Sketchbook, "Art Scarf", and Questions and Answers

I procrastinated far longer today, but I finished the tax work. What a relief! So on to more pleasant subjects.

Well, the first is not exactly "pleasant"; I feel ambivalent about this. My Sketchbook Project sketchbook left Nelson yesterday, January 10; I stuck a note asking them to mark the postmark date clearly; I hope they obliged. I did a lot of collage pages, because I was reluctant to draw, partially because I'm not confident, but also because the paper was thinner than I expected; I didn't want to use wet medium.  Even the markers bled through.  And I couldn't believe how hard it was to draw outside the drawing class, so I brought the book to class a couple of times and worked quick drawings into the book. 

I like collaging for my own pleasure, or to share with friends, but certainly not for the public to see. Among other things, the stores discontinued my fav glue stick so I used another which left blobs and gobs all over. I also tried my PVC, but that was worse.  I had to separate the pages and let the book dry for a few days! I now know I can do some layered collages; I even tried some doodling on top of the collage, but I still prefer the simpler pages. 

When I was working on the project, I had in mind as a reader/viewer a child or a young person who knew little about weaving. I tried to show a little bit of how one weaver's mind works but result was a mishmash of half-baked ideas, I felt. I managed to stick in three drafts, and three woven samples, but the sketchbook felt... unresolved.  If I were ever to do this again, and I honestly don't know if I will in a hurry, I may take no prisoner and launch straight into hard-core weaving stuff. I tend to underestimate the intelligence of young people, and if I provide enough visuals, weaving makes sense to people even if they don't know the parlance, I think. I also tried to introduce New Zealand, but halfway through I saw too much of it and pasted over some pages.

I think my book has the look and feel of a moderately successful middle-school student project.  Enough said.

* * * * *

I don't want to get too hung up on the words, but I think I'll try to envision what I'm calling "art scarf" when I plan each piece from now. I'm not declaring it's art, it's not a challenge, but I like the name and it tells me what I have in mind.  Just a thought.

* * * * *

I've been working on Julia Cameron's "Walking in this World", the second of The Artist's Way trilogy, since the start of the year.  When I work on The Artist's Way books, I'm conscientious and serious, but this time I'm skipping the Morning Pages, an introspective journal she'd like us to work on first thing in the morning every morning.  It is an interesting exercise, and I got a lot out of it when I worked on "The Artist's Way" in 2002; I pretty much lived in the The Artist's Way world for three months.  But in 2008, when I started to work on "Walking in this World" the first time around, I couldn't get my head out of the peculiar Julia Cameron world and I had to either strop weaving for the duration, or stop working on the book, and I chose the latter.

From time to time I need some gentle coaching and hand-holding, and I've been thinking about redoing this second book.  On New Year's Eve, the idea came to me that I didn't have to do absolutely everything, and I decided to skip Morning Pages.  It's a big part of The Artist's Way experience, and I felt like a renegade, but I'd rather keep weaving, and for me blogging and pretty much everyday living provides enough introspection so I'll be alright.  I can always sit down any time of the day and write the kind of journal entry if I wanted to, if I think it helps.

The Artist's Way books try to nurture the artist/child in everyone, and part of the process leads to reflections on our childhood and whether we were encouraged/discouraged to engage in art, and if so by whom.  Inevitably some of this leads to blame. I had a volatile relationship with my parents when I was a child and I wasn't even aware of it then, so it's been painful learning about it through this process but more through counseling for depression.  But you see, I'm 52, and even if I did have a strict,. volatile, and anxious upbringing, that was the past and I don't want to waste my life and energy rehashing it any more.  This is another reason I'm skipping the Morning Pages. 

That being said, she makes us do a variety of interesting and fun tasks, and I still think back to a few of the things I did in 2002.  This week, I astonished myself when I couldn't finish these sentences. I usually have multiple answers for this sort of quizzes, so there is definitely changes happening in my head, and I'm curious to know where it's (I'm?) going.  And if it's that dreaded lack of imagination, I do hope it's temporary. 

* If it weren't so foollish, I'd love to try _____
* If I were 21 again, I would let myself study _____
* If it weren't so nuts, I'd love to try _____
* If I gave into my secret dream, I would let myself _____

Gasp.

