The Price of Eggs in China, aka Talking Pears

I did finally take an afternoon to weave while we were anchored in Hadley Harbor, on the Island of Naushon just across from Wood’s Hole.

I’m working on a small tapestry that was an assignment from a workshop that Archie and Susan gave to the Wednesday Group several months ago. They called the workshop “Talking Pears.” For the workshop we were to bring two Bosc pears, our sketchbooks and pencils, and a variety of colored papers.

For the morning, we arranged and drew our two pears several times.  After our lunch break, we took the sketches we liked best and used them as ideas for making several paper collage designs.  The nature of the paper collage designs being so graphic led to other ideas.

At the end of class we lined up our paper collages and discussed shapes, arrangements, and color choices.

This may be more than you want to know about the “price of eggs in China,” but I’m certain that Archie and Susan carefully chose this workshop as a clever way to make us start thinking in the language of tapestry rather than in the language of pure image.  Many of us are often intrigued by an image first and foremost, and we attempt to make a cartoon that will be weaverly.

Here, the relationship of our pears as two shapes coming together, along with the relationship of the surrounding area, and the colors we chose to use took precedence over the image itself.  The simple paper collages we made prevented us from creating shading and contours.

This simple exercise has allowed each of us to focus on how to create the shapes of the pears and the surrounding areas.  I’ve never paid so much attention to my curves and slopes!  I’m usually too busy also trying to create light and shadow.  I had a lot of fun choosing the colors for this little project, and with only six colors I really concentrated on the relationship between them.

 

Here you can see the frame that Bob made for me to hold my copper pipe looms.  This frame allows me to adjust the loom up and down so I’ll always be weaving at a comfortable height.

 

 

 

One Wednesday Grouper has already woven eight small tapestries!  Several others have already woven two.  This is my first one, and I do hope to weave another.  I’m so slow that two will probably be my limit!

Soul Collage

A friend of mine invited me to join her at a one-day workshop on Soul Collage which I had not heard of.  I thought that learning some collage techniques might help my tapestry design, so I was looking forward to the workshop.

The collage class ended up being much more than I expected!  It’s a way to get in touch with many of our deepest, strongest, sometimes unrealized feelings…and how great is that for creating art?  The collage techniques were nothing compared to tapping into such deep seated emotions and powerful core beliefs.  I’m so glad I participated in this!…although by the time  left I had a massive headache! (I still seem to wilt every afternoon with aches, headache, nausea and exhaustion…what a flu!)

This is an image of someone else’s collage posted on the website.  Many of them are quite powerful.  I wanted to post one of mine, but my scanner refuses to scan right now.  It’s making a lot of noise and giving me error messages!  Hmmph!

New Year

It's been ages since I sat at a loom, either my tapestry looms or my "regular" looms. I'm getting a bit frustrated about that! I haven't even managed to get much knitting done this holiday season, except to finally sew together my Hild sweater, which I wore to the opera on Monday, when I saw "DieWalkyrie" at the Met with Lorin Maazel conducting.






My younger son has certainly been creative during his time off this month. This is a drawing he did for his dad for Christmas. It's a traditional boat called a Friendship sloop, for Friendship, Maine, where they were built. I had envisioned us doing some drawing together, but it still hasn't happened. I could sure use a dose of his creativity! He leaves on Sunday to return to school.