This Moment in My Life

This morning, on our way into town, the sky looked like the first page from a sketchbook belonging to someone taking Introduction to Drawing; narrow bands of grays getting progressively darker until almost black; the bands in nearly uniform width and length, and nearly straight, but in places, not so; the blending/smudging done well in places, but in others, the pencil marks still distinct. I wished I had a camera, but we didn't have time to fetch it because I was on my way to see Jay, the owner of the aforementioned Red Art Gallery.

I had hoped to chronicle such a momentous event as this in a way these momentous events are recorded in artists' biographies, but this happened organically, and I don't remember the details. Jay and I started to talk about weaving, textile and dye in the last few months I've been loitering in her gallery on my way to or from my physiotherapist. She must have wondered about this woman who claimed to weave, but was in her gallery almost every day, right arm cradled in a slightly serious-looking splint. I, on my part, was only trying to see as many beautiful things as possible so I can use the inspirations when I finally resumed serious weaving.

One day in early June she suggested I showed her my work. So I did, this morning. And she offered to have some of my work at the Red.

I cannot contain my excitement. Some of my limbs have been shaking all morning. In terms of my weaving, I feel my effort of the last six years have paid off. As a child, I was taught it is not polite to ask for too much or too good, so I seldom pursued my first choices in life, selecting, rather, to feel benevolent/smug about settling for second choices. As regards the Red, though, I am glad I doggedly stuck to my first choice. At the same time, I didn't have to work very hard to convince Jay, and I feel extremely lucky.

I'm home now, looking west to Takaka Hills from my window. The air is clear, the colors vivid but flat and almost unreal. I couldn't imagine a better picture to express how I am feeling at this very moment.

Serendipity, fate, coincidence - call it what you will; the red shawl seen in my very first, April 30, post, in which the Red Art Gallery was mentioned, was one of the pieces selected. I posted that photograph because it is the closest to red (the piece in real life is very red, not pink). Ben insists I take and post more photographs of work not in blue, as he reckons I have too much blue on the blog and the web site and they need sprucing up!!

Humor vs. Glamour

I think I am a person with a sense of humor. I believe laughter is not only the best medicine, but probably the cheapest elixir.

What I weave, on the other hand, I would like described with words like "delicate", "elegant", "exquisite", "excellent", "feminine", and "glamorous".

Here is the problem: these adjectives and the concepts they signify are so foreign to who I am and the way I have lived my life before I became a weaver, that I needed to develop a whole new side of me, and sometimes I feel quite duplicitous.

I can't stop laughing re-reading the second paragraph; I'm not sure if I am embarrassed or feeling silly. And yet, you know, I take my weaving very seriously. Help!

You Could Have Told Me it Was No Big Deal

As a result of having purchased space in the aforementioned Nelson Regional Guide Book, Art in its Own Place, I was given the opportunity to have my work photographed by a professional photographer. At no extra cost. So I signed up.
Textile is said to be difficult to photograph. This is true in my limited experience. In photographs, I hope to convey the feel/hand/texture and weight of a shawl and accurately record the colors and the weave. I avoid hanging a square piece like a museum exhibit, and use table and chairs to drape my shawl. As a shawl is meant to be worn by a person, often in motion, I am not necessarily displeased with an out-of-focus photo if it emulates movement, and works in context. Thus far, I have had a few successes with details, but still struggle with an entire piece, and accurate colors, especially with sheen as with mohair, still elude me.

For a week prior to the shoot, I worried about how to choose the pieces and how to prepare them, and most importantly, how to transport them without getting them creased. I worried about bringing too few or too many, and I worried my work may not look beautiful or well-made to the trained eye.

The day arrived, but I still had no idea what to expect, so with variety in mind, I chose two shawls and one piece of fabric. I picked off dust and lint, steam-ironed both sides, and waited for them to dry before rolling all three in a big piece of bubble wrap. Just in case they were creased, I stuffed my iron and two bath towels into my backpack, along with my own camera to record the shooting session for future reference. I called a taxi, rolled what looked like a carpet in the back seat, and sat next to the driver.