Trying to Observe

January 11; I'm trying to make this not about me but about the lettuce patch and the lettuces.

There is so much clover here this year, they are hard to eradicate and I'll have to think of something drastic when the lettuce season ends. We haven't had the horrible winds and the evening temperatures have been saner, so the leaves are doing better; the ground hasn't been dusty dry for a while but I am also watering more conscientiously.

The lettuces seem to grow upright and nicer from the point of view of harvesting when planted closer together than when planted spread apart.  Having said that, the ones you see upright have been harvested (chopped at around an inch off the ground) a few times, and I wonder if this helps.This made me consider Japanese commuter trains; urban Japanese don't necessarily have better postures, so we must require more sun!  :-)

Let Me Try This Again

On Reading Rachel Beckman front, it's still early days, but she touched on my favorite topic for the first time in her blog here, (I've been dying to know how she reconciles the not-very-high status weaving commands,)  proving herself to be versatile, an artist, a beautiful and optimistic soul, a totally different kind of a beast, (a "beast" like a gazelle to my hippo! And that's not self-deprecating because I love hippos; I feel an affinity towards their mostly-submerged life.) I learned from how she stands by her work.

About my not having the tools to think about "art" making: I think about what I do, plan my pieces, and in a half-detached, fearful way, struggle with combining concepts with cloth weaving, much the way one uses extra-long tongs to pick up trash.  Sometimes I spend too much time thinking and not enough doing, but I am reconfirming my suspicion I lack the tools (understanding of the art school parlance??) to think constructively and be able to converse about my cloth making.  It's a pleasure and a privilege to be able to read Rachel's thinking and how ideas manifest into tangible work.  So what can I do to think more effectively?  For starters, to be more vigilant about the vocabulary.

The easiest thing is, for the foreseeable future, (until I feel more qualified and I do hope some day I do,) I'm going to stop thinking of myself as an artist but a maker, a craftsperson, an artisan (who are they anyway??), a weaver. It doesn't matter what the name is, I suppose, as long as I keep weaving.  But I still believe it is valid to discuss the art of weaving, the craft(s-person-ship) of weaving, and weaving as artwork.

About her critiques and my Textile Lunch Group: Firstly, the Textile Lunch group plus a whole lot of other textile women in Nelson are coming to my house on Saturday.  Originally it was in lieu of the end-of-the-year lunch, but I wanted to see a bunch of others, too, and they happen to be all involved with textiles, and many have known each other far longer than I've been in New Zealand, so I decided to invite them all.   

But the more I thought about constructive criticism and mutual encouragement, and that I think my Textile Lunch group has run its course, and because I know at least two others would like a regular group, I thought I'd gather as many as souls as I can and sound out some ideas.  I'd love it if my old TL friends would come, too, but I think the focus need to be on current practitioners this time.    

A common vocabulary is a great tools in sorting one's thoughts and speeds up the discourse.  When a meaningful discourse takes place, if we're careful and focused on the discourse and not the one-up-person-ship, remain genuine and honest, and I think stay in the discussion for some length of time, it has got to be a wonderful stimulation on individual (and collective) creativity.

In the end, whatever I call myself, (the tax department calls me "textile worker - miscellaneous" or similar,) whatever methods I employ to design and make my cloth, if I can make a few pieces once in a while I can be proud of, on which I'm happy to put my name, pieces that satisfy me, that's what matters.  But if I can have friends to hold hands with, in real life and in virtual life, to get over my rocky bits or to help their steep bits, that would make the experience of "making" , and therefore our lives, even more meaningful, doesn't it.

I think that's what I wanted to say in yesterday's post. 

* * * * *

I've been good today.  I was supposed to take my tax return information to my accountant today, but I was far from finished, so this morning, I unplugged the Internet connection from my laptop and concentrated on the task.  I had to connect again, because so many bills and statements are online nowadays, but I resisted the temptation for short breaks and kept working.

I'm only about halfway done, but by this time tomorrow, hopefully, I'll be finished for another year.

Lettuces

January 10.  The purple lettuces I moved are doing well; the crisp green ones, yet unknown. I have to use some of the basils because the rapid growth of the row on this side is depriving the sun from the shorter row behind.  This morning I deadheaded marigolds, and my hand smells lovely.

