Daryl's Blog – Page 146 – The World from a Weaver's point of view!

Perseverance…

I really should be doing other things, but I have this tote bag thing stuck in my head, and so I trotted upstairs to shop in my attic, for some scraps…

Sidebar: I did craft fairs for about 10 years, selling my handwoven clothing. I would weave 30 yards of cloth at a time, and then cut it into garments, and sell the garments to whoever wanted to buy them. When you cut into yardage, you get two things, 1) better fitting garments, and 2) a lot of scrap… I was smart, in retrospect, I couldn’t bear to throw out all that scrap, so I carefully packed all of it into 18 large banker’s boxes, with small swatches of what was in each drawer taped to the front, and put it all in the attic. Over the years, I’ve made some amazing garments from that scrap, and since there were a lot of scraps of similar fabrics, or the same fabric in many cases, I pieced the scraps back together creating a garment that just looked a lot more interesting than the original fabric did when it came off the loom.

Yes, that is my lovely daughter when her hair was it’s natural color! She was only 12 in those photos!

Anyway, I went up to my attic stash, which is different from the main studio stash. I looked through the boxes quickly, and pulled out this wad of scraps, in the dark maroon, rust, blue families. I hauled it all downstairs, raveling and depositing threads all across my carpets.

I searched through my studio stash of fabrics, and found some things that I thought coordinated well with one of the scrap colors, a wine and teal combo, one of the fabrics, actually came from the stash of sari’s I got from my husband when he flew back from Mumbai, India last January. There was also a small scrap of a quilt fabric that someone handed me at an ASG meeting a couple months back.

I spent a few hours last night, redesigning an easier tote bag, other than the handles, the body is actually one piece. The basic construction is pretty brainless, and I think that this could be easily accomplished in a one day workshop. I love the size and shape of this tote, and using the FlexiFirm thick stiff interfacing makes it hold its shape well.

Now I can return to writing proposals for the American Sewing Guild conference…

Overload…

Well best laid plans…

I’m listening to The Devil Wears Prada on my new iTouch. I’ve seen the movie of course, but I never got around to reading the actual book. I was looking for something light, to download from my library service for audio books. They don’t have a lot of the type of literature I like, but this caught my eye. If you haven’t seen the movie, rent it, a great chick flick. New college journalism graduate lands her first job as the assistant to a wickedly sadistic boss, Miranda, the editor in chief of Runway magazine played by Meryl Streep, sort of an obvious take off on Vogue. There is a scene, repeated quite often in the movie and the book, where the poor overworked assistant, Andrea, is sitting at her desk, and “Miranda” sweeps into the reception area, dumping her sumptuous full length fur coat on Andrea’s desk, completely covering her and sashays off into her private office, leaving Andrea to deal with the coat.

This is a great visual for how my week has been going. I feel like the planets are having a field day dumping huge fur coats across my desk, so many I’m drowning in them. There are some wonderful, sumptuous opportunities being thrown at me from all directions, and I am accomplishing some really fun things in the studio, but I feel like I’m drowning in too much of a good thing. Can you imagine? So I don’t want this blog to sound like I am complaining…

First, there is the opportunity to send proposals to the American Sewing Guild conference in Atlanta next summer, then there are a number of late fall/winter art exhibitions that I should apply to, and there is my article to write for SS&D. Orders have been coming in, and I’ve been invited to participate in a Fiber Arts telesummit, in November, a weekend virtual event where participants listen to and interact with presenters on the phone. The roster of speakers looks great, and I need to send bio, lecture title, write up, etc., by yesterday. I’ll talk more about this event as I have promotional material to post.

Meanwhile, I did talk about trying to make something to sell for my guild show and sale in November, (the same weekend as the Telesummit). And did I mention I’m leaving on Sunday to teach for a week at Sievers Fiber School in Wisconsin? I made it to UPS today, with a huge box of handouts, monographs, and interfacings and such, since I’ll need to be prepared for whatever the returning students want to make. And I took a quick drive to Montclair State University this morning to drop off an application for an exhibit next January. The application was of course due today.

