Open Studio Tour: Landing and Stairway

Yes, I even have tapestries in the hallways! As you leave the studio or sitting room, there are tapestries on the landing.

Above the radiator is one of the few walls in the house where I usually do hang a tapestry. For the tour, there are 3 there; ‘Northern Lights,’ and two of the Calendar Series pieces, ‘January’ and ‘February.’ One of our cats, Poe, became obsessed with the bird in the February tapestry, so much so, in fact, that I had to take it down until just before tour time. He was determined to climb up to check it out more closely.

In the corner space is another Calendar Series tapestry, ‘June.’ (Which is the best fishing month at the lakes here.)

As I don’t have much wall space, I hung another large tapestry from the Four Seasons Series over a door. This is the Spring tapestry, ‘A Time to Wait.’ It is my daughter-in-law, when she was expecting our first grandchild.

 I have hung a number of small tapestries going down the stairs. These are all approximately 8x10 inches, framed. Sorry that these photos don’t really showcase the tapestries well. They are mainly to show where things are hung. Most have much better photos on my website.

 

Open Studios Tour: the Sitting Room

My sitting room is next to the studio. It is the brightest room in the house, so is where I usually have my morning coffee, write in my journal, catch up with social media, and do a quick sketch.

The French doors lead to a summer sleeping porch. For the studio tour, I’ve hung one of the large Heritage Series tapestries (‘Croquet Coquette’) over the doors. I generally do this in the winter as well, as the sleeping porch is not heated and has a lot of windows.

Above the fireplace is the ‘Graffiti’ tapestry, and the ‘Graffiti Garden’ tapestry is to the left of it.

On the wall behind the sofa is the ‘Winter’ tapestry of the Seasons Series (‘A Peace of Quiet’,) ‘Emergence,’ and ‘December’ from the Calendar Series.

 

Open Studios Tour: the Studio

I was planning to add some videos of my participation in the local Open Studios Tour this coming weekend. However, I can’t seem to get my videos to fit the format here, so I’ll just add photos. I’m starting in the studio, which is probably the last place visitors will be, as my studio is upstairs in my home, and I have work through a good bit of the house, as well as in the studio.

As you go in, there are a few small tapestries hanging together. These are each about 8x10” or less.

The pastel sketch on the easel is a ‘maquette’ or a design for a tapestry. The tapestry itself will be seen in a later post.

Another small tapestry on the end of my yarn shelves.

The bins in these shelves are filled with the Swedish yarn I use in my tapestries, sorted by color families. The upper left shelves also hold my sketchbooks from over the years. Many of my tapestries come directly from my sketches.

I have a number of oil paintings in the studio, and the one here of boats was a maquette for a tapestry. The tapestry itself was stolen from a gallery in North Carolina. If you should ever see the tapestry, please let me know!

This is my work table. It contains the materials I’m using in the tapestry I’m currently working on. There is also a small loom on it now, as I have a small tapestry in progress as well as one on the large loom.

My large loom is a 6-ft wide Shannock loom. It also has a tapestry in progress on it. A tapestry this size will take me several months to weave. I can weave about an inch across the width of the tapestry in approximately 8 hours.

There are a few tapestries behind the loom, including a few from my ‘Selfies’ series, “The Caregiver,” and “Not the Enemy,” and “The Photographer.”

This small work table is where I paint. I got the Unicorn tapestry poster at the Cloisters Museum in New York, and the triangular tapestry hanging from the loom (upper left) is my duplicate of the ornament I was privileged to make for the White House Christmas tree during the Clinton administration.

 

Challenge accepted!

This is Ringo

The American Tapestry Alliance hosts an unjuried exhibition every two years, in conjunction with the Handweavers Convergence conference. It will be held in Wichita, Kansas this summer in a gallery that is mostly aimed at sight impaired visitors. So the challenge for the small tapestries is that they need to be highly textured, as visitors will be allowed to see them by touch.

A sketchbook version of Ringo

So, I looked through my sketchbooks for something that would inspire me to weave textural, as well as visual interest. I decided this sketch of Ringo would be my maquette.

I bought a really fuzzy yarn, a skein of something I would normally NEVER consider weaving with, but that said ‘Ringo’ to me. It turned out to be SO fuzzy and textured, that nothing showed up, either visually or texturally, but fuzzy yarn. I knew I’d never get any details to show up, using this yarn.

So, I unwove it. Looking through my stash of knitting yarns, I found some less fuzzy, but still textured yarns. One was blue, one was tan, and one white. I decided I could try them.

When the tapestry was woven, I added whiskers, and the word CAT, in braille. This tapestry is about 7x9”. It turns out that I actually enjoyed being challenged to do some out of my comfort zone, with materials I wouldn’t normally use. I hope it will be enjoyed by all viewers in Kansas this summer!

String Theory

 

Ok, I don’t know anything about string theory, except maybe what I see on The Big Bang. But there is an excellent fiber exhibit right now at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod by that name, now through March 6. If you can go see it, definitely go! If not, watch this excellent video of the exhibit:

https://youtu.be/024N2VSELmc

My tapestry, ‘The Duet’, is shown towards the end of the 6 minute video.

The exhibit is in South Yarmouth, MA. Let me know if you get to see it there!

Ready or not…….

It seemed that Thanksgiving snuck up on us this year, with summer easing quietly into a warm fall.

And you don’t even have Thanksgiving dishes done and the National Dog Show watched, before being slammed into the Christmas season, via ads and watching your social media follows decking their halls.

As I always confess at this time of year, I have a very hard time getting into the ‘Christmas spirit;’ the one that includes decorating, shopping, and parties.

My Christmas includes advent readings, candle lighting, reading by the fire with hot chocolate, avoiding malls, and doing what I do anyway - like my daily sketches. My sketches recently have been ‘holiday’ themed. I am not a total Grinch. I put a tree up for the cats to enjoy, and I have done some minimal hall decking.

And I am doing an ‘advent challenge’ in IG to sketch a weekly holiday themed sketch, like ‘Mistletoe Kisses’ above. But, just about the time the holiday mood finally overtakes me, it’s time to celebrate a new year. Who can keep up anymore?

 

Inktober… I didn’t miss it!

I have participated in Inktober each October since 2016, but I forgot to post the ink sketches here this year. So here they are. They were all done in a large sketchbook that has paper that won’t take paint, so just ink, Inktense pencils, and ballpoint pens.

Each day in Inktober has a prompt, which I pretty much stuck to, but I think I’ll just let you guess the prompts this year!

I enjoyed sketching with ink this year, even more than in previous years. The sketchbook I used is a larger format one, and I have grown to like that.