A call to action for tapestry artists.

Foreground piece is Tara by Michael Rohde

***Update added 1/18/13 at 5pm ET. This note is from the ATA's Chair of Exhibitions: 

As you may have learned, through a misunderstanding with the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, they had initially only installed part of the ATB9 exhibition. Michael Rohde has spoken with the Museum Executive Director, who has promised to begin next week the installation of the rest of the tapestries. ATA regrets the situation, but feels that the Museum is doing its best to rectify the omission.

Please, if you have any questions or concerns, do not contact the Musuem, but send your questions to board@americantapestryalliance.org

I am in Fort Wayne, Indiana today to see the American Tapestry Biennial 9 at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. I was excited about this trip. It is no small thing to get here from rural Colorado.

I flew into Detroit, drove the 3 hours to Fort Wayne, located the beautiful downtown museum, and was greeted warmly by the museum staff. I walked into the gallery indicated by the docent and immediately knew there was something wrong. There weren't enough tapestries. I counted 25 and then reviewed the images in my mind of the tapestries I expected to see from the catalog. There was no Barbara Heller or Nancy Jackson or Archie Brenan or Dorothy Clews to be found. I checked around all the corners. I went to the gift shop and looked at the catalog again just to make sure I wasn't making up tapestries that were supposed to be there. Nope, they weren't hanging.

I was able to talk to the curator of the show and executive director of the museum, Charles Shepard, about what happened to the other tapestries, the purpose and structure of the American Tapestry Alliance, and some about what tapestry is all about. There was certainly an error somewhere with communication about the running feet needed for this show. Whose fault it was is not important at this point. What is important is that almost half of the glorious tapestries are rolled up in a room somewhere and I couldn't see them.

In my mind, what matters most is what came next in our conversation. The museum is interested in showing work in many different mediums and it seems that all they really understood about tapestry was that it is a fiber medium. They didn't really understand what tapestry was and through research of past biennials on the ATA website, didn't fully comprehend how large tapestries can be. When they got the work and realized it was a show of "fiber paintings" some of which were huge, they realized they didn't have a big enough space reserved. So after a lot of shuffling, they chose the pieces that are currently hanging.

I was grateful to get to speak with Mr. Shepard and extremely happy that he accepted this show for his gallery. I appreciate his successful efforts at choosing a cohesive group of tapestries from the juried tapestries sent to him and for hanging them so beautifully. I hope that the Fort Wayne Museum of Art hosts another ATA biennial one day soon. Their facility is fantastic and they are open to showing fiber work. They certainly have enough space for an entire biennial, they just didn't have enough of it reserved for this show.

What I am disturbed by is that the museum didn't completely understand what tapestry was. Did you get that? An art museum didn't understand what our medium is. This is very bad news for tapestry artists. We have a long way to go if we want to be considered fine art. And how are we going to have our art seen if it isn't considered fine art? If I spend my life energy creating images that attempt to communicate something to the world outside my head, then I want my images seen. I hope that other tapestry artists also feel this way.

I am discouraged by how few fiber artists seem to want to engage in dialog on this matter. Yes, it is easier to hide in our studios and weave, but tapestry will remain an antiquated medium remembered as something for decorating medieval castles and not a contemporary fine art form if we don't talk about it.

Let's start now. Leave your thoughts in the comments. Go to the ATA forums and participate. Use the power of social media and the internet. Talk to people in your various art communities. Pay attention to international tapestry work. Submit your work to shows and tell people what tapestry is. Go to public places and demonstrate tapestry weaving. Show your work wherever you can. Do it.

Here is the list of the tapestries that are not hanging in Fort Wayne. You can see the others at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art until February 21st.

Deann Rubin, Draw/#2 Pencil
Mary Kester, Broken Lintel
Myla Collier, Urban Forest
Janet Austin, On the Edge of Chaos
Erica Lynn Diazoni, Psyche
Bozena Pychova, Blue Prelludium
Nancy Jackson, Lakota Creation Myth II
Kathy Spoering, August
Joanne Sanburg, Bebe
Suzanne Pretty, Road Construction in Detail
Archie Brennan, Partial Portrait-AB-Once Upon a Summer
Barbara Heller, Sarah Rebecca
Dorothy Clews, Antipodean Landscape
Pat Williams, Red Winged Black Birds: Memorial to Their Falling From the Sky
Anne Brodersen, Departure
Marie-Thumette Brichard, Glaucophanes et Prasinites 2

Though the show is truncated, I still highly recommend seeing it if you can. Most of the pieces hanging are stunning. I mourn the ones that are in the back room. I really very much wanted to spend some time with them too.

(Yes, I did request permission to photograph the show. ATA allows photographing of tapestries in the biennials, but this particular museum does not allow photography. I was given permission to photograph just in this gallery today.)

How Would it Be?

I am sitting in a hotel room in Denver awaiting a flight tomorrow morning. Here is a snapshot of the art that is on the wall. (My apologies for the poor photo and that I don't know whose work this is.)

