Orcs and GORT

I am GORT, the Goddess of Re-Threading. You my kiss my hem. It's that kind of a day.

Cherry

With two days of work days left, I find myself re-threading. I have run out of living room space; the small loom in the office didn't work, so I am wedged in my stash room between the ironing board and two vacuum cleaners. But this is the only room in the house with the view of our garden. And with the heavy rain today, this will all be gone tomorrow morning. 

Peace.

Oh, the Ideas in my Head!!

Ten years ago when I was putting my second or third warp on my 16-shaft computer-controlled loom, I wondered how Ben could build me a loom where there are no shafts, but the computer somehow controls each and every warp end. Because if it can handle shafts, the logic couldn't be too different; the issue would be the space and weight for the mechanics for each and every heddle.  So, by threading the loom once, one could tie on new warps forever and use the loom for plain weave just as easily as, say, for 80 block on 240 shafts. I always meant to propose to him this wee weekend building project.

Then it dawned on me on this weekend that, as far as I understand, that's what Jacquard looms do. Am I right? 

Debriefing - Merely Part 1 of... - Or, "To Sirs, With Love"

Although I'm in the middle of threading the last piece for the exhibition, (which will be installed, golly, in a week!!) since I wove the last plain weave shot in my fourth pillar, I've been debriefing with myself about the exhibition and the last two years of my making. That's pretty much the length of time I spent obsessing about large blurry thingamajigs hanging in a tall space. I'm glad it's over; I've no residual sentiment. In fact, it's worrying how far back in my past I've put them; they're piled up on the floor unfinished and perplexed looking, and I step on them from time to time while doing other things. I suppose I should finish them, make the casings, cut and drill holes in the dowels, sand, thread fishing lines, spray-paint the metal bits, etc., etc., etc. If I weren't such a control freak, I would hire someone for these.

I feel a shift in my focus. This morning on Facebook Pracownia na kaszubach (though that's not her name) linked to a whole lot of photos by this weaver, and again, I was filled with nostalgia that at one time I would have gone googoo gaga over her work. I think her work is wonderful, and I may even be tempted to buy one if I had the chance to feel them, but I want to weave something different. I was taken aback to find myself wanting movements. I felt smothered in the rigidity of repeats.

Yeah, it's that pesky word, "dynamic" all over. I know Randy (by which I mean Randy and Brian, and not the Randall Darwall brand,) injected me with the idea six years ago. It felt like an annoying prick on my head at the time, but the injection filled every fluid part of me, every gap between the cells inside my skin. Back then it felt as if he was drowning out my aesthetic. I'm told it takes seven years for all cells in a human body to be replaced by new ones, so the injection must has been taking effect, seeping into my every new cell, and my conversion is 6/7 complete.

(I still have the 1/7. Just last night I was reading the graphic design book, and this section had good and bad examples of page layouts. Alongside it reads: 

"Centered elements create passive white space, while asymmetrically-positioned elements create activated, dynamic white space... Passive white space is static. It looks motionless and 'left over.' It isn't used to guide or draw the reader into the design. Passive white space is hte chief offender in making documents ugly, if indeed, they are noticed at all."

Centered or left-justified, hands down my preferences were the most conservative, evenly-spaced passive pages. The eyes feel restful and comforted and I can concentrate on reading, rather than the eyes jumping all over and not taking in any one information.) 

It's also taken me six years to "study" Randy's work instead of being bulldozed by R&B's awesomeness and my adoration and admiration for the two. (Still feeling slightly miffed they didn't decide to adopt me and take me away at the end of the workshop.) It's only this month I felt comfortable enough to handle his scarf I bought to have a closer look. (Still feeling somewhat begrudged Megg, Ali and Jill for skipping the kowtowing and going straight into accurate analysis of elements in the piece. "Gosh, you guys don't know R&B like I do!!!!!" OK, not so much Jill, she knows them way better than I. And lest you wonder, I've only ever taken a five-day workshop with them, so I don't know them know them. Nothing scarier than a cyber stalker.) But where is the ceremony if one simply picks up a Randall Darwall and ... and... looks at it analytically?  How dare they???)

(Regaining composure, wiping tears from laughing at myself, and a little bit from the acute lack of awe by some.) Anyway, looking at the one which resides in my house and many others on the Internet I have the niggling sensation that I have begun to sense what Randy meant by "painterly" and various musical phrases. Yeah, I'm slow. But I don't mind that my 0,0 is a smidgen closer to what Randy taught us. And I think I am fulfilling what Randy suggested; I'm doing my own apprenticeship.

Where to after the exhibition? I wan to revisit exploring the visual elements of Log Cabin, Shadow and Corkscrew Weaves. I want to explore the tie-down part of the tied weaves. I'm now curious about designing with multi-layered weaves.

