June 2009 – Daryl's Blog

NYC!

I love living near New York City. I will admit, that for many years, I’m embarassed to say how many, I avoided going into the city, working myself into a state, finding all kinds of reasons why I was too busy, but in the last couple of years, I have discovered two very important things.

NYC is an amazing place and like anything in life, you just have to practice.

It is critical that I get out of my studio and see what’s happening in the world if I want to be a player in art or fashion.

So, my daughter and I boarded the bus this morning from the transit center which is 5 minutes from my house, and within 40 minutes, we were in Port Authority Bus Terminal in mid-town Manhattan. $12. round trip, you can’t beat it. The trip is usually faster but there was a particularly large amount of traffic this morning, summer tourism I’m thinking…

First stop, Columbus Circle via the C train, uptown, express. The new digs for the Museum of Art and Design (MAD Museum) are just gorgeous. They have space, their exhibits are classy and interesting, and they have a fantastic permanent collection of fine craft. The exhibit we wanted to catch is leaving July 5, so we made that a priority. The exhibit was titled Elegant Armor: The Art of Jewelry, featuring innovative pieces from the permanent collection, dating from 1940’s to the present. Fortunately the website has a great selection of images from the show. And I was thrilled to see a couple of pieces from craftsmen I use to exhibit with when I did craft fairs in the 1980’s, like Tom Mann, and Bob and Loes Pfuelb and Arline Fisch, yep, that Arline Fisch who wrote the book Textile Techniques in Metal. We really loved this exhibit, and there were drawers full of additional pieces we didn’t have time to open. I would have loved to have gone back, spent the day with a sketch book, so I’ll do the next best thing, I already have my order ready to go on Amazon for the catalog. The pictures are gorgeous.

We left Columbus Circle, continuing uptown on the C train local, and got out in front of the Museum of Natural History at 82nd Street. My intent was to find the entrance to Central Park, and walk across the park to the MET, but there was a huge sign hanging outside the American Museum of Natural History that said Extreme Mammals and Bri turned to me and said, “Oh Mommy, I really want to see this…” So in we went. This is a real kids museum, they have all the great dinosaur skeletons, and the place was packed. The exhibit cost extra, in addition to the entrance price, but it was a really terrific exhibit, Bri was so thrilled, she suprised me at how much she knew about living and extinct mammals and marsupials, and said, “You know, I’m thinking I really need to go into a career that involves animals. I work in a kennel, I am fascinated by all aspects of animals, and I think I need to go to school and become a zoo vet.” Bri is at that age (16) where she will need to come up with some kind of direction for college, within the next year, which is so ridiculous, but her skills are all over the place, and she is having so much trouble focusing on any one thing. As it should be. Last year it was Biomedical Engineering, and two years ago, it was Jet Propulsion Engines. Meanwhile, she sat in my studio the other night making Temari balls…

So, we left the Natural History Museum, and walked across Central Park, the weather was perfect for a summer day, not too hot, and we came out the other side of the park, and into the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My most favorite place in the world. I could easily live in that museum. Since it was well after lunch, we grabbed lunch in the basement cafeteria, one of my favorite places to eat in NYC, the food is great, and reasonable for NY, and then we went up to the second floor to see the Exhibit, The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion. “This exhibit focuses on iconic models of the 20th century and their roles in projecting, and sometimes inspiring, the fashion of their respective eras.” The exhibit runs through August 9, so there is still time if you are planning a trip to NYC, and I will say it was a blast back in time, following fashion and those famous faces we all remember, through the 50’s, 60’s, (remember Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton), 70’s and the supermodels of today. This photograph by Alex Hills is from the MET website, there are all kinds of images of the exhibit including ones “behind the scenes”. It is so frustrating not to be able to take photos in any of these exhibits, but fortunately they are all just a click away!

Weather permitting, I always take a quick ride up to the roof of the MET whenever I’m visiting, there is always some wonderful installation, and the views of Central Park and Manhattan are the best around. Roxy Paine, an American artist, created a 130 foot long stainless steel sculpture for the museum’s roof, called Maelstrom. It is pretty amazing. Here are a couple of shots, the first is one with my daughter Bri.