I love lettuces of any and all variety.  In addition, I love endives but have never been successful in growing them and I don't see them in stores too often. I love bok choi and have had successes, though sometimes they grew so big I wasn't sure if I wanted to eat them.  I love rocket; sometimes I have nothing but rocket growing, but I always call this my lettuce patch.  I like spinach but they tend to bolt quickly, and the first tine I grew New Zealand spinach, I was flabbergasted because they have thicker, very hairy leaves; I was tempted to pull them out and throw them in the compost bin, but tried cooking with them once and found they tasted the same, but with a tad more volume.

I love cabbages, too, but have not tried to grow them.

Today, I must (will?) work on my tax returns. 

Words, Words, Words...

I have several trains of thoughts taking place at once, and I feel I muddled them up, so I've taken off this post for now and will try to rework it. Sorry.

Bulldozed

January 9.

I tidied the lettuce patch before sunset yesterday. You could say I bulldozed my way, moving lettuces, making way for more seeds. And I crammed so many more seeds, bok choi, endive and sorrel, far more than what the packets recommend. All for my aesthetic pleasure and convenience. You could say I have an industrial approach to my lettuce patch.

While walking around the airport Ben took a few pictures of me. They were astounding in that what I look like on the outside is so totally different from what I look like from the inside out. The situation is dire.

West-facing window at dusk, fig tree, navy blue window shade; the combination look like a Yukata design, especially this time of the year.

An Eye for the Man-Made

Ben and I went for a walk around the airport this morning.  In our little old Nelson, you can walk around our little airport, on a City-Council-created track called, ahem, the Airport Parameter walk.  In fact, I like to wait until a plane departs or arrives so I can see them fly right above my head, but today we found out that is not allowed, that you're to stop at a certain point if you see/hear a plane.  I had always thought the sign was meant for airport maintenance vehicles, but Ben though otherwise. Oh, well, close enough.

About half of the track goes around the airport as you and I may know it, and then it wraps around the grassy part where smaller planes and helicopters land and take off, and then it's the far end of the airport, and through small pre-fab office buildings of car rental and distribution businesses.  That's the route on the right-hand side if you go clockwise.  On your left-hand side the track starts with an estuary, then Waimea Inlet with Rabbit Island across the way, and then the dreaded golf course where I keep picturing me getting hit on the head or the face with a stay golf ball.  You may get a sense of it from the map below.  The whole walk, if you walk briskly like a Kiwi, takes less than an hour, but if you stop and shoot like we do, about an hour and a half.


View Larger Map

It's a nice walk, especially if you start off early enough so you are not walking under the scorching sun.  Whenever we go on walks like these, we regret we don't do it often.  Ben looks around in his slow, careful way, but I think he likes the sea and the birds, whereas I'm interested in the planes; I never tire of looking at planes arriving and departing and travelers getting off and on and luggage carts toing and froing with pretty much the same-looking suitcases. I also like to think of the last/next trip to Wellington which is only 25 minutes away.

See, Nelson is wasted on me.  If you like swimming, kayaking, hiking or even skiing and snowboarding, all these are available within an hour from our house.  But me, I would rather go to several bookshops in succession, (Nelson has only one independently-owned bookshop and two used-book stores,) galleries, (of which we have a good number for the size of the town,) museums, walk around town gazing at buildings, gates, bridges, preferably old stone ones, (of which we have not,) and end up in a theater in the evening, (don't get me started on this one.)  A good day of walking, to me, is visiting a big museum or two and going to every single floor and reading every single blurb on the wall.

I am attracted to man-made things, like architecture, sculptures, urban parks; I am interested in stories of people. I enjoy reading history and biography.  Sometimes living in a small place without a sense of history frustrates me; it makes me feel as if I am living on a cardboard city.  I also think my art-making would be so much better if I lived in a place where architecture/cityscape were beautiful.  

But Nelson is a beautiful place; we have a big sky and lovely water.  Always in the background are the  hills that can surprise you with white stuff on top when you didn't expect it.  And though small, it is a community kind towards artists and art-making, and if I packed my looms and moved somewhere, I could do much, much worse.  I know this.

How Many Posts Shall I En/title "Lettuce"?

January 8.  We had crazy wind and blaring sun yesterday, and the ground looked dry, but thanks to the rain on Thursday, the ground under the surface was sufficiently moist.  I know this because when I watered, the water stayed on the surface and created small pools, whereas last week before the rain, no matter how much I watered, it went right though as if through a sieve.