I arrived at Arts Marketing, was asked if I wanted to be listed under my family name or as Meg Weaves, and I replied, uncharacteristically nervously, "MegWeaves, capital M, capital W, no space between the words, thanks." Then I was taken to the next room, a darkened spare office, now an ad hoc studio, and met Daniel, the professional photographer. I unrolled the roll, he threw the pieces on to the table, and before I knew it, it was over. He showed me tiny images of my pieces on his digital camera, and I unceremoniously rolled my stuff back in the bubble wrap. All in all, I must been at Arts Marketing less than ten minutes. But then the photo in the book will be about the size of an Air Mail sticker, so everything is in proportion.

Daniel's website is www.danielallen.co.nz. I didn't look this up until after the fact, but am relieved to know my shawls were in capable hands.

Financial Sanity in the 21st Century

When I was in school, I loved to read biographies of and letters by artists. I had painfully romantic images where composers lived in small 3rd/4th floor stone apartments in Vienna, and roamed the autumnal Viennese Forest in search of symphonies. Painters and sculptors lived likewise in Paris, and though they could only afford half a baguette and a hardened piece of cheese, they met with friends at the corner cafe to discuss art, love and life into the wee hours. Writers, on the other hand, preferred quaint cottages in the English countryside, or Maine or Connecticut, and corresponded with friends in beautiful, longhand letters. The intrinsic beauty of artists' lives was understood by everyone around them. I don't recall finding books about weavers, potters and cabinet makers; I wonder if these craftspersons/artisans/"applied artists" seemed less sexy and their work more "work" than art.

My life as a weaver is pretty unsexy and most of it is slow and, unless one enjoys it immensely as I do, tedious. On a good day, I am covered in fine fiber dust; on a fair day, in sheep and goat poo; and on a more colorful day, I breathe toxic dye fumes or stick my hands in piping hot water and soap. So even though my life for the last few years has evolved around attempting to create beautiful shawls, most days I don the same old track pants, Ben's old shirt, and a red synthetic apron covering me from neck to the shins. The only aspect of my life that coincides with my childhood images is privation.

Well, not really; Ben has a real job, and we can buy whole baguettes. I have, though, surprised myself with my inability to live within the rules of my life: weave, sell, earn, spend. The relationship between this mechanism and my bank account was never so crude when I worked in office jobs. I do the fourth most eagerly, and the first earnestly; I haven't yet the confidence to go about the second enthusiastically; therefore, the third isn't robust. Not many weavers in the developed world can live on handweaving alone, and not many New Zealand artists of any kind can live on their art alone, so for a newbie like myself, it is Kafka-esque.

To get a little help, but more ardently longing to belong, I joined an organization called Arts Marketing, for a fee. The organization publishes an attractive guide to Nelson's artists and art facilities on even-numbered years; a listing in this book is covered by the annual subscription, or so I thought; but no, one has to purchase space. So I did. For a fee. Previous guidebooks have been roughly A5 in size, (roughly half of letter size,) take away the margins, and my space is 1/6 of that, or just about the size of a piece of sellotape going across the page, or two Air Mail stickers sitting beside each other.

I appear to have been positively idiotic and naive about being a member of the free world in the 21st Century; of course everything costs money. My life is utterly unromantic, and the intrinsic beauty of my life is knotted and entangled. But now I am in the book; I have declared myself an artist, and the name MegWeaves will be in print. We shall see, you and I, how this works out. Have your magnifying glasses ready.

*****

If you practice art in the Nelson area, and have not done so already, consider speaking to Martin Rodgers at Arts Marketing to see if you will benefit from the organization. Their website is www.nelsonarts.org.nz.

To Bead or Not To Bead

Yes, I have noticed beads have been in vogue this century; in fact probably for over a decade now. And I understand neither you nor I are in the income bracket that allows/requires wearing jewel-encrusted silk/satin gowns, so I agree with you that beadwork, along with hand-embroidery and handmade lace, is at the high end of luxurious garment embellishments. You would like beads in your handwoven shawl, you say...

The problem, for me, is, I have an ethical dilemma when it comes to beads. For one thing, for me, they have to be glass beads to withstand the chemical wear and tear of modern laundry. But glass beads break. So as a responsible 'manufacturer' of your cloud-soft shawl, I hesitate to embellish the selvedge with glass beads lest a tiny one breaks and caresses your face. I take great pains to make the shawl as lovely as your baby's cheeks so if you couldn't enjoy its feel against your face, my efforts will have been in vein.

