Modern Swatches

I've been trying for the past few weeks to figure out how I should start this post, but I've been having trouble, so I'm just going to come out with it:

I'm making a swatch book about the work of contemporary weavers.

This came about primarily though a discovery I made at my university library a few years ago - I found a copy of the Red book by Malin Selander, a Swedish weaver, who, after lecturing and teaching in America in the 1960s, returned home and spent nearly two decades producing four runs of books containing real handwoven swatches. It made so much sense - of course you would have a sample in the book, how else would a fellow craftsperson truly understand your work from flat, 2 dimensional words and photographs? Weaving cloth - and then experiencing the finished textile - is such a material, tactile experience, and the meat of your knowledge comes through direct contact, through your hands. 

So for the last few months I've been reaching out to some of the many weavers whose work I follow online and asking them if they'd like to participate by weaving a number of swatches. As these swatches come in over the next few months, I'll begin photographing and collating them into a book  - a limited number of books containing real swatches will be made for the participants, and then a small run of books will be produced that will contain photographs. 

Textiles tell so much about us – we make them to cover ourselves, keep warm, shroud our dead, soak up our tears, and tell others about who we are and where we are from. With this in mind, I’m curious about the why of modern textiles – what is it that draws us all to cloth making? This project, which I am calling Modern Swatches, will try to provide a glimpse into the way contemporary weavers practice and utilize cloth, and try to articulate this why in a form that needs no clicking or flicking - in something that you can hold in your hand.

In my next post I'll tell you more about the weavers who have been incredibly generous in agreeing to make swatches for this project. The support I've received from them alone is enough to tell me that there is interest in this sort of project, and so I am thrilled to be able to gather their cloth together and share with others their textile practices.

Thanks for reading - please let me know your thoughts if you have any!

2016

2016! Whizzing by already!

I started work on a new project a few months ago and I'm about ready to announce more details - they'll be upcoming in my next post. Until then, this photograph M took in November of me weaving...

Only one title

Morioka Shoten, a bookshop in Tokyo, stocks copies of only one title each week - the owner, Yoshiyuki Morioka, says this about his shop:

“This bookstore that sells only one book could also be described as ‘a bookstore that organises an exhibition derived from a single book’. For instance, when selling a book on flowers, in the store could be exhibited a flower that actually appears in the book. Also, I ask the authors and editors to be at the bookstore for as much time as possible. This is an attempt to make the two-dimensional book into three-dimensional ambience and experience. I believe that the customers, or readers, should feel as though they are entering ‘inside a book’.”

Read more on The Guardian. The image up top is a publication produced in conjunction with the exhibition Weaving Fabrics for Suits, by Franz Schmidt.

Lendbreen Tunic

"Reconstruction of Norway's oldest garment. Rapid melting of glaciers over the past few years has resulted in hundreds of old archaeological items emerging from the ice in Oppland, Norway, On the 4th of August, 2011 archaeologists from Oppland County and Museum of Cultural History, Oslo found what at first glance appears to be a rolled-up piece of fabric, It turns out to be a well-preserved tunic from around AD 300. Norway's oldest garment, dating back 1700 years. This film shows the reconstruction of the tunic, the way it may have been done, 1700 years ago."

hand / work

Craft

 

There's an interesting article on the Selvedge Magazine blog by Polly Leonard about the word craft (and I do love the many meanings, allusions, and inferences words can bring)

"The problem is the word Craft. It is just too general – encompassing everything from Alison Morton’s exquisite hand woven linen tea towels to something produced as a response to Kirstie Allsopp’s have-a-go manifesto, and everything in between.

...

In the West, particularly the UK, this idea is turned on its head – we teach students as young as fourteen to think creatively and develop an idea through to a conclusion, with the intention that they will pick up the necessary skills during their personal creative journey ... However, on a rudimentary level creativity is the easy bit. Almost anyone can make something..."

Give it a read here.

Baby blankets

Underway the past month has been two baby blankets - one a commission for a friend, the other for a friend's wee one, arriving soon...

warp

Where my mind is at work (and often how it feels too)

Summer

Summertime tea towels.

Iceland

A selection from my Instagram feed of my month in Iceland. I kept busy weaving, spinning, and walking and swimming. I wove two small blankets inspired in part by the motifs and shapes you find in lopapeysa, Icelandic yoked sweaters.

More soon!

