In the northern hemisphere, winter is bearing down on us. With COVID and colder weather keeping us home, I am digging through my “to be read” shelves and making stacks around my favorite reading spot.* I thought you might like a few possibilities for your own favorite reading spot so I’ve listed some of my current favorites below. These are fiber-related books but I definitely have a good mix of other types in my stack. These books are also all more process-oriented. I have some history-of-fiber or tapestry books queued up to talk about soon.^

Lynda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Ornelas are sisters and tapestry weaving and teaching powerhouses. I’ve had the pleasure of talking to them at various events over the years and I’m always delighted to connect with their knowledge, insight, and fantastic sense of humor. They are not only wonderful human beings, but they have a passion for teaching that I seldom see matched. Before COVID they traveled extensively to teach most of the year. They teach workshops for Diné (Navajo) students frequently as many families lost their weaving knowledge due to racist and repressive practices of the US government two generations ago (and more). There are young Diné weavers working again today thanks in part to Lynda and Barbara’s work. (See the resources guide in the book for how to contact some of them about purchasing their artwork.)

Tommye McClure Scanlin is an artist from North Georgia. But I might also say that she is of North Georgia. She is an artist that is firmly rooted in this place she has lived all of her life and this is the thread I feel running through her artwork. Her new book, The Nature of Things: Essays of a Tapestry Weaver, has just been released from University of North Georgia Press.

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That dedication to exploration is one of the narrative strands throughout The Nature of Things. Because developing her own designs and work is full of this nature of exploration: from her walks in the woods as she contemplates subject matter through various methods of designing including painting, drawing, dyeing, collage, and woven sampling. Seeing this process laid out repeatedly in this book as she takes us through her work in various series and about a variety of subjects, underlines the organic way she works. She pays attention to what interested her in a particular project and she works through that interest in another iteration. Hearing her talk about this and seeing the images she provides of a project as it evolves is a powerful way to communicate her artistic process and draw us into her work.

This is the year of new tapestry books! Today’s example is Micala Sidore’s new book, The Art is the Cloth: How to Look at and Understand Tapestries from Schiffer Publishing.

This book is not quite what I expected it to be. I thought it would be a book with a fair amount of text that gave us some guidelines for how to understand what we’re seeing when we look at tapestries. I think I can be forgiven for that considering the book’s subtitle. Instead, it is a book with hundreds of images of tapestries and almost no text. It turns out this is a fantastic advantage for my education. You see, I’m really good at words. I like to string them together, often use way too many of them, and though I love pictures, if I can read about something, I’ll use my brain to mull the words instead of studying photos.

This book is ALL about the photos.

Jean Pierre Larochette and Yadin Larochette along with Yael Lurie (illustrations) have produced a wonderful new book about tapestry. I read the whole thing this weekend and I highly recommend it. In fact, if you are a practicing tapestry weaver interested in French tapestry techniques, this book is an important one and absolutely should have a place on your shelf.

It contains information from a fairly wide swath of tapestry practice. Jean Pierre Larochette is an Aubusson-trained tapestry weaver with 60 or more years of experience who brings his practice to light quite poetically in this beautiful book. His daughter, Yadin Larochette, is not only a skilled tapestry weaver herself, having learned in her family’s workshop, but is also a textile conservator and provides a wealth of information in the last half of the book to help tapestry weavers create long-lasting textiles.