I was, as I am wont to do, lounging on the bed surrounded by knitting, books, my journal, and my computer (having abandoned the television as hopelessly unimaginative) and I looked over my right shoulder and saw this picture. It made me gasp actually, and that is something I have never said about hotel room art before. It made me think of a song I was listening to today as I drove north through the Arkansas valley watching the Collegiate peaks appear before me. Ellis is one of my favorite folk singers. I love her song How Would it Be which is on her Break the Spell album.

How would it be if everything that you thought you knew
Was turned upside down, opposite from your point of view
How would you feel if the ground was really the sky
And all this time you've been walking when you could've been flying

[...]
What if all the birds were flying just to show us
And all the trees were really holding the sky up
And everything that you do matters some how
What if heaven and hell was right now?

How would it be if you really created your life?
[...]
What if loving what you have is everything?

[...]
How would you change your life?

(You can listen to the whole song song at her digital store on her website HERE. It is the first song on Break the Spell... or just buy the album. Or if you like the visual, here is a YouTube video of her singing it at the 2007 Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in Lyons, CO. Incidently, I was there listening.)

The Sangres and Collegiates were gorgeous today with the sun peaking through the clouds and shining off the snow. The wind was fierce driving through South Park (yes, the place the cartoon was written about) and there were ribbons of snow racing across the road. They were beautiful (and admittedly they turned me into a white-knuckle, multiple cars behind me, pretending to be 85 years old, driver... but just for a little bit. I got my mojo back as soon as I could see again). When I started climbing Kenosha pass I glanced back at the valley below me and it was all brilliantly white and yet soft and fuzzy from the snow blurring the boundaries.

Sometimes blurry boundaries and turning things upside down is a very good thing. It sure feels like heck when you're hanging upside down by your toenails though!

(Yes, it did occur to me that the people who hung the photo put it up upside down. This is a new hotel. But I like it this way. New perspectives are important.)

Mighty cold

Last night Alamosa, CO had the distinction of being the coldest place in the nation. This isn't a huge surprise. It happens every year. Still, the fact of the cold is shocking. When we beat out Fairbanks, Alaska and Bismarck, North Dakota, I know it is cold. Minus 33 degrees to be exact. I am still completely amazed my car started at 7:30 this morning. It took a few tries. She was really cranky when I let the clutch out but on the third try she kept running. After 20 minutes of letting her warm up, there was ice on the inside of the windows and no melting at all of the 1/4 inch of ice on the outside of the windshield. Though I parked in the sunshine at work, when I went out to eat my lunch at noon, it was frozen in my lunch bag.

The cold makes me hold myself tight to my bones.
It doesn't let me fly free. It makes me clench against the pressure of it.
This is hunching in your coat cold.
Dog won't walk on the snow because it hurts her feet cold.
I don't care if my hair gets messed up, I'm wearing a hat cold.

Our house is an old farmhouse outside of Alamosa a few miles. It still has single pane windows (which you might remember I complained about being painted shut in the summer...) and no insulation in the floor. My laundry room which is also the storage room, coat room, mud room, and entryway to the house as the real front door is broken, was below freezing yesterday evening. The door hinges scream when you open the door because they are iced together. Needless to say the washer is frozen.


The cold is insidious, insistent, and a little frightening.
The neighbor's sheep, in all their pounds of wooly glory, are huddled together en masse against it.
And that is saying something.

2012 in the rearview...

2012 was not a bad year. It had some phenomenal highlights as well as some really deep struggles (okay, I haven't written about the really deep struggles, just the funnier ones). Here are some of both. The links are to earlier blog posts about these events.

I got married. This was the BIG one. Even when committed to a small ceremony, getting married consumes a great deal of a year. Couple that with the need to drive 9000 miles to have the ceremony in a state where our union is celebrated (and legal), and you have a wonderful summer of wedding. Okay, we didn't have to drive and we didn't have to go all the way to Prince Edward Island or the northern tip of Nova Scotia, but damn it was fun to do it. Iowa would have been closer, but how romantic is getting married in Iowa?
 The Wedding blog post.

My niece was born. This was another biggie. I've never had a niece before. In 2012 I got one niece from my sister and married into another one (see THIS post about Megan)! This kid is already following in her auntie's footsteps--she is lying in a tent holding onto a Macintosh computer.
The day I became an auntie post.
My little knitter post.

I did not weave... well not very much. I did finish a couple pieces including a great commission for a couple in Pheonix.
Emergence VI post.
Cherry Lake post.

Emergence VI

I did teach many workshops and greatly enjoyed my students.
Symbols of the Southwest at EVFAC post.
Michigan Leagues of Handweavers Conference post.
The City of Love post.

Teaching at the Michigan League of Handweaver's Conference in Holland, MI. These ladies were amazing.

I spent a lot of time in my dye shed dyeing yarn for myself and my students.
Dyeing red yarn post.
The Dye Shed post.

