Pacific Portals

Merna, Karen and I hung the Pacific Portals exhibit at the Long Beach Public Library - Main Library today; 152 beautiful and diverse tapestries from 12 countries.   This is the 9th unjuried international small format tapestry exhibit and is sponsored by the American Tapestry Alliance.

The library is a great venue and allowed us to separate the pieces into three spots; a Lobby Gallery at the entrance of the library, an Art Exhibit area where the tapestries are in display cases and the Lower Level Gallery which as the name implies is on the lower level of the library.   Being able to separate the show into three locations avoids the tendency to be overwhelmed by the great number of tapestries in this exhibit.   We also provided a listing which allows folks to find where a specific person's tapestry is located.

The exhibit will be up until August 30th and is open during library hours.  The library is closed on Sundays and Mondays.  If you are going to Convergence check it out.  If you are not, buy the catalog when it is available on the ATA site - it too is fabulous....but not quite as fabulous as the exhibit itself.

Here are some shots of the exhibit...

Lower Level Gallery

Entrance Gallery

Display Case

More Display Cases

Can one ever have too many looms?-

Here is my afternoon project...putting together a four harness Fireside upright tapestry loom.   I am sure it will be easier than it was taking it apart!    It moved from a third story studio in Venice to my studio yesterday.  To get it down three flights in Venice plus through our very thin front door required almost complete dis-assembly.    It's not often one of these looms goes on the market.... and well let's be honest...can one ever have too many looms?  Plus it came with the coolest bench - no assembly required!


Evening Update:  just had a glass of wine.  Loom is together in about a sixth of the time it took to take apart...well as together as it will be for now...all I need is three strong macho men to upright this upright tapestry loom.   Once upright, it should fit nicely into the corner and rest while I order new rigging and freshen up the wood and clean the steel.  Sounds like cleaning a boat...   I hope what they say about boats is not the same about this loom...meaning the happiest day in a boat owner's life is the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it...

Rita's Adventures in Words and Weft

Rita's Excellent Adventure told in tapestry is going live!

Last year, I submitted, for my tapestry group, an exhibit proposal for a children's story illustrated in tapestry to HGA for a community exhibit as part of Convergence Long Beach 2012.   We hadn't heard anything so I figured ah well, perhaps the proposal was a bit too vague.  At the time of the proposal, the story was not written, the hero was not selected nor the tapestries conceptualized.  All we knew was that we would have 18 tapestries (woven by six tapestry artists) framed on plexi which needed to be hung sequentially since it told a story. Later a common palette of yarns was selected, a hero selected, the story written (by me) and tapestries begun.

So what a surprise a few weeks ago to hear from a gallery in Long Beach interested in showing our story about Rita, a sand crab that goes on a quest for the best plankton in Santa Monica Bay. Once the story had been written and converted to verse, there turned out to be 20 tapestries in all.  So, needless to say, our group had slowed down a bit since that's a lot of tapestries to weave for six people.  And over time the excitement wanes.  But with that phone call, our focus snapped came back and 19 of the 20 tapestries are completed and ready for finishing.  By the end of June, they all should be ready to hang.

Pictured is the last tapestry in process...page 19; where a Father on the beach challenges his young son to a race to the surf against Rita, our heroine.

My Fiber Slaps in Handwoven

My Taqueté Fiber Slap Bracelets

These are my taqueté slaps that consumed my life for the first couple of months of this year.  They were designed and woven for an article in the May/June 2012 Handwoven magazine that I wrote.   These are great bracelets, which slap around the wrist, since they are light, colorful and fit pretty much any size wrist.   I designed a simple repetitive pattern for the bracelets which used three shuttles; silver, turquoise and black yet appeared to have three shades of turquoise through an optical illusion.   By swapping the positions of the three colors; six different bracelets are possible with the same shuttles.  I also did a few from different parts of the color wheel.    I felt like a mom sending her kids off to pre-school when I mailed them off to Colorado for their photo shoot.  They should be home again soon.

Now, only one more big project and I can get back to tapestry weaving.  I have several ideas churning through my brain.  Is it time for another addition to my butt series or perhaps a poem in silk or....ah I can feel the excitement increasing...

Not Much Studio Time

Not too much time in the studio this month since I am working on the catalog for the Pacific Portals exhibit which will be held in Long Beach in conjunction with Convergence.  The exhibit will be up for two months at the Long Beach Public Library - Main Library.  This exhibit is the American Tapestry Alliance's unjuried small format tapestry exhibit.  It's a great exhibit to see since there are tons of tapestries in one place and the wide variety of images and techniques is astonishing.

I am working on the photos of the tapestries right now which is quite fun since I get to see all 150+ tapestries up close and personal.  It is interesting to see the various ways that the tapestries have been finished on the back.  I see them when I photograph them as well as when I tweak them in photoshop as well as when I insert them into the catalog.  I figure I will have them all these memorized real soon!

Our tapestry group submitted a group entry called Pacific Portholes... here is a shot of my tapestry; not the catalog shot.  It's called Three Sisters on Vacation.  I was trying for a cartoon look of me and my two older sisters peeking out of the portfholes.

All of our tapestries are white with two blue stripes and all have portholes of course.   We were limited in size to 5 inches in one direction and between 5 to 10 in the other.   Mine is close to five by ten. The others are more square.   It's pretty lumpy tapestry since the portholes poof out. It is woven at two different setts, with the white at the top and bottom at about 8 epi woven in a basket weave technique.  The portholes are at 16 epi woven with silk singles.

It was fun experimenting with different setts in one piece.  I would have preferred a bigger piece because then greater detail in the faces would have been possible.  I wove the portals from the right to the left and each got better and better as I figured out how best to handle the different wefts. I find this always to be true; by the end of any piece with a new technique; the later parts are better than the former.   I thought about going back and redoing the ones finished earlier but thought better of it.