Oh what a night…

I’m still pinching myself, last night will go down as one of the best.

For many many reasons…

First, there was this opening at a gallery…

Not just any gallery you see, but first let me fill in some background…

I belong to the Textile Study Group of NY, I don’t often get into NYC to meetings, but whenever there are exhibits to enter, I try to be first in line.  You may remember my hard work last summer on three felted pieces for the 9x9x3 exhibit, which sadly I was not accepted to…

Meanwhile, there was another exhibit, that sounded interesting, and my work fit the format of the show, so I sent along my application and promptly put it out of my mind.  You see I rarely get into these types of venues, they don’t support garments, they are about pushing textiles and fibers past the boundaries, where fiber and the art world collide.  My small Woven Memory pieces are what I usually apply with, and that’s what I sent in for this exhibit.  It was the 35 anniversary celebration of the Textile Study Group of NY and they had procured a wonderful venue.  Which I didn’t pay much attention to…

The exhibit was is called Crossing Lines: The Many Faces of Fiber, and when I got an acceptance in the mail, my first thought was, well, if they accepted me, probably not many people applied or it isn’t that important of a show.  Seriously, I still get those insecurities as an artist, I know I make good garments, but the art thing still alludes me.  But I keep trying, and sending in those applications.

So after a really rainy dreary Wednesday, one where we broke the record for annual rainfall here in poor drowning NJ, I seriously debated whether I wanted to trek into NYC by myself, for this event.  My husband is in Saudi, and my daughter away at college, and they were both my top choice to go with me.  And my other choice is my friend/neighbor down the street who loves to accompany me on these jaunts.  She is thoughtful and sensitive and we have great dialogue when we go to events like this.  Sadly she was playing a gig at a local bar last night, and couldn’t accompany me into the city.  More about that later…

And so, armed with my directions and subway maps and my knitting, I headed off into the city, got there in record time, 30 minutes on an express bus from the mall, and hopped the E train, first to the east side to see the exhibit Fiber Futures: Japan’s Textile Pioneers at the Japan Society Gallery.  The show is only there until the 18th of December.  Totally worth the trip.  The textiles were innovative, as only the Japanese can do, and soaring, filling the space with air and light and movement, as only the Japanese can do.

There is a wonderful article from the director of the Japan Society gallery on the show in the current issue (Fall, 2011) of Shuttle, Spindle and Dyepot from the Handweavers Guild of America.

NYC has been installing new subway trains, and I had a lovely comfortable trip from the east side, down to the last stop on the E train, which is for the World Trade Center.

Sidebar…  I was last at this subway stop, the last week of August 2001, when my husband and I loaded the kids on the train for a NYC adventure.  We live a half hour outside the city, just over the river in Jersey, but like any good New Yorker, rarely take advantage of the tourist sites.  We decided for some reason, still unknown to me to this day, to take the kids in and see as much of the city as we could cram in a couple of days.  The weather was gorgeous, and we went on top of the World Trade Center, the view was amazing, we truly felt on top of the world, and we wandered around the area shooting all kinds of photos, and that was probably the last film shots I ever took, oddly enough in black and white, and though I can’t find the images or negatives, I found the contact sheet.

The twin towers were always an architectural anomaly, not very interesting, just very very tall.  But the Winter Garden, the glass enclosure entry way that faced the Hudson River, was one of the most beautiful man made spaces I’ve ever been in.  I shot lots of images of the outside and the inside.  Soaring palm trees reached the top of the glass arch.  I stood in awe for a long time…

Two weeks later of course, was September 11.  The Winter Garden was crushed in the wreckage, I pulled this photo from Wikipedia, taken by photographer Bri Rodriguez shortly after the towers fell.  As horrific as 9/11 was, I was heartbroken that such a spectacular man made space fell victim to the events of that day, and though I can’t really say why, I’ve not been back to the financial district of Manhattan since.  I don’t  like crowds, and it is largely a construction site, and I’ve had no reason to be down in the financial district.

Until last night…

I walked along the construction barricades, from the World Trade Center subway stop, along what I thought was Vesey Street, in the general direction where I thought the World Financial Center was.  Largely I just headed towards the river following all the people along the pedestrian walkways protecting them from all the construction debris.

I got to what I thought was the right building, and asked a guard where the gallery was.  He pointed and then explained about walking down this corridor, around to the left, all the way to the end, up the escalator by the Starbucks, etc.

I was growing weary and needed food and thought about what an out of the way confusing place this gallery is, and when I got to where he had explained, I couldn’t find the gallery anywhere.  Until I turned around the looked up.  OMG!

