I started Change the Shed just over a year ago. Yesterday was the 55th episode. I started broadcasting from my studio when the COVID-19 lockdown first happened in Colorado thinking it would only last a few months. I know I didn’t think it would last very long because when I started, I did it every day. That wasn’t sustainable as we moved into months and now a year of dealing with this global pandemic. I am now doing it about twice a month on Wednesdays.
We’re all weary of this pandemic. But there is hope. There are vaccines that are working and more and more people are getting them. Frankly, hope helps.
Rebecca Mezoff, weaving a tapestry diary piece about regeneration after the Colorado wildfires of 2020 during Change the Shed. https://rebeccamezoff.com/change-the-shed
I have enjoyed the challenge of weaving on camera. Actually, I should say that I have enjoyed the challenge of making mistakes on camera. The teacher in me feels this is valuable. The artist cringes every time it happens. But the truth is that “mistakes” happen all the time. Creating hand-woven tapestry means that we’re building an image very slowly and how that happens best on a the grid of warp and weft isn’t always obvious until you’ve woven a bit. So sometimes those mistakes are just a matter of seeing.
Sometimes they’re outright mistakes as in the episode below where I used a crapaud to shift the shed in an area and then of course realized I didn’t need to do that. And that is something I should have known since I built all those shapes in a way that the sheds would always work (until I adding another element or something!). So viewers get to see how I would have dealt with a shedding issue in that situation and then how I fixed the fix once I realized I didn’t need it. I suspect it helps to see both the mistake and the fix, but perhaps it helps more to realize that this is a process of error correction sometimes.
I started Change the Shed thinking that I would just turn on a camera in my studio and do some weaving. It was a “weaving together” sort of thing to encourage us all to engage in some creative activity every day. I very quickly realized that you can’t take the teacher out of me and if I was going to interact with people who were joining me, I was going to end up answering a lot of questions. It is also true that I have a lot of fun hearing what people’s questions are both about what I’m doing and about tapestry weaving in general. So there is a lot of teaching in those videos. I hope it helps you find your own way in your weaving practice.
Below is yesterday’s Change the Shed episode.*
I have just updated the index on my website. Click the button below to see a brief description of what I talked about in each episode. There are also links to things I mentioned each day near the end of the page. I know the list is long, but they are chronological and starting in late April 2020, they are mentioned with the episode in which I talked about that item, event, or idea. There is also a link to my YouTube channel where the live feeds happen. (Please subscribe and click the thumbs up “like” while you’re there.)
I started Change the Shed with the word “Change” ringing in my ears. The idea is that doing something helps make change. There is so much to explore in the world and much of it starts right at our fingertips on the internet. We can make change in our lives and in the lives of those around us just through our creativity.
So let’s start with weaving!**
Change the Shed, one example of a set-up for this live broadcast on YouTube from my tapestry studio. www.rebeccamezoff.com/change-the-shed. The videos look a LOT less cluttered than this behind-the-scenes shot!
If you want to join me on Change the Shed, the next one is April 14, 2021 at 10:30am Mountain time (same as Denver, CO. Set yourself up HERE.) It is broadcast live on YouTube and all the videos live there along with the live chat afterwards. I have worked on all kinds of looms including Mirrix table looms, the Mirrix Saffron, the Schacht Arras tapestry loom, copper pipe looms of various sizes, other frame looms, and peg or slot looms. In future I will be showing my Harrisville rug loom and a large-scale tapestry.
*Should you be interested, there are 54 more linked on my website.
**My first instinct is to weave, but yours might well be something else. Go do it!