I am happy to see the quick regeneration of lettuce in the lower right quadrant.  And some (most) of what I thought was new weed growth in the on the top right quadrant turned out to be the rocket I sewed on Tuesday.  I must have spilled the seeds for them to create an L-shape, because I thought I made two short horizontal rows.  Basil at the far end is taking off now that I've removed the bolted rocket and the sun hits them directly.

Ben likes to keep the green onions until the moment he wants to use them; I'm tempted to take them all out and weed and put bok choi in.  I've left the lower left quadrant empty so I can kneel and weed between the onions; must do this really soon.  

Returning Where?

With the red cashmere warp, I found myself revisiting something I did at the earliest stages of my weaving.

I think it was in 1997. I had owned my first four-shaft jack floor loom for two years, but never wove on it, because I was intimidated by it. And even though I coveted four shafts so I could weave twills, and undulating twills in particular, the first warp I finally decided to put on was plain weave. I think I told myself I wanted to get used to the loom first, but the fact is, having woven only on a rigid heddle for so long, the concept of twill boggled my rigid mind, and I did not understand the structure.  And I still tend not to try a new structure until I "understand" it.  (I wove my first undulated twill in, I think, 2002, on my current jack loom.)

I wanted to weave a set of napkins/serviettes with my Swedish cottolins, of which I had many shades of blue, a green, a pale yellow and a pink.  But I wanted something more than mere arrangements of colors.

I found a lovely example in "Handwoven's Design Collection 15: Sensational Scarves", page 4, and of course it was a lovely blue piece.  The example uses two weights of cottons in stripes in the warp and the weft, ergo creating a check with density.   I read the instructions on page 2, and to my amazement, it was dead easy to understand.  There was the minor point of the example using threads of two weights, whereas all my cottolins were the same size, but I figured using three ends in place of the thicker yarn would work, so I put on a warp.

The vertical stripes worked like a charm, but my beating was unsteady and I decided to weave in stripes and not checks. (To this day, I am intimidated by strips for fear of inconsistent beating.) Here they are, 14 years later, my well-loved set is a little stiffer, but still in use especially when we go on picnics.

Back then, I don't remember calculating the different DPIs, but I played it by ear, or eye in this case.  And I admire my gutsy newbie self.

I had a warp in five or six different reds in a random order, and some time in the last week or so for no apparent reason I had decided I was going to weave the same crammed/spaced plain weave.  But this time I changed the width of "stripes" as well as the EPI several times before I was willing to sample.

At first I wanted to weave "clear" colors, and tried dark grays and black as well as several purple/blues.  But I enjoyed the unexpected results in my last warp, where the color of the cloth were quite different from what one might expect looking at the individual colors used.  (I promise I'll take pictures of the Log Cabin scarves once I wet-finish them.) I wanted to do some samples with unexpected combinations, and with a red warp, what better (or worse) than green wefts??

I like the "clarity" in sample with the darkest purple weft; it would be a rather stark looking piece.  The different reds stand out equally against the black weft, making it almost a severe piece.  But I can't stop looking at the dark green weft sample, (the one further away,) either; the green is a slightly blue olive green, but in the cloth it almost looks a nuanced gray, much nicer than the three grays I sampled. 

I don't know if I am going to stay with these DPIs; the washed but not pressed sample looks a little too rustic for my taste, especially in the spaced parts.  I don't know if I will weave pieces with one weft color, or mix and even attempt a check.

Colors are  interesting; the more I look, the more I prefer the unlikeliest combinations.  And I get to sample them and decide which ones to use; it is a little bit like playing god.

Sun, Wind, Did I Mention the Sun??

January 7.  We had some rain yesterday morning, and then it's been sunny as anything, and I see weeds coming back where I put in rocket, in the top right quadrant. Heck...

I am supposed to be working on my minuscule tax return; some years it takes a day, others it takes two days to do this; but it's usually preceded by days and weeks of procrastination.  Instead I fixed my red cashmere warp downstairs this morning, and did a small sample piece; I don't like the look of it, so I'm going to sleep on it and maybe change the threading or undo the crammed/spaced sleying. 

Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up feeling like doing the taxes.