Iceland

Tonight I head to Iceland for a month's artist residency in Blönduós at Textílsetur Íslands. I'm a bit dismayed to find that I'm heading backwards in terms of weather (+10 here, -2 there...)- but I have no worries that the rest of the trip will be beyond wonderful. 

If you want to follow my trip, it's best to check out my instagram account. 

Below: I just bought woven labels for my tea towels - I'm pretty excited by how they look!

Warping

Cottolin

The February blues have gotten to me this year, and everything has all but stalled.

One sunny afternoon has to be taken advantage of however, so I photographed the things that have been lying about - some thin cotton and linen tea towels meant to be given away as gifts.

News

Lots of snow has been great for finishing some woven gifts that have been hanging around my work table, unhemmed. It's nice to have the pleasure of finishing things and clearing the slate. On my only day off this week I dressed the loom with a sample, the beginnings of an idea. If only I had another snow-day...

Last week I got some great news: I was accepted into an artist residency called Textílsetur Íslands, which is located in a northwestern town called Blönduós in Iceland. I'm very excited to be spending the month of May there!!

I have been thinking a lot lately about weaving and making and the twin questions, or words really, of unique and inspiration. They're very difficult questions to answer - I think my problem is that these days they're used so often to describe all sorts of things that they've both become a bit trite.What is unique anyway?

I've seen the work of Catarina Riccabona over the internet before, but I came across this short interview with her a few months ago and I particularly liked her answer to "What is unique about what you make?"

"I don’t try to make my work very unique. That’s not super important to me. I think what’s typical for my work is that I have a strict eco-concept behind my work. I take care in what materials I use and what I don’t use. I think because of that very strict set of rules I’ve created for myself, a sort of style, or aesthetic evolves as well. I use a lot of undyed linen, and that’s a “color” or a non-color, but that comes through a lot and that’s just a given. There are certain factors in place, and then I have to work around them. 

...

I think my way of working is not something I set out and said, “Oh, I’m going to work like that.” It’s something that evolved as a result of certain thoughts or principles that I wanted to apply for my practice, for my business. Then I think it’s a lot of trying and seeing, okay, this works or this doesn’t work. For two years now I have been weaving a lot. I have just been making, making making and if you do a certain activity a lot, you have the ideas ready at hand... I don’t have a sketchbook for instance. It’s very spontaneous work. It works for me because I’m sort of in this rhythm of working very regularly. "

Or this answer to "What inspires you?"

"I’m interested in practically everything and then not for very long. It’s very eclectic. What I always enjoy looking at is African textiles or textiles from other parts of the world that were handmade and you can see that they were not a standardized product. Or, just going to a museum. It can be art, it can be a painting."

Right on!

(image from Catarina Riccabona's website)

Bonnie Kirkwood

BONNIE KIRKWOOD - WOVEN TEXTILE DESIGNER from BONNIE KIRKWOOD on Vimeo.

I love watching other weavers at work, even though after I finish typing this I'll go to my loom and do the exact same thing, and experience is much better than watching.

This is weaving by Bonnie Kirkwood, a London-based textile designer. I'm really enjoying the samples in the photograph...

Warmth

 

It's cold and snowy here, perfect for staying indoors to weave and work on projects.

We gifted the first of two baby blankets yesterday: warm alpaca, merino and silk, a long-ago yarn purchase now all used up.

I dislike having too much raw material around and have been trying to use things up for the last year or so - all that abundance just stresses me out, I never know what to do with X yards of Y!

Starting the year off with a favourite draft, summer and winter.

The last few weeks of December always fly by. Surprisingly, I never weave Christmas gifts but always seems to knit them - and it's a miracle I'm almost done (though I might have to take a few weeks off of knitting afterwards - my wrists!)

I did weave some simple table runners out of a cotton/hemp blend in the past few weeks. They came out the wash wrinkled right up - even a pressing with a hot iron didn't get all the kinks out. But despite the wrinkles, I like how soft they are and the bronson lace is so simple. I have three - I'm not sure what to do with them yet.

My friend Phillipa and I have been taking a pottery class every fall for the last three years. Wonky pots galore! It's nice to do something different with my hands and get dirty. This bowl was one of my favourites this year.

Cut it off

Lately my advice to others about stuck, blocked, wrong or otherwise encumbered artworks has been: rip it out, start again, cut it off, get rid of it, simplify it.