Rebecca Mezoff Blog — Rebecca Mezoff

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Tapestry diary: Agnes Martin

Tapestry diary: Agnes Martin

While teaching in Taos, NM in January, I visited the Harwood Museum. I saw many marvelous things there, one of them being the Agnes Martin room. On my Tacoma trip this month, I wove a tapestry diary piece in tribute to Agnes Martin (1912-2004). . . .

I wanted to play with these feelings in a tapestry diary piece both to think more about how her paintings were constructed physically but also as a way to remember my reaction to the work. The tiny 2 x 2 inch tapestry is nothing like an Agnes Martin painting, but the experience of making it absolutely cemented something about the work in my mind and made me excited to learn more about her creative experience.

The making of this little tapestry diary piece was nothing special and indeed, did not take long to weave. But the experience and process of making it helped me revisit the art in my mind and think again about how and why it was made.

Yarn adventures in Tacoma: teaching, Clara Parkes, and all the other bright stars here...

Yarn adventures in Tacoma: teaching, Clara Parkes, and all the other bright stars here...

I was thrilled to be able to teach at the first annual Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat in Tacoma last week. I had a great time and thought you, dear reader, might like to see what happened at this conference.

I’ll start with the workshops I taught. The students were so much fun. I am not sure if this is a Pacific Northwest thing or if this particular show (which was Madrona until this year) just brings in people who are easy-going and eager to learn, but my classes were full of such bright souls. I taught Is Tapestry for Me? which was a 2-day beginning tapestry class. And I taught a one-day color class where we played with optical mixing.

A France adventure: the tapestries of Dom Robert

A France adventure: the tapestries of Dom Robert

On my tapestry tour with Cresside Collette in France last May, we visited the Museé Dom Robert in Soréze. I posted a video with some thoughts about this visit to Albi, Soréze, and the museum in THIS post from June of 2019. I’d like to show you more of the photos that I took of Dom Robert’s tapestries.

Guy de Chaunac Lanzac, otherwise known as Dom Robert, lived from 1907 to 1997. In 1930 he entered a Benedictine abbey as Brother Robert and became a priest in 1937 and was ordained as Dom Robert.

In 1941 he met Jean Lurcat who inspired Dom Robert to become a tapestry cartoon designer. His tapestries were woven primarily by Tabard and Suzanne Goubely in Aubusson. Though tapestry weavers in the USA might be disappointed to realize that these large-scale tapestries were not woven by the same person who designed them, this is common practice elsewhere in the world even today. Dom Robert was a tapestry cartoon designer, not necessarily a weaver. He clearly understood weaving techniques and his cartoons seem very approachable to me as a tapestry weaver.

His work includes 150 cartoons, mostly woven in Aubusson. Numerous copies of his cartoons were often made and most are in private collections.

A tapestry January in photos

A tapestry January in photos

January has come and gone. It was a busy month for me. Here is a tour in photos.

January 1: New Year’s Day. #weaveeveryday

I have no illusions that I as a business-owning, traveling teacher, tapestry weaver will be able to weave every single day of this year. But my intention is to weave as often as I can because even a few minutes of weaving means that my hands and eyes return to the process and little by little, progress is made.