I have been somewhat successful in making a couple of things for the sale. Here is where it gets a little difficult. I am perfectly capable of making stuff. The hard part is making cheap stuff. I mean affordable stuff. Once into a project, it twists and turns, and usually turns out wonderful, but at a price point that would be way beyond what someone would pay at a guild sale. I purchased a yam colored pigment dyed sweatshirt from Nancy’s Notions. Nancy has gorgeous sweatshirts, in wonderful colors, if you like sweatshirts, and I bought one to try it out, and cut it into a jacket, and trimmed it with a handwoven scarf I had laying around. I made one of these last spring after an American Sewing Guild chapter meeting, where the seminar leader took a sweatshirt, cut it into a jacket by cutting up the center front and removing the bottom bands and sleeve cuffs, and adding quilt fabric for trim. I took it a step further, and used a handwoven scarf. There were two tiny scraps left when I was finished.

Next I started on a tote bag using the piecing technique I teach in my pieced vest class, called Vested Interest (which I’ll be teaching at the John C. Campbell Folk School in NC in January). I am trying to see if I can develop a one day hands on seminar, using the technique and developing a project that will appeal to everyone, and can be completed in one day. Well, I was partially successful in making a very cool tote bag, (almost finished, just some handwork) but failed miserably trying to make a reasonably priced item for the guild sale and something that could be made in one day. I’ve been working on it solid for three days, and yes, I take photos every step of the way, about 200 so far, and I am constantly ripping out and redoing as I think of a better way to accomplish something, but I’m at least moving in a direction full of possibilities. I basically have to simplify, simplify, simplify, and sadly, I never learned the meaning of that word…

I’m trying to finish up the inkle band that coordinates with it, and maybe use it as trim, though I’m liking it just the way it is, and think I may use the inkle band for something else…

And then there was the guild meeting on Monday. The Frances Irwin Handweaving Guild is embarking on a fall study of rugs and rug structures, and we had to bring a loom warped to try sampling the September theme of Summer/Winter and Taquetté in rugweaving. The directions called for a 10 1/2″ wide sample warp, and though my little sample loom is only 10 1/4″ wide, I went with it. And the recommended thickness of rug yarn was heavier than anything I have laying around in the studio, so I went on an attic hunt and procured a bag of yarn, some bright pink wool, and some brown handspun from my mother-in-law’s stash. Even though she has been dead for three years, she still guides me to her stash when I need something, as though her spirit is still hanging in my studio and telling me, “Use this…”

So I dusted off my trusty Ashford wheel, and plied the pink wool, and brown handspun, to make something closer to the required weight of rug wool.

I got the loom warped, and took it off to the guild meeting yesterday, and was pretty happy with the first samples off the loom. I will say this is about as foreign as it gets for me in weaving, one because I’m using a table loom which is awkward and slow, I’m use to speed yardage, and the weight is really unusual for me, I think I’ve woven two rugs in my whole life, maybe not even that many. I weave yardage for clothing, so this is a stretch. But I love the colors.

So, I’ll continue working as hard as I can, because that’s what I do. My daughter is also putting out fires, apparently there was a major summer assignment for her Spanish 4 class in High School, which was never given to her, and she found out about it only a week ago, the teacher graciously allowed her a week to complete the hugely labor intensive assignment, and my lovely pink haired daughter is alternating between ripping her pink hair out, and suffering complete meltdowns. And trying to keep up with all the other work assigned, and the extra curricular activities, is killing us both! And my wonderful adorable, lazy 19 year old son has finally made the decision to join the Army National Guard, the appointment with the recruiter is tomorrow, to finish the paperwork and make it all official. Part of me of course is immensely proud of him, and part of me is scared to death. And part of me is snickering, because when he acts like the lazy 19 year old he is, I think to myself, “The army will never put up with sleeping until lunch time…” And there is his room in the basement… 🙂

Special Event

Most of you know I am a breast cancer survivor. I had a mastectomy more than seven years ago, six months of chemotherapy, and no reconstruction. That was a personal choice and I am happy with that decision.

Fast forward a few years. One of my good friends has a friend, Pete Byron, who is an art photographer. He was embarking on a project to celebrate the faces of breast cancer, a very intimate and personal journey for the women who agreed to model for him and share their bodies and experiences. Pete spent the last few years assembling an impressive group of photographs, and has successfully gotten the Morris Museum in Morristown, NJ, to host an exhibit of some of these photographs. I understand Atlantic Health Care has underwritten part of the exhibit, and that the images have been printed very large, and will command quite a presence in one of the upstairs galleries at the museum. And I also understand there is a book in the works.

