SPUN at the Denver Art Museum

This past weekend, I got to go over to Denver to spend some time with my youngest son and his family. On Sunday, my son took me to the opening day of the much touted SPUN, Adventures in Textiles exhibits at the Denver Art Museum.

One of the featured exhibits in the museum for SPUN is "Red, White, & Bold: Masterworks of Navajo Design, 1840-1870." I wish I could have taken a photo there! (The one above is from the DAM website.) The room was exquisite! The tapestries, all red, white and black, were hung away from the walls, nearly all the way to the high ceilings, 'stacked' so they hung touching each other, top-to-bottom. The room was dimly lit, and the rugs (mostly chief blankets) were lit from the bottom at the back with black lights! They absolutely glowed, like they had inner light. Stunning! But no photos allowed in that room.... sigh.

I was not sure of what to expect from the exhibit. I know the museum owns some tapestries by Ramona Sakiestewa, so I was hoping to see those again. The exhibits are to celebrate the opening of the new Textile Department. So, while Ramona's tapestries were not on display this time, I hope they will rotate into the museum sometime in the future when I'm there. At least now, they will be displaying textiles regularly. The new Textile Art Galleries are on the 6th floor of the North Building.  The inaugural exhibit there is called "Cover Story." It includes the only one piece that I would classify as a traditional tapestry (above and detail below.) It is "Spring" designed by Stefan Galkowski and 'manufactured' by Wanda Cooperative in about 1961 (that is how it is listed at the museum.)

I apologize for the poor photos. I just had my iPhone with me. Photos were allowed in this gallery, so I had wished I'd taken my camera in.

There were a couple of 'Ritual Rugs' from middle eastern countries, this one from Afghanistan. They were soumack or  pile woven.  This one was a short pile.

 

One of the things the DAM does well is being a 'hands-on' museum. They especially do well with activities for children, related to the exhibits. I love taking my grandchildren there! So the new Textile Gallery has a room attached which has shelves filled with things related to making fiber stuff. I don't know why I didn't get a shot of the weaving area (!) but I think I liked the quote above the embroidery space better, or something.  The weaving area had small looms, including Weave-its. It is a well-done area. There is also a place for weaving on an upright loom, in which the 'warp' is mountain climbing ropes, and the weft is suitably chunky. Pretty appropriate for Denver! There are also spaces for quilting, knitting, and anything related to textiles.

There is also a creative corner about designing your own textile piece. It shows how someone was inspired by the "Spring" tapestry to create this small quilted piece, and they have paper and stamps and pictures of the tapestry for people to make their own designs.

 

In a different part of the museum, the Material World gallery is featuring this piece by Chuck Close.  I didn't see the 'no photos' sign anywhere in the gallery, so took this photo, though I'll also post the one from their website as well. It is quite an amazing piece! It is a short-pile tapestry of silk and linen. Up close, it is just a riot of color. From a distance, you see the portrait. I believe it was woven as a pile tapestry, and I wish I had taken a close-up shot of it. My son and I got very close to it. It is only about 1/4" think, so is very finely woven. I couldn't think of any other way it could have been created. None of the written materials I could find there say anything about where or how it was created, which was very frustrating for me, as I think the creators should be given credit for such a complex work, as well as the designer.  But it is certainly worth seeing! Below is the picture from the museum website.

The SPUN exhibits will be at the Denver Art Museum through September 22, 2013. After that, there should be textiles on exhibit always in the new Textiles Gallery. The Navajo exhibit is wonderful, and there are some other lovely bits here and there throughout the museum. I still wish they had included more tapestries, but of course I would wish that!

My Colorado...

 

Our 40th wedding anniversary was Sunday.... an event that just seems to need to be celebrated in some way, don't you think? Forty years. Married. To the same man. Something had to be done!

 

So we decided to take a few days off right here in Colorado, to visit places we had seen before and a few spots that were new to us. 

Many, many people visit Colorado. To them, Colorado may be the view of blue mountains over the top of the Denver skyline. Or it may be ski resorts with snowy slopes and very pricey real estate. But I have lived in Colorado a long time - almost as long as I have been married! In fact, I was born in Colorado. So I feel like the Colorado I know is the 'real' beautiful rocky mountain state.

On this trip, we saw most of what is familiar in Colorado to me. We went to Mesa Verde, which is in the Four Corners area. On our way there, we drove two lane highways, following the river through high ranch lands, surrounded by snow-capped mountains that played peek-a-boo with us through the clouds. We were rained on, sleeted on, snowed on, and the sun briefly shone on us. We passed a stand of trees we have seen before, filled with nesting herons.

We arrived at the Mesa Verde lodge in the evening, and this was the view from our little balcony. The lit canyon sides are where most of the cliff dwellings are.

  

On our first full day there we decided to leave the park and see new things. We went to the Canyons of the Ancients, and my husband (for 40 years) rode his bike along a trail, while I sketched a bit, and walked some, looking at the wildflowers and blooming cacti, and spotting little cliff dwellings (or evidences of where they had been) in about  every overhang of the canyon walls.

