Irony…

I finally got a couple of days to myself, much needed and very much appreciated.  Sadly it was short lived.  I found myself driving to Maryland as my mother took ill.  I was grateful for a number of things, one that I wasn’t traveling somewhere when she went into the hospital with a pulmonary embolism, and that she lived to tell about it.  She is slowly recovering, and I was so glad I was in between trips and could go to Maryland and support her, and my sister who lives close enough to get the phone calls when something happens to my mom, and my mom’s husband, whom I adore and know this is just as hard on him as it is on us.  So at the moment, all is moving forward in a hopeful direction and time will be a gift.

I’m home again, though briefly as I travel once more on Friday, this time to Atlanta.  It will be a quick in and out, but I have to prep for four classes, mostly lectures, and the packing for this, and prep of handouts, etc, is leaving me scratching my head.  Everything must be shipped by tomorrow if I hope to have it in time for the weekend. Priority Mail is usually very dependable, but my experience at Sievers showed me that it isn’t perfect!

Meanwhile, the results are in…

Back in September, I entered the Blue Ridge Fiber Show in Asheville, an “international celebration of fiber arts”, in both the Felted/professional category and the Woven/professional category.  I certainly don’t consider myself a professional in the felted category by any stretch of the imagination but I know there are some that would argue since I’m certainly a professional in clothing,so I selected that box when I sent my application. Since my daughter was with me at the time I applied, I encouraged her to enter the show as well.  Unlike other fiber exhibitions, everything entered would be exhibited, and the show is judged for awards only.  And there is an amateur category as well as professional.  Entering exhibits is all part of the fiber journey, and having judged many many shows myself, I know how subjective jurying can be.  You never know.  I actually judged the Blue Ridge Fiber Show show back in 2010.

The show opened the beginning of October when I was still at Sievers, and since no one wrote me on facebook or otherwise, there was of course the assumption that none of my work won anything, though in the 2012 exhibit, I had won an award and didn’t find out until I got a letter from the show committee about half way through the exhibit. I made a few discreet inquiries and found out that not only had I taken first place in Felted Clothing for this piece…

I had taken second place in Woven Clothing for this piece.

And I was just overjoyed that my daughter, bless her, had taken a couple of honorable mentions for her two entries as well.  It was a Lancaster sweep.  Let me say first, that already my daughter is way more of a technical structural weaver than I’ll ever be.  Multiple shafts is not something that interests me nor do I care to explore structure pushing boundaries and looking for the next way to push the loom.  I weave very competent cloth, and make really good clothing, exploring color and texture, and I’m happy doing that for the rest of my life.  I am a sewer first and a weaver second. My daughter however, thinks like an engineer/scientist, and the number of shafts never holds her back, she just figures out how to make it work with what she’s got.  She is her father’s daughter…

And so the letters arrived, with our awards, I opened my daughter’s letter as well, only to repackage it in a new envelope to forward it on to her at college.  I was surprised when a second paper slipped out from behind the letter from the exhibit committee.  At first glance it was from the Handweavers Guild of America (HGA) about them retaining her images for publication, and I did a head scratch and actually read her congratulatory letter.  Apparently, my lovely 21 year old daughter won the coveted HGA award, for the entire exhibition with her turned Krokbragd Inkle Woven Sheep Juggling Balls, set of three.  This is the best I could come up with for images.  (She left me one for my box of Inkle woven examples to use for classes.)

So how do I feel about this?  I think the whole thing is hysterically funny.  I have been working in this field and entering exhibits for probably 35 years and I’ve never won an HGA award.  I have given them many times in my tenure as a juror, but never actually won one myself.  Ironically I’ve won the Complex Weavers award, but never the HGA award.  And here, my enthusiastic science major with a linguistics minor college senior nails the award her first time out.  I am very proud and just a little bit jealous?  I knew she would surpass me at some point in life, as all children do, but at 21?  I’m laughing as I write this, there are  no words…

And of course she won an honorable mention for this piece as well, it is a complex eight shaft summer/winter with pick up showing Star Trek motifs.

The interesting twist to this story is my daughter broke the cardinal rule of the art world, never let work leave your possession unless you photograph it first.  My daughter has no photos of her entries to share.  So it is with interest that I see how she manages to send magazine quality images to the HGA for her work when none exist and the pieces are tied up in the exhibition until the first part of January.  Even Daryl’s daughter must learn things from personal experience…

Stay tuned…