Rita's Excellent Adventure has Popped Up in Long Beach!

Rita's Excellent Adventure told in tapestry is a story about a young sand crab that loves purple plankton.  One day she heads out on a current to find the best plankton in Santa Monica Bay and has an adventure which is illustrated with 20 tapestries woven by six tapestry artist.  I wrote the story in verse and with five other weavers in the Seaside Tapestry Group we spent a year creating the tapestries.

It's Rita by Nicki Bair

It's a fun exhibit.  The first time around the room you read the verses and see how the artists have chosen to illustrate the story in tapestry.  And perhaps you discover Rita's eyes staring back at you from a spot hidden in a tapestry or two.  The second time around you notice how the frames on each tapestry use the same yarns but look different.  Each frame is at a minimum 1/2 inch wide but no more than 1 1/2 inches wide but then the creativity begins. Each frame is different.   Next you step back and try to guess which tapestries were done by the same artist; can you recognize their styles?  So many layers to a single exhibit!

It was wonderful to be selected for a HGA Community Exhibit as part of Convergence Long Beach 2012.  The gallery space is part of a program that Long Beach has which converts vacant commercial space into pop-up galleries thereby creating excitement and activity in the area. And of course, it makes the vacant building must more attractive for potential buyers.  The space for Rita used to be a bicycle shop.  

From a fiber standpoint the great thing is that there are three of these pop-up galleries within blocks of each other on Pine St., so if you go see one you get to see three fiber exhibits.  Just a half a block up is Designing Weaver's World of Fiber exhibit and a block or so away is Susan Mcghee's exhibit of woven metal at 555 Pine St. 

I did find out the hours in the Gallery Guide were incorrect.  The three galleries will be open this coming Friday, Saturday and Sunday starting in the evenings.   Then during Convergence Long Beach 2012 the gallery will only be open for the big reception on Friday July 20th from 6 to 10pm.