30 am to 1:00 pm: how's that for a working day? I smell bacon & eggs all day upstairs. Conversation drifts up between the floorboards into my weaving studio, which is above the dining room.

a nice surprise

2009-01-03T07:33:00.008-06:00

I am always grateful that people actually buy my tapestries. This amazing act of faith has enabled me to continue my life as a studio artist for over 30 years. Can you imagine how lucky I feel! And though the times ahead are perilous, I have weathered recessions before and hope to manage again this time.

Therefore I was astounded & delighted the other day to receive a note, via my etsy site, from a woman who had tracked down my tapestries and bought one from one Patina Gallery, and then, amazingly, a second from Telluride Gallery. Thank you, Angelique! You are indeed an angel.

nearly January

2008-12-30T12:45:00.004-06:00

I made several small scale tapestries for a show at Hibberd McGrath Gallery this season, titled "Images of Winter". Here is my favorite, "White Barn, November". (Framed, 8.5" x 11", wool with rayon, metallic, cotton, paper)

a wonderful year

2008-12-01T13:17:00.004-06:00

2008 turned out to be quite a solid year for me as an artist -- a surprise that I am profoundly grateful for, given the nature of these times. In the spring, my tapestry "Villa Farsetti: The Greenhouse" was acquired by the Reading Public Museum in Reading, PA; and last month the Art Institute of Chicago purchased my tapestry "Grey Stones", which hung for many years on my living rom wall as I loved it too much to let go of it. I am delighted it has found a home where it will be cared for in perpetuity!

Other museums which own my work include:
The Archives of the Venice Biennale
The Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Denver Art Museum
Cranbrook Art Museum
The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum

shown: Grey Stones, 1999, wool with cotton

November Color

2008-12-01T11:34:00.006-06:00

November was always a month I dreaded. While I lived in Chicago it was that dull grey space in between the beauty of fall and the reality of the coming hard winter. Cold, chilly, colorless.

But here in southern Indiana I find this time of year quite beautiful: the air, though cool, is refreshing, and the colors fascinatingly subtle.

Here are a couple of recently woven pieces. I have just sent Treeline, November to Hibberd McGrath Gallery for their winter show.

top: Wabash River, November; 33" x 36"; wool with rayon, metallic & cotton
bottom: Treeline, November; 16" x 60"; wool with rayon, cotton & metallic

autumn in the spring

2008-04-30T20:39:00.005-05:00

Last fall I began a hand weaving of the dried corn ready for harvest. Somehow the scale -- 55" across, full of detail -- daunted me and I never finished it. This spring, while beginning to make image files for the new jacquards, I decided to make use of the scale & detail of the jacquard loom and imagine the tapestry as I had meant to weave it by hand. The color was a challenge for the mill, reddish golden stalks, but the weaving arrived today and I am delighted. And the scale is majestic: 54" high x 80" across!

chicory, second version

2008-04-29T19:14:00.004-05:00

To follow up on the last post about weaving this tapestry to get the correct color, I received the next strikeoff of Chicory the other day, and the color is much improved, though the weaves are not yet finalized. In the first version, the weaves had more dimension and the chicory flowers nearly popped off the ground.

The weave designer told me that she will continue working to get the depth in the weaves and the colors correct. This was woven on a warp with a brighter base set of colors.

new jacquards

2008-04-23T06:38:00.000-05:00

I have been experimenting for some time with jacquard-woven "tapestries" in relation to my hand-woven work. The industry has a specific kind of warp setup known as "tapestry", which consists of a repeating combination of 6-12 colors which combine & re-combine optically to create a semblance of a color spectrum. Semblance is, of course, the operative word. It is both a frustration, in that the true color I want to see is often not possible, and a relief, in that I know that the color I work by hand with such control is inimitable and hence, worth the effort!

Here is the first serious attempt to make a jacquard woven version of a full-color tapestry: Chicory, which relates to my work of last year called Cornflowers.

The question is rather like that I always ask at our life-drawing class: do I want an exact likeness or do I want to learn something new? I.E., is the color good enough here, without reference to the original? Perhaps I will let you browse back through other postings to find the original, as I can't yet bear to see them side-by side, and yet I consider this image to be quite handsome in itself. More on this as it evolves -- revisions are in process as I write this.

Shown here: Chicory 1, 2008, 26" x 36". Copyright Laura Foster Nicholson

spring stones

2008-04-04T17:03:00.000-05:00

I find that I am needing sharp spring green in my life right now: I have been waiting for it but it is cold out and things are slow to open. The fields of winter wheat are emerald green against leaden skies and rich wet brown earth, but that sharp yellow green is only here & there in a weeping willow budding out. By next week I will be satisfied, but today I am weaving it in among the grey & black stones on my warp.

Landscape 2007

2008-03-17T07:45:00.001-05:00

Misery Acres, 2007, 27” X 51” wool, cotton, rayon, metallic

Frost, No Snow, 2007, 29” x 51”wool, metallic, cotton, rayon

Barns 2006 & 2007

2008-03-17T07:04:00.000-05:00

When I began weaving these barns in the fall of 2006, I had just moved to the country after years in Chicago. I love it when a place is brand new to my eyes: I feel I can see with extraordinary clarity and know it won't be to long before these sharp novel sights become everyday custom and I lose that x-ray vision. I set right to work and made these strong, modern tapestries. I say modern because they are certainly the simplest, most pared down work I have ever made, and they end up being all about the modern vision of agriculture. You can find the transition between the old, tumble down peeling barns such as Silver Arrow, and the new metal sheds such as Big Green Barn, which are replacing them. They are all surrounded by fields of modern monoculture, something of confounding beauty which suits our modern aesthetic while it ruins the land.

top to bottom:
Big Green Barn #2, 2006, 28" x 29"
Silver Grain Bin, 2006, 33" x 33"
Big Red Barn, 2007 , 23" x 32"
Silver Arrow, 2007 26" x 33"
Big Green Barn #2, 2007, 31" x 33"

time to show the art

2008-03-16T16:54:00.001-05:00

Having spent most of my web-identity energy on ribbons and ribbon-related projects for the last several years, it is time to show the artwork that comes out of my busy studio as well. I have multiple artistic identities which balance art, craft, and design; most are textile-oriented and drawing-based. So now, in no particular order, I will begin to catalogue the artwork that I make. This consists primarily of hand woven "tapestries", actually made with a brocading technique. I call them tapestries because they hang on walls in the old tapestry tradition.

Today's post is of recent work, tapestries which are based on the landscape and rural buildings in the vicinity of my new home in New Harmony, Indiana.

top to bottom:
Orange Slat Barn, 2007, 29” x 30”, wool cotton rayon

Corn Cribs & Pear Tree, 2007, 30” x 30”, wool cotton metallic rayon nylon

Cornflowers, 2007, wool & cotton 31” x 30.5”

Corn, 2007, wool, cotton, metallic, 33.5” x 30”