I took a workshop with Helena Hernmarck. She is an amazing woman who has woven hundreds of monumental tapestries. She was a huge inspiration.
Helena Hernmarck "In Our Nature" post.

I revisited the studio of James Koehler and helped dismantle a loom that I almost bought shortly after he died. The Cranbrook has moved on to a new studio where it will be very loved. There were a LOT of parts in that loom. There were some posts about selling James' looms and the struggle with losing a teacher.
The Shannock loom post. This one you may still be able to get your hands on.
The Cranbrook loom post. (This one sold.)
James and the Cranes post.

 There was the never-ending skunk saga.
A Skunk in the Night post.
Why Skunks are not smarter than I am post.
The Cask of Amontillado post.
And the FINAL skunk post.

We came home from our trip to Mississippi on New Year's Eve to enter a house smelling of skunk. There were no breaches in the foundation, but we did turn off the skunk fan when we left, filling the opening with insulation against the minus 20 degree weather. Turns out the fan is needed to battle the stench even when everything is frozen solid. That is some serious stink.

I took some business courses and worked hard on advancing my tapestry studio business. I had a fantastic photographer do some new portraits of me for the business. Cornelia Theimer Gardella did both my wedding photos and these portraits. She has a great eye. She is also a great tapestry weaver. You know that head shot you're still using from 20 years ago? Consider a new one.
Artist Headshots post.

I started a mailing list and published my first YouTube videos.
Go to this link to subscribe to my newsletter.
Here are the two posts with the YouTube videos:
James Koehler Interlock Join video is in this post.
A little post about making tapestry butterflies is in this post.

 
There were, of course, many many visits to yarn stores. I can't resist them. I think you call someone like me a "fiber freak."
Taos Wool Festival post.
String Theory and yarn bombing post.
Salida Fiber Festival post.
Vermont Yarn stores post.
Double Yarn Stores day post.
The Why I Knit post.  (Answer: To keep from killing people.)

I turned 40. I'm not sure what else to say about that.
The birthday post.
I think you'll agree (if you are a knitter) that this was an awesome birthday present!

 
There was the disappointment of being rejected for ATB9.
The rejection post.

Emergence V: The Center Place; 44 x 44 inches, hand-dyed wool tapestry.

I found out about the closing of Weaving Southwest and the death of Rachel Brown in the same day. The closing of Weaving Southwest came with not only losing my gallery, but a struggle to get paid for my work.
The closing post.

 2012 was a good year. It was full of love, family, adventures, and yarn. But I do hope that 2013 is just a little better... at least in some ways. Best wishes to all of you.

Happy New Year from the snowy and cold southwestern United States!

2013 or What Tapestry Still Has to Teach Me

New Years Day. After an exhausting few days of marrying Emily and my storage lockers across 1200 miles of the United States, I slept 15 hours last night. When I woke up I didn't know what time it was as Emily consistently unplugs all the appliances when we leave the house for more than a few days. My clock said 3:10. I came downstairs to find that it was closer to 11am. With great hope I tried to find the Rose Parade on TV, but we only get 4 PBS stations, 3 of them in Spanish and though I'd have been happy enough watching the Rose Parade in Spanish, they were more interested in showing soap operas on New Years morning. I did manage to find it streaming live on the internet and caught Dr. Goodall (she is such a bad-ass!) going by before the parade was over. I missed all the bands and everything. (I always hope that one of these days they will show the half time show at a football game and I will see some marching band... but they never do. You'd think I'd give up on this, but I continue to hope in vain that I will see "the band".)

In the spirit of looking forward and hoping for positive changes, I spent today doing what I hope to do much more of in the coming year. Weaving. I happily warped the Mirrix and started a new piece. Yes, I miss my big loom terribly. I patted her beater yesterday in the storage locker and promised to free her sometime this year. In the meantime, the ever-versatile Mirrix will have to do. There is more travel and relocation in our future and no matter how I try, I can't fit the Harrisville rug loom in the back of my VW.

Being an artist and making a living have been the biggest struggle this year. I have learned a great deal about how to be an artist and make a living at it, but have not yet accomplished that while supporting myself or my family. I have learned a lot about balance, and if my not-infrequent tears of frustration are any indication, have a lot more to learn.

I think that tapestry weaving still has a lot to teach me. And when I am not weaving much (like in 2012), I forget the lessons of the slow accumulation of fabric. I forget that if you put a little bit together every day, eventually you have a whole tapestry and something new is born. I forget that the process of each of those weft passes is building something important even if I just can't see it minute to minute. And I think that steady activity of weaving builds something in me too.

So for 2013, I am returning to the loom. I have many other goals, but this is the most important one. Whatever loom I am able to use, I will weave on it. I will make things which may or may not become public pieces, but I will weave nonetheless.

2013 has begun.

The forecast for Alamosa tonight is minus 27 degrees.
27 degrees below zero.
Twenty-Seven.
Degrees (F).
Below.
Zero.

Makes your snot freeze when you breathe.