We left the MET and headed downtown on the M4 bus, which picks you up right in front of the MET. It heads all the way down 5th Avenue, past all the grand windows of the best stores in the world, to Penn Station at 34th Street. We got out there, and walked down to the Museum at FIT, I can’t say enough about this museum, which is totally free, they have the best fashion exhibits anywhere, and an unbelievable textile collection. The latest exhibit, in their spacious basement gallery, is Isabel Toledo, Fashion from the Inside Out. This exhibit runs until September 26. Opening next week, in addition to this show, is one called Fashion and Politics. I’ll just have to go back later in the summer to see that one as well. But I wanted to see the Isabel Toledo exhibit, and I will say, I am on sensory overload. OMG! I felt like I did when I saw the Ralph Rucci exhibit there a couple of years ago. Who knew anything about this designer? Remember Michelle Obama’s lemon grass dress and coat combination she wore at the inauguration? It was designed by Isabel Toledo. Mostly Isabel makes her garments from basic shapes that fall over the body in the most amazing ways. There are a few of her garments pictured in the press release for the show. The catalog for that show is already on pre-order through Amazon in my little shopping cart… What I loved about this show, besides how close you could get to the garments and how well it was lit, was the little illustrations below many of the garments that showed the actual layout when the garment sections were flattened. Origami is just the beginning. Like this apron dress from her 1997 collection in silk chiffon.

We left the museum at FIT, and headed for the long walk uptown to the Port Authority. The skies were getting very dark, and the wind was picking up, blowing grit in our eyes, and it was definitely looking like a major summer thunderstorm was brewing. We walked as fast as we could through the rush hour crowd, and made it to the door of the Port Authority just seconds before the skies opened up. We boarded the bus the second we got to the platform, no waiting, and off we headed back to NJ. When the bus exited the building, we were hit with torrential rains, all the way to NJ. When we arrived back at the transit center to pick up the car, the rains stopped, miraculously!

Remember my wool cooking in the crock pot yesterday? Before I left for the city this morning, I carefully rinsed it, a beautiful shade of burgundy, and laid it out in the sun to dry on the back balcony. Silly me. I forgot to check if there were any thunderstorms predicted… So when I got home, there was my completely drenched wool, so I went to plan B, and I used the rack in my dryer to dry the wool out. I have more wool cooking, this time a lovely navy blue.

Tomorrow, a trip to the Allentown Art Museum…

The morning after…

It was a productive Monday, I did my laundry from the week away, and started to “find” my house. All of the members of my family are quite comfortable in their clutter, sadly I’m completely opposite, I find I can’t concentrate when there is clutter everywhere, and I can usually keep the clutter monster at bay while I’m home on a daily basis, but when I leave for a trip, the clutter monster comes out from hiding and well, lets just say I always expect to spend a couple days “finding” my house, once I return.

I got all the banking done, made a deposit, did my bookkeeping, and got all the bills in order to be paid. I dusted the upstairs, and tidied the kitchen. I stayed busy, answering emails, updating my website, and I proofed my article for Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot on the Challenge project from 2008. Look for that in the next issue.

Look what’s cooking on the floor in the corner of my studio. I grabbed a handful of fleece from the garage, and stuffed it into the crock pot this morning, threw in some water and sprinkled in some Cushing dye, a burgandy color, it was the first color I pulled out when I reached into the box. I poured in some white vinegar, and turned the crock pot on to ‘low’. It cooked all day, and I turned the pot off this evening. I’ll look at it tomorrow morning, and rinse the wool before I head into NYC to catch some fiber shows with my daughter.

I had a number of conference attendees tell me how much my gallery talk at the Small Expressions Exhibit meant to them, and others tell me they were so disappointed to have missed it. Since I had actually written up the talk and put it onto PowerPoint and emailed it ahead in case I didn’t arrive in time last Wednesday night to actually give the talk in person, I decided to just convert the whole file to a PDF, and post it in the “extras” section of my website. The gallery talk was titled “Parallel Threads that Parallel Life“. Anyway, enjoy the presentation, mostly I’m known for my garments, but there is an artist in there, who has something to say, and I really appreciated all those who listened to my talk and said such kind and supportive things to me afterwards.

I’m off to NYC tomorrow, and I’ll report back tomorrow night with some more fiber overload!