None on the selvedge, then, but in the fringes? You can still get those fringes caught in the bedroom door as you rush downstairs to greet the babysitter, and crush a few beads. Your daughter can rush up to you, calling, "Mommy, Mommy, please, can we have ice cream tonight?" and again, that rogue broken bead in the fringe might brush against your daughter's face. What then?

What, you don't have a daughter, and you're extra careful with crushed beads, and you gently handwash your shawl as per my instructions, but when you squeeze the water after the final rinse, and if there is a broken bead, I don't want to be responsible.

Ah, you bring up the sparkle factor.

When you catch your own reflection in window at the Opera House and you see your shawl mysteriously sparkle, it can take your breath away just for a moment, and if you happen to catch your husband looking at your reflection, too, it makes the evening a bit more special, I know.

And when your eyes meet those of a tall stranger, three times, and on the third he raises his finger as if to tip an imaginary hat, you would like the last glimpse he has of you to be the starlight reflected in your shawl.

I concede; I like the sparkles, too. But please, please, be extra careful, because the shawls I weave are meant to make you glow, not cry.

*****

Bead Gallery, Nelson, New Zealand, www.beads.co.nz - a real Aladdin's Cave.

Working Alone, Living in This World

For the first seven years of my life, I was an only child; for the first ten years of school, I went to a Catholic school in Tokyo about an hour's train journey each way. So you might say I spent a lot of time in my own company from early on. I don't remember being lonely; I liked deciding what I did when I wanted (as long as Mom allowed), changing rules at whim, and not sharing! That's why I love being a weaver who works alone in a basement studio with two small windows.

Make no mistake, if our house had more room, I would definitely have an upstairs studio, looking to the West and the Takaka Hills, but we don't, and my big loom is too heavy, and the air compressor too noisy, so my basement studio, next to the garage, with the laundry and a small bathroom, suits me fine. Actually, it's perfect, because the basement feels cocooned, shutting out the outside noise and protecting me.

I may be what you call a self-taught weaver, in that I've gone to only a few workshops, and I don't belong to a local guild, but I learned much from books and magazines. I subscribe to a few Internet fora, I communicate with other weavers, and I go to galleries, museums, films and clothes/design stores specifically to find visual images I can work with. And I try to catch as many weaving/textile exhibits as I can.

With my weaving, every single decision is mine, and I alone am responsible for the outcome of every piece. Being a rather boisterous person, even 'I alone' can be a noisy bunch, so I would rather not have to contemplate anyone else's suggestion. Therefore, until recently, I never understood why people say the creative process is lonely.

But I do now, in a way. I have come to love being with other artists, to listen to how they came to their art, how they overcame problems or what they plan to do next. But most of all, I have come to appreciate belonging to the same group as they, a group of people who make things.

Maybe I grew older and a bit wiser, or maybe I have woven just enough pieces to have a taste of 'being an artist', and my few, tiny successes have given me a peek at triumph. By listening to other artists, I found myself, to my great surprise, more focused on my own work, and I even began to enjoy hearing comments on what I do, be they good or bad. And I know, then, I still live in this world.

Thank you, ladyv and jj.

Content and Confident

Today, quite unplanned, I booked a small gallery for an exhibit next February. It will be my first. The gravity of this action may yet come to haunt me, but for now I am feeling a quiet satisfaction with my decision.

This was not done on impulse; I have been playing around with ideas for showing textile in the smaller of the two rooms at the Gallery since December. So, in a way, and totally unexpectedly, I am relieved the project is no longer just in my head. On the other hand, I have no experience and little idea of what is involved in executing an art/craft exhibit, so I am yet to find out all that I do not know.

But for now, I am content, and confident.

The Warp and Weft of Weavers

This is the way I see it.

The warp is time, and the weft, distance. There have been many, many weavers over the centuries, in probably every corner of the world, who wove cloth to make their own clothes, to use in their everyday lives, to present to royalty and holy men, and even to pay as taxes. Many wove to exchange the cloth with other essentials, like food perhaps, and many to fulfill their artistic aspirations; most were motivated by a combination of these and many other reasons.

Some raised (captured?) the flora and fauna which yielded the fiber, some did the same to dye, and some spun their own fiber. Nowadays some buy yarns from lands far away by typing in credit card numbers, and some yarns are even brewed in factories. Some have recorded their work, in bits of clay, pieces of paper, or over the Internet, some just put on another warp and move on. Some worked the entire process; some were taught, (or even born?), to do just one part.