I was one of the models who shared my experience with Pete, and I am looking forward to seeing the end results of this special encounter, Pete is talented and has a sensitivity that made it easy to work with him. I don’t have the exact dates of the exhibit, just that it runs the month of October. Here is the blurb from the Morris Museum’s website,

The Faces of Breast Cancer: Photographs by Pete Byron

Upper Level Gallery

October 2009

This exhibit of intimate photographs incorporates not only powerful images of breast cancer survivors, but also documents their stories as real tributes of courage. The project will be inspiring for survivors of breast cancer all across New Jersey…sending them a message of hope.

9/11

This is a hard day for New Yorkers. For the rest of the nation as well, but especially for New Yorkers. We mustn’t forget, we can’t forget. It is raining steadily here, from a nor’easter hitting the Atlantic coast, unlike this day eight years ago, where the day bloomed gloriously, blue sky, cool dry air, the most perfect day. I had been offered the job as Features Editor for Handwoven Magazine that day, eight years ago, and as the days unfolded, my emails to Madelyn van der Hoogt, editor in chief of Handwoven Magazine from Interweave Press, netted this letter to the editor, written September 12, 2001. It appeared in the following issue of Handwoven Magazine.

I live approximately 20 miles from ground zero. I put my children on their respective school buses and sat down with my morning coffee. My husband called to tell me to turn on the television and my life, and the lives of all my fellow countrymen were in that instant changed forever. I watched in horror as a second plane crashed into the symbol of the free world, a structure built to stand up to bombs, earthquakes, even a 747 direct hit. Within the hour, the World Trade Center towers were a twisted pile of ash and debris. All of us will remember this date for the rest of our lives, where we were at the exact moment we heard the news, the powerlessness, anger, and fear that gripped a nation who never thought it could happen here. I turned the television off, I couldn’t watch anymore. I went into my studio, my hair still in hot rollers; I had a class to teach at the university, in about four hours. I am a professor of fine arts in the fiber department at Montclair State University, an artist, and a handweaver. I sat down at my loom and began to weave. Although the structure I was weaving, an 8 shaft shadow weave, was complex, I blindly, numbly, and mechanically, treadled the sequence, threw the shuttle, and found my mind wandering back to the devastation occurring just over the river. How many friends, community members, parents of my children’s friends were in those buildings? I called my mother. We cried together, we watched as the horror of the day unfolded. Over the next few days I watched with grief, fear, anger, uncertainly, my whole world crumble like the dust of the mighty structures that stood like a beacon to the abilities of mankind.

I wandered aimlessly in my studio, unable to motivate myself to create, weave, sew, suddenly all of it seemed so pointless. I sat at the computer and began to write. Fiber is a slow medium for self expression. I am a fiber artist, my pieces take upwards of 6 months to complete. I was to teach a class that day to a new fresh group of university art students, mostly educators, and the first lesson was in two element plaiting. Basic under/over… We use newspaper strips. We make mats, vessels, enclosed forms. Over/under… I couldn’t face a class, I knew they couldn’t concentrate; most of the roads in this part of New Jersey were either closed or clogged anyway. The university cancelled the class.

What is the role of the artist in a society that is grieving the loss of its countrymen and basic freedoms? I kept asking myself, since, it is the artists who record the events, question, criticize, and document the emotions of a nation. I am an artist and a weaver. It was a simple gesture, but for me a profoundly cathartic one when I went to the computer, printed two identical photographs of my children standing atop the South Tower of the World Trade Center less than three weeks ago. They had never been and I wanted to share New York with them. I sliced the two photographs into horizontal and vertical elements and wove, in a simple over/under pattern, the two photographs back together. Because of the process of the interlacement, the images have an eerie offset quality. I made sure my children’s faces were whole and readable, and the rest of the photo, the World Trade Center became shaky and unreadable. It was a small gesture. I shared the piece with my students on Friday. A different class, we had already met once. We cried, we shared, we talked about the role of the artist in our society, the role of the art educator helping