Iowa Day Three

I had a free morning, my next class wasn’t until after lunch, so I took advantage of a rare opportunity to actually sit in on a class, and I am embarrassed to say, I chose this class because I liked the title and there were no materials we had to bring (which is really important when you are already at max limit with checked bags). I actually didn’t know what the class was about. Sherry Konya, a delightful teacher, who I hadn’t crossed paths with before, taught a morning seminar called Bodacious Boas. For a nominal materials fee, Sherry handed us everything we needed to make a needle felted boa, from dyed locks of wool. We got the wool, the needles, and the foam base.

I sat next to my buddy Amy Norris from St. Louis, I met her when I taught there last year, and we instantly hit it off, we chattered for three hours while we stabbed a foam block, making a Bodacious Boa from dyed wool. It was sooooo much fun. And Amy passed along tips for dyeing in a crock pot, which I am “dying” to try, especially now that I have acquired about 30 pounds of new fleece. I have a feeling my crock pot from the kitchen will now move and live in my studio…

During lunch, I skipped over to the vendor hall, to see if I had won any of the door prizes. Sure enough, I won a small baggie of Camel Hair, suitable for spinning, which was very exciting, but it ended up being a costly door prize in that I accidentally passed by a booth with a bin of 50% off all South West Trading Company Yarns… Well what was I to do? I bought one of everything in the bin…

While I was in the vendor hall, I took advantage of the reduced crowds and got a look at the guild exhibits. They were all wonderful, but there was one guild, the Sand County Shuttle Guild, from Central Wisconsin, whose display was amazing. Everything in the booth was woven from recycled plastic bags. And everything was really well done. I was totally impressed.

My final class (that I taught) was a terrific one for conferences, and great for the end of the day. Everyone is really tired at this point, and on total overload, and I had 24 very eager but exhausted women, all gathered around the table and I dumped little quills of yarn all over the table. We just had a blast, I gave them little challenges, and they wound warps based on my parameters. We got to play with Color-aid papers, and magazine photos, and they all came up with palettes based on those photos, and then tried to interpret them with yarn and a warp. And of course I gave my presentation on Color and Inspiration, which is available in a color monograph. The images in this presentation are based on all the color forecasts I wrote for Handwoven Magazine. We made such a mess, there was yarn everywhere, but there were lots of smiles, and more than one person at the end told me that I had freed her to run amok! Well done…

My wonderful class assistant had me packed up in no time, and I headed out to dinner, one last chat with my buddies Robyn Spady and Ruby Leslie and then off to set up for the teacher sales event. I had my monographs available, and I was really happy with the enthusiastic sales, I sold out of the one on Fitting, and was able to bring home some additional income.

Late Saturday night I caught a ride to an airport hotel in Des Moines, since I had a very early flight to Houston this morning. As I was boarding the plane on the Houston/Newark leg, the gate agent handed me a new boarding pass, yippee, first class. So I sat in a lounge chair, drinking a margarita, all the way to Newark. Life just doesn’t get any better than this…

Iowa Day Two…

So I finally got to teach today in my miracle classroom. The class was wonderful, enthusiastic, and a joy to work with. I had sixteen women of all body types make a jacket pattern from my basic jacket design, that would fit them. It was a long day, but they were all great sports, and I can’t wait to see the jackets they make from them. There was a small glitch when I couldn’t figure out how to get the projector to work, odd since it worked the day before, and reluctantly I called for tech support, and while I was waiting for them to arrive, I figured out I was pushing the wrong button to power it up. Duh…

A hurried late afternoon, I had to pack up, get over across campus to eat a quick dinner, race over to the Theatre for the fashion show rehearsal, and then the actual fashion show. I love fashion shows at conferences. And I love it when the weavers/makers wear their own work. So here are a few highlights while we were all milling around the dance studio waiting for line-up.

Here I am once again, modeling my Frosted Florals dress, which made it back from Kansas City and the Surface Design Fashion Show on time to bring it to Iowa. This dress has seen a lot of mileage so far. Literally.

I just loved this Victorian Walking Skirt by Christy Berry from Kansas City, MO. It has a gray warp and yellow weft, from 20/2 perle cotton, plain weave. The design is original.

This is an Anita Luvera Mayer of Anacortes, WA, garment titled “Woman Warrior”. It is a vest of Melton cloth with rows of beaded and hand sewn mosaic pieces. It was inspired by a bone warrior vest from Sumatra. Anita was one of the instructors here at the conference.