Few were lucky to be highly esteemed, with accolades, gold pieces, or their names in books; some had their work categorized as an example 'from this era' or 'from that region'; most, however, went unnoticed.

And some were men, some were women.

When weavers weave, whether on a 32-shaft compudobby with a fly shuttle in a purpose-built studio, or on a backstrap loom in the shade under a tree, we are in the company of countless weavers across time, and distance. I will never know most of them, but I am among them, and that is a thrilling and privileged place to be.

Why Do I Love to Weave?

My physiotherapist Aramoana asked me why I love to weave. I had never thought about this, but I heard myself tell her, "I get an adrenaline rush," and then, "When I'm weaving, I have to pay attention to so many things, I really have to concentrate."

I have never been a here-and-now person. I measure my life in terms of: "When I finish xxx...", "When I go to yyy...", and my recent favorite, "When I get enough money to buy zzz..." I have always had visions/goals and multiple To Do lists to help me get there, because I was told, "If you don't know where you're going, you will never get there."

However, as I get older, I've become wary these mad dashes hasn't got me where I thought I might be about now, and I don't want my legacy to be a pile of half-crossed To Do lists. But how do I function without them? How do I stop the note-to-self voices in my head? How can I enjoy the moment, instead of turning it into another stop to somewhere else?

When I weave, I watch the tension, the pick, the selvedge, and the amount of yarn left on the pirn or bobbin. I watch my posture (weavers' upper body rock back and forth), the feet (we 'walk', that is, use the left and the right feet alternatively to press the treadles or the foot pedals), the part of the beater I grab (ideally the centre) and whether the lighting is on the correct spot.

And the more I weave, and supposedly the more I improve, the more I notice things, so I cannot concentrate any less. I do listen to music and books on tapes, but I am focused, and when I am weaving, fringing, beading, washing, I cannot think beyond the very process I am engaged in at that very moment.

And I'm seriously enjoying the moment.

Back in the Game

In mid-March, after six weeks of pain, I was told I had tendonitis, and to avoid activities which put stress on my right wrist and lower arm. It took me a while just to identify these activities; washing hair, brushing hair on the right side of my head, brushing teeth, and ironing were among them. And anything to do with scissors and knives. In fact, there was very little I could do. Normally, I love to read, and I look forward to a few days off with a cold every winter, but this time I felt restless and paced like a caged animal instead.

By Easter, I was at my wit's end because I just wanted to weave. I had so many ideas, plans, unfinished projects, all the time in the world, and, of course, yarn. I was especially eager to return to a fulltime weaving routine I established last year. I was cranky. At the same time I didn't want this to be life-as-a-weaver-threatening, so I went cold turkey. Weaving in short spurts, for me, tantamount to being given a chocolate chip cookie after all the chocolate chips have been removed.

But with age does come a modicum of wisdom. After a month of pacing and no chocolate chips, I sensed that if I want to weave to be 90, I couldn't go back to that routine . So I conceded to doing this sensibly.

Today, I wove for one hour. Except for a botched sample weaving in late March, this was the first time I wove since Christmas Eve. I set the kitchen timer for 60 minutes.

I wove on my 4-shaft Jack loom because this is the most comfortable, and it was already dressed with a glorious warp - three reds in shiny wool in a very wide Dornik Twill stripe. I wove three shawls on this warp last year with different wefts, and named them Merlot, Cab Sav and Stawberries and Brut, and sold Merlot at the exhibit in Blenheim. 10 pirns for the shuttle were already wound with red possum/meirno/silk. All I had to do was to tie the beginning and weave.

I felt a bit shy at first. It was like meeting a friend for coffee; a friend I've known for years, who lives not far away, but we were meeting for the first time in a long while. We both felt a bit guilty for not being in touch and sniffed around for safe things to say, but after 20 minutes, the company was as familiar as the scent of my favorite wool wash. The harnesses lifted smoothly, the shuttle glided, and we parted knowing we'd be seeing each other really soon again.

After the hour, still not wanting to leave the studio, I started to dress the 16-shaft compudobby. This is going to be a very narrow warp, only 160 ends of undyed merino, so I can redo the sample weaving. And I'll probably have enough leftover for a short scarf for myself.

It's fabulous to be back in the game.