The gallery is in the second floor rotunda, soaring up into the atrium of this building, I could see the artworks hanging on the walls.  I went up the escalator and saw that the entrance to the gallery was closed off, which makes sense, since I was two hours early.  I grabbed a sandwich from Starbucks, and decided to walk outside.  I really didn’t know exactly where I was, I’m not good with directions, and I was blown away by the sunset over the Hudson and the walkway of trees with beautiful moving lights suspended from them.

And then I turned around.  I froze.  There in all its magnificent glory, was a completely restored Winter Garden.  I did a quick look on Wikipedia, and found out that the first structure restored after 9/11 was the Winter Garden.

…almost all the glass panes were blown out by the dust clouds triggered by the collapse of the Twin Towers, but was rebuilt during the first year of the Financial Center’s recovery. Reconstruction of the Winter Garden required 2,000 panes of glass, 60,000 square feet (5,400 m²) of marble flooring and stairs, and sixteen 40-foot (12 m) Washingtonia robusta palm trees at a cost of $50 million. Reopened on September 17, 2002, the Winter Garden was the first major structure to be completely restored following the attacks.”

And the gallery where my small insignificant art work hung, was attached to this glorious structure.  The palm trees soared, and though it was night, the space was spectacular, as beautiful as I remembered it, I took a couple of photos and  wandered back to the gallery doors to sign in and get my badge.

I floated through most of the evening.  I cannot tell you how beautiful the exhibit was, and how honored and humbled I am to have been included.  The work represented fiber as art and craft and social commentary and historical.  Boundaries were pushed, and  the variety and caliber of work was breathtaking.  And the space…

One of my favorite works was a floor sculpture that stretched along the wall of the rotunda, overlooking the atrium of the Financial Center Courtyard. This burlap and paper sculpture was called Cathartic Birth by Rachel C. Wright.  It represented a lot of what I felt about the evening.

I went slowly and carefully through the exhibit, chatting with so many of the artists I knew, and many I didn’t know.  I savored every minute of it.

The piece I submitted was one I did from a drawing I sketched on a napkin while I spent the endless vigil watching my mother in law, one of my oldest and dearest friends and fiber mentor, die at the age of 99.  I wanted to commit to memory every line of her face, capturing the grace of her lifeless body as she breathed her last breaths.  I carried that napkin around for a long time in my purse, until I decided that to preserve the napkin and therefore my memory of that grace, I should scan it into the computer.  That gave me the idea of printing the image on silk habotai, and stripping it and reweaving it back together, it was a very healing piece for me to weave, and is one of my favorite of all the pieces I have done in this technique.

Sidebar: I am offering an online class in this particular technique, called Weave a Memory, on Weavolution.com December 13th, next Tuesday, from 7-8:30 pm EST.

Anyway, I eventually wandered back to the subway stop, feeling like all was right with the world.  The Winter Garden was whole again, and life would go on.  My work was in probably the most gorgeous show I can ever hope to be a part of, and I came back on the bus with only one regret.  That my husband couldn’t be there with me to see it all.  He is of course in Saudi Arabia.  The show will continue through February 19th, 2012, so I’m hoping to go back with him to see the exhibit, open Tuesday – Sunday from 12:00- 4:00pm.

Back to my neighbor and her gig at the local bar…

I have a wonderful friend and confidant, we have know each other for almost 20 years.  We raised our kids together, and shared a street, our homes, holidays, our children, and our lives.  A media specialist by day, in the Newark public school district, she has embarked on a pretty grueling and impressive second life, that of a musician, playing local gigs, and some not so local, she has teamed up with another really talented musician and together they have formed the band Morning Door.  I’ve watched her blossom in this new role, she is so talented, and I’m so thrilled for her, when I realized her local gig was the same night as my opening I vowed to figure out a way to do both.

So I got off the bus at the mall, headed home in my car, going directly to the Sunset Bar and Grill at the little airport behind my house.  I met my son there, who said he would be happy to accompany me, like a date.  The bar was packed when I got there, and I found a stool behind the pillar, so my friend didn’t see me there until the break.  We chatted and when she returned to the stage to play, she called my son up to join her in a Leonard Cohen number, one of my favorites, Hallelujah, and my son stepped up to the mike and I thought I had died and gone to heaven.  The night couldn’t have gotten any better.  He belted his heart out, in beautiful harmony with my friend, they had rehearsed earlier that day, and again, my only regret was that his father wasn’t there with me.

Sigh, what a night…