Speaking of warriors, this piece was amazingly original, from Melinda Raber McCain, of Indianapolis, IN. The piece is titled Warrior Princess, it is handwoven armor, in a Shadow Weave, 5/2 cotton, black and gray. It is an original design. And it was modeled by one of the Grinnell College tech support students.

And I loved the colors and textures in this vest by instructor Collyer Ekholm, from Swisher, IA. This is called Shaman’s Vest, and is woven from cotton and silk, in a variety of weave structures for the panels. Japanese braids done on the Marudai, Takadai, and Ayatakedai are all couched onto the fabric. Collyer teaches kumihimo on the Marudai and Takadai.

After the fashion show there was a lovely reception in the rotunda outside of the Faulconer gallery. I had four garments in the fashion show, and my finale piece was one called Aurora Borealis, which I made draping a couple yards of an old plain weave fabric I had floating around, on my dressform, making heavy use of the bias, and holding it all together with one seam. We were asked to mill around the reception in the garment we wore for the fashion show, so I wore Aurora Borealis, and was thrilled to grab a shot with John Mullarky. John was also an instructor here, he is a fabulous tablet weaver, and author of a terrific book of tablet woven patterns, known for his amazing braids, and I just had to get a shot of him in his jacket, which he made in a workshop with me, using the same pattern I fit on sixteen women today. I love the versatility of this jacket! And he trimmed the whole thing with his own tablet woven braids. The jacket is really beautiful.

This next shot needs some explaining. Wednesday night when I gave my gallery talk at the Small Expressions Exhibit, I was actually standing in an adjacent gallery when I gave my talk, where they had an exhibit of images of butterflies and other natural wonders. I happened to be standing to the right of the screen and was unaware of what was on the wall behind me. Later, one of the audience members came up and told me that I had wings behind me the whole time I talked. She pointed to the large butterfly print behind me on the wall, and was able to grab a photo of me in front of the butterfly print after the reception tonight. I thought it was pretty funny. Course I wasn’t wearing this dress, but never-the-less, the wings added to the whole aura of the evening.

Stay tuned…

OMG!

I just got an alert, my dress, Frosted Florals is on the front page of the Threads Magazine website! Thanks Tien!

The conference is going well, course I haven’t done anything all day but hang out, chat, and set up my class room. It is beastly hot here. I’d say 110 degrees in the shade. And the poor vendors, are in an airless gym with no AC, and people are dropping like flies. Still, it is a feast for the eyes, enjoy the photos, looms, yarn, shuttles, books, too much to look at!

The cute looms are from Glimakra, I spent a lot of time in their booth, though I’m not in the market for a new loom, I can’t help but be impressed by their ability to keep up with new trends in looms, always thinking and redesigning, and they are always a joy to chat with.

I spent some time with Joanne Hall getting a real demo of their band loom. I like this loom, and I think I’ll put it on my wish list, it is for making inkle bands, and has a warp and cloth beam so very long lengths of bands can be done without having to rewarp the inkle loom every couple of yards. Hmmmm…….

I was able to get back to the Faulconer gallery this afternoon to take a better look at the Small Expressions Exhibit, and grab a couple of gallery shots. This is a beautiful space, and I enjoyed the intimacy they were able to achieve with all of these very small works, if you can believe, my tiny post card size works are in the first photo all the way in the corner furthest away from the camera. Sort of the last pieces on the wall on the left. You can’t even see there are two pieces side by side.

So I don’t cause you any further eyestrain…

I got my classroom set up, and I have to say this, I have died and gone to faculty heaven. I want to be buried in this classroom. It is high tech, just popped my little pen drive into the system (and after much fiddling, etc.) my presentation came up on the huge wall, I played with the little wall switch for awhile, making the window shades go up and down electronically, the table space is huge, and there is a nice wall in the back to hang my garments for display.

And as I walked across campus, I grabbed some shots of the gorgeous colors in the gardens, I think these would make beautiful palettes for fabric, especially the ones with the greys.

The keynote address is tonight, it is always a joy to listen to Madelyn van der Hoogt, editor of Handwoven Magazine from Interweave press.

I have to say, I adore mid-western weavers. They are so great to work with, so helpful, and so kind. Lots of smiles, and lots of hugs, though we are all doing virtual hugs because of the heat… And there isn’t a lot of handwoven stuff being worn today, I can assure you.

Stay tuned…