 

The day began to cloud up again, as we headed to Hovenweep. There are still pueblos (villages) of mesa-top ruins there, atop a number of canyons. I love the two towers in this one, which are each on it's own  rock outcrop, separated by a deep ravine. The canyons were chosen for building in because of access to scarce water.

As we drove across the top of the mesa back to the national park, the sky put on a show for us. You can see so far in my Colorado, with nothing to block the view. I am sure the ancient people who once lived here loved this about their home, as I do.

On our last day, we visited the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde. I love this photo that I took, because it looks a lot like the old photos that were taken shortly after Cliff House was 'discovered' by anglos. The park service and the rangers are very respectful of the history of this place. It is still regarded as a sacred place by the many Native Americans who live in this area. Horses that belong to the nearby Ute ranchers have free reign in the park, with signs up along the road to watch for them. However, oddly (to me) none of the tribes in the area claim to be descendants of the people who built and lived in these amazing cities.

 

When we left to come back home, we returned by another way, again following a river along a two-lane highway. This took us into the red rock canyons, where the valley floors are greening up with springtime.

Isn't my Colorado a beautiful and diverse place?

Inside and Outside...

 

Our winter was so dry, that we are thrilled to be having some moisture now this spring! Most of us are anyway.... Booker does not like lightening, and we had quite a bit of it yesterday; enough rain to soak me, as I came out of the grocery store. That doesn't happen often here. Most people around here don't even own a umbrella, and we certainly don't carry them with us!

It rained again today. So it was a lovely day to be inside at the art center, doing some portrait practice. We had our first male model today, and he was a delight to paint.

 

Just outside the gallery, in the center's zen garden, it kept raining. We heard the steady sound of it on the roof as we worked, keeping time with the quiet classical music we paint to. What a lovely rarity, to have a standing puddle of rainwater! I had to capture it.

I did not paint a masterpiece today, but I enjoyed my painting time. We have only one more session before the summer art camp begins, so we will have to find other things to do and places to work through the summer. I will be in my own studio, hopefully. But I may occasionally stop the weaving just long enough to grab a willing model to paint from, as this has been a good challenge for me to do.

Slit Sewing 101....

Most of my designs have both vertical and horizontal lines and shapes in them. So, even after choosing the best direction to weave the image in (see this post for more about that) I usually have some vertical slits to deal with as I weave. If the slits will be long ones, I usually try to sew the slits as I weave, for structural strength, to keep shapes and edges from pulling in, and to keep the number of slits I have to sew after the tapestry comes off the loom to as few as possible.

Sewing a slit as you weave is not difficult. I don't sew little slits this way, because I would have to keep knotting the thread and beginning it again, which would really slow me down.

But this tapestry has fairly vertical tree trunks which go all the way up the tapestry, so sewing the slits as I go just makes sense. I weave an inch (or two or three), then I stop and sew the slits.

To sew the slit, choose a thread that is close in color to one of the colors on the tapestry slit edge. Thread the needle; knot the end of the thread, and tuck the knot through the slit to the back of the tapestry. Then slip the needle up through one of the slit edges, going just inside the weft, but NOT catching the warp thread. This is pretty easy to do when you get the hang of it. If you sew through the warp, you risk weakening it, and I hate broken warp threads! I sew up through that side of the weft/slit edge about 1/8th of an inch, then stick the needle back out. (See above photo.)

Then I do the same on the opposite side of the slit, going up inside the weft edge along the warp, and pulling it out.

I alternate sides, back-and-forth, up the slit edge. I move over when the slit moves over, continuing up the shape edges. You can see the thread between the slit edges in the photo below, because I have pulled the slit open a bit. But when you pull the thread taut, the stitching will not show at all.

If you are smart (and sometimes I am) you will sew your slits before you have moved too far up the cartoon. This is helpful, because, even on a large tapestry, you can sometimes reach your hand down behind the fell edge, and help guide your needle up the slit from behind.

When you have reached the end of the slit, or your thread has run out, make a knot in the thread that will be to the BACK of the tapestry, then pull a bit of excess thread into the nearby weft, pull it through,  and either cut it close to the front, or (preferably, if you can) cut it with a small tail hanging on the back.

Maybe you already know all of this. but I thought, as I was sewing slits on this tapestry, it would be a good time to share it with you. And if you have a better way, please let me know!

At Weft Speed, (which is NOT the same as Warp Speed)....

 

I AM making some progress in the studio, but it is not fast progress. Of course, tapestry progress is never fast progress, but I am progressing more slowly than usual lately. I don't know if it is allergies or something else, but my eyes have been giving me a real spot of trouble this past few months. They are red and ugly, and I have trouble seeing clearly much of the time. I have used a number of 'solutions' on them, from antihistamine drops to antibiotic drops. but they haven't yet solved the trouble! I'll see the doctor again early next week, and am hoping this time will fix it! 

In the meantime, I am weaving when I can on the October tapestry, and am about 6 inches from the top. Seeing the top is always an inspirational prod to me, so maybe this next six inches will progress more quickly than the last six inches have.

 

Across the studio, I also made a bit of progress on the daffodil painting, blocking in about half of the large flowers. I haven't worked much on the painting, but hope to work some more at the weekend, or maybe even when I have my palette out of the freezer tomorrow for the portrait session at the Art Center. No rush on this one, though. I just want to hang it somewhere where some bright color is needed in my dark house for the summer.

A storm seems to be headed our way this afternoon, as Booker is insisting that he needs to be in the studio with me. He only does that when it is thundering (or is going to maybe thunder) and he always seems to know a few hours before the storm hits. We'll see if he's right this time. He usually is.... I do not really like him to be in the studio, but I allow it on occasion.  

Back to the studio with my big chicken of a dog!

An Under-the-Bed exhibit...

"Cabin Fever" tapestry 24"x36" 1988

I am doing my spring cleaning. Well, okay, I am supposedly doing my spring cleaning, though you know I am really at the computer (any diversion helps in these situations.) In cleaning the bedroom, I pulled a big box out from under the bed. It is a box that only gets pulled out once a year, during spring cleaning. Sometimes I don't even open the box; I just clean the floor where it was, then cram it back under there. Out of sight, out of mind.

But, knowing what lives in the box, I decided to open it today, and check to make sure everything was doing well in the box, and not being eaten by moths or an unruly cat. What lives in the box are about a half dozen of my very early tapestries. I truly do not know what to do with them! I have considered stitching them all together and using them for a studio rug. I have considered letting the dog sleep on a couple of them. But I just can't destroy them. They not only constitute my technical learning years, but they also contain some of my 'visions' and 'visual thoughts' of those early years, simple though they be.

This tapestry, woven in 1988, was a pretty ambitious piece for me at the time. Each of my tapestries back in those days were woven with certain technical challenges in mind. This one, I remember, had a couple of challenges. I wanted to figure out how to use lines in a subtle semi-transparent way. So I included the shapes in the background, which you can see if you click on the image to make it larger. Also, I was working my way through the weft-faced techniques in Peter Collingwood's rug book (which is how I learned to weave tapestries.) I wanted to work on using joins, and I wanted the joins to leave a jagged, irregular edge. So all of the sides of the house shapes are joined, using a couple of different techniques. Where I wanted clean edges (the sun and moon shapes,) I used slits.

I was loving the work of Paul Klee at this time. I had been to the San Francisco Art Museum, which then had a "Paul Klee Room." I remember walking into that room and seeing his work for the first time, and being reduced to tears by it. It was actually a pretty embarrassing situation, as I was the only person there, so the docent came over and asked if I was OK. Probably not too many people weep at Paul Klee's art, but I did. I loved it! So this tapestry still speaks to me of his work, and his colors, and my love for what he does.

I designed and wove this when my sons were young, still playing with Legos in the family room where my floor loom was. My husband was very busy building his pediatric practice, and was gone a great deal of the time. This tapestry was woven during a very long, hard winter. It is called "Cabin Fever," for obvious reasons.

If you read my post a few days ago, you saw one of my other tapestries from my under-the-bed exhibit, woven the same year as this tapestry was. The technical challenge of that piece was to learn to use an outlining technique. As you can see from both of these, I was in my 'bright colors on black' period.  1988 was a pretty productive year. I designed and wove four pretty good-sized tapestries that year. Those little boys with Legos didn't slow me down anywhere near as much as age and a tendency to over-detail my work has done lately!

Back to spring cleaning. Wonder what else I'll find....

A better week ahead....

This week has started off much better than last week did, and I hope it stays that way. I got a beautiful bouquet of flowers from my parents for my birthday yesterday. I've taken what would have been a whole roll of pictures of them, back in the day of film rolls. I'm so glad to have gone digital, because it often takes me a roll or two worth of shots to get the one I want! The one above is one I like well enough, but it is not the one I am saving to paint from. That will have to be a surprise, I guess. (And the surprise may be if I get around to the painting!)

I have been weaving more, and my reaction to the original  image is starting to come about from the tapestry, FINALLY! This morning when I started weaving, I actually felt myself back at the place where this image is from, remembering why I wanted to weave it. I actually felt, just for a moment, back in that time and place. Yes! That is what I want from this particular tapestry! So I'm glad I didn't give up on it. (Sorry I have so many butterflies covering up the right side. The weaving itself is really not that dark and messy!)

If I turn my weaving chair around as I weave, sitting on the easel behind me is the start of a painting that I began over the weekend. The painting session at the Art Center is postponed tomorrow for the local public school art week, so I plan to spend the morning painting here. This will be a larger-than-life painting of the daffodils I bought myself earlier this spring. I normally don't paint a lot of flowers, but this spring has been so on-again/off-again, I think I feel compelled to provide my own spring! The funny thing about this painting is that I had prepped an 8x10" canvas to do it on, then at the very last minute, I put that canvas aside, and grabbed a 16x20" canvas and just jumped right in. I have done the beginnings of the vase and the background, but will start on the daffodils tomorrow. They will fill all the white area at the top. I can't wait to see how they turn out!