It's About Time....

It is about time.... it's about time for the October exhibit. It's about time that I get all the prep work done. It's about time for me to design the next Calendar tapestry; get it out of my head and into a visual format so I can weave it. It's about time for summer to end, and my favorite season of the year to begin. It's about time for it to stop raining.... and who would have EVER thought I'd say that!!

I have been mounting (and remounting) three tapestries this week. I have two done, and just the June one to do tomorrow. I have posted in the past about how these tapestries are mounted, so if you are interested in seeing it again, or if you missed it the first time, you can go here.

The Calendar series tapestries are all about Time, as well. Here is the Artist's Statement I wrote for the exhibit next month:

When I began weaving the Calendar series of tapestries, I had just completed weaving a series of tapestries of the Four Seasons. I realized that those four large tapestries, though each said a lot about the passage of our seasons here in Colorado, did not say everything that I had to say about the passage of time. I have reached an era in my life when the topic of ‘time’ seems to be, well, ‘timely.’ So I decided to approach the topic by exploring each month of the year individually. Each of these tapestries is a very personal statement about the things that are of value to me in my life here in western Colorado. They strive to convey the play of light and shadow, the creatures and beauty that surround and share our spaces, the colors that change with time, and the feelings I have for our place in the larger world. So far, I have these eight tapestries in the series complete, with four more to design and weave.

Designing a tapestry can take a moment or a lifetime. I use photography, computer design, and/or painting at the easel to find an image that I will want to weave. After the design stage  is complete begins the work of weaving. I sit at the loom and pass tiny bits of colorful swedish wool in and through the warp tied on my large upright loom, in a very slow dance of creation. A vertical inch across the tapestry can take 8-10 hours of weaving time, sometimes more. I have to fall in love with an image, and be in love with the medium and the process itself, to be willing to spend the time to create it in a tapestry.

My work ties me to others. It ties me to those in the past; the medieval tapestry weavers and artist-designers of the tapestries I have seen in the Louvre. And it ties me to the rug and blanket weavers of Native American weavers, whose work is done with the same slow process I use. And it ties me to you, the viewer; to those who share the experiences and recognize the stories in the images I weave.

I still prefer the 'artist's statements' that I came up with when I had to do them for the last exhibit at the Art Center. They are here. I especially like the one that says 'I weave, and I weave, and I weave.....' Someday I will be brave enough to turn that in for my statement. Maybe next Time....