I want to use my colors. Pat burst out laughing whenever I say this, but Connie's recent "Shabby Journals" (which are anything but) gave me the push to return there. While I now see 50 colors are nicer than five, I want to explore more analogous combinations, and sheen/saturation contrast. I feel my way of using many colors so far has been just piling up hues, and though I think I'm more open to accidents than before, I also want to train my eyes/hands to use colors in a controlled, considered way.

I'm also sticking with Alison's design process because if I understand what is blocking my way into doing things her way, I sense it will aid me in developing designs further than I do. And this is important because I've come to feel my design process is rather naive and I'm itching to move a step forward.

OK, enough blathering. Back to threading. Thanks for letting me bend your ear and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Window Display

We install the exhibition a week from tomorrow. Page & Blackmore, the only independently-owned bookshop in Nelson, has kindly lent us window space to promote our exhibition. When I approached the window this evening, a man was looking carefully at the display, stepped back and read the poster, and I was very pleased.

Stella, in the floral dress in the above link, carefully chose not only the subject of the books but also the cover design and colors. Thank you so much, Stella and P&B.

Already End of Thursday

And I admit there have been more than a few heart-stopping moments this week, including a heavy beam falling on Ben's forehead and the back of my head simultaneously while I tried to wrangle a few more picks out of a warp. But the mistakes have been so stupid I will not admit to them under torture. Unless you serve me Long Island Iced Tea first.

"Friends(hip)"
The draft. Now I'm wondering about renaming this piece from "You've got My Back; I've Got Yours" to "Chin Wag", which is a term I learned in New Zealand from a woman born in Liverpool and raised in Australia.  Which name do you like better?

This is the pattern side; there is one warp end for the plain/inlay side for ever two pattern warps, which works better than 1:1. Since I'm weaving this on a table loom I needed a dead easy lift plan. 

"Self-Portrait"

This is the wet-finished Self-Portrait; it still needs to be affixed to a foam board roughly the size ofthe black line, and it's not as crooked as it appears in this photo. I must admit for something I whipped up in a few days, I am pleased with it. As you can see, I desperately needed a few picks of plain weave at the top.

"Merchandise"
Studying pictures of your buttons and my swatches, I felt the colors and color combinations in my swatches are too "specific" and the buttons would not have the "something for everyone" appeal. So I'm weaving a short length of simple twills on the Self-Portrait warp. I think buttons from this will be immediately identifiable as "related to that piece" in spite of the different structure, which is a bonus. (The Self-Portrait draft has floats of up to 11 ends so was not suitable for small buttons.) But I think I'll make a few gold-and-blue buttons for myself.

Postcards. I need your help. Please see below.

Imagination
Or is it creativity, experience, or just common sense? Yesterday Maria had a photo shoot of her exhibition garments and I was envious of her imagination. I don't want a beautiful young woman, (or even a man,) sauntering in the woods with my pillars, but I have only three ideas for work photos: piece on loom, close-ups or installed-centered-symmetrical "Big Pictures". I've Googled gazillion textile and student exhibitions and catalogues in the last year months, but short of installing the pillars somewhere else, I came up with nothing new.

Which leads me to my conundrum and I hope you can help me. If you go to a textile exhibition and there are inexpensive postcards of the works, what kind do you prefer?  I think as mementos of an exhibition, I like pictures of whole works, unless the close-up is really attractive. Or do you have a so-out-of-the-box suggestion I'll have to go to the next zip code to execute? Also, would you buy "just interesting pictures", i.e. the colors or contrasts drastically altered from works you see in the exhibition, or only truer images? Please, please, leave comments/suggestions/experiences.

Other members of the group don't like postcards and are going for greeting cards with envelopes, but as some of you know I am so a postcard girl so I'm going solo on this one.

Only on a Monday

Yesterday I discovered new ways to make weaving mistakes I had never known before, and I bet you don't know them because I've never read or seen them.

Catalogue Submission

We were supposed to send three photos and an artist statement to Jo today as her husband David is creating an exhibition catalogue for us. With 30 minutes to spare, I sent the following:

Usually I spend days photographing with mine and Ben's many cameras at different times of the day and parts of my house, but this time I don't have enough  pieces completed so it was a quick 15 minutes. I didn't have an opportunity to hang a pillar pillar properly so the top one was taken in my laundry again, the pillar folded in half and hung, me kneeling on the floor looking up. The second is one of the two samples of the Self-Portrait, third is the Self-Portrait in progress. Happily, that is now off the loom.

What's funny is the two projects are so different in scale, and yet in photos, you can't really tell. Bad planning, but I don't have time to worry about it.

If you are anywhere near Nelson during October, say somewhere in the Southeastern Hemisphere, please drop by.

The Warp of Shame

That long painful howl you heard from the bottom of the planet today was moi.

Though for a much shorter period than usual, I did observe, arrange, and edit my warp colors over several days, during the day and at night, on sunny and cloudy days, with and without the lights on. So why did I have such a different picture in my head than what was right in front of me? I am speechless.

The irony is, if I set out to make a rainbow gradation warp, I doubt I would have come up with such a smooth transition.

GROAN!!