Collaboration

I spent the day working on a collaborative tapestry that my tapestry group is working on. The piece is for the Harmonies Exhibit for the Color Connects Conference in Riverside March 6-9th 2009. The Harmonies Exhibit is an unjuried exhibit that focuses on collaboration. Our tapestry group is currently working on two pieces.

In the past our group has done a number of collaborative pieces. In the past our collaborative pieces have been individual pieces based on a common theme. Once we did a snake and cut the cartoon into into individual pieces. Other times we have a theme and certain constraints and we each weave our own tapestry. Once we did a 4 by 6 inch piece with the theme of Vintage TVs.

This time we are all working on the same tapestry; one person at a time. I am the 5th of potentially nine people to work on this piece. The inspiration for the piece was a photo of a poppy field. There is no cartoon. The colors are the conference colors for Color Connects. Basically, you weave whatever you want with whatever yarn you'd like until you feel you have woven enough. Then you pass it on to the next person.

I got this tapestry at our last meeting. Today I worked on the mountains and sky. I wanted to get the piece up to the bottom of the frame. Done.

Much of the yarn in the piece is wool and I can feel my palms burning. Fortunately I found some non wool yarn to weave the mountains with. Unfortunately, I couldn'' find any non-wool yarn which matches the colors in the frame. But it's done...it will be interesting to see how folks finish off this piece.

I wasn't sure using the conference color would provide enough value contrast but it seems based on the second photo there is enough. The black and white photo however does quickly point out there is no focal point in this piece. It might be possible to fix that with a flock of birds or a sun or moon in the unwoven part. Time will tell how it all weaves up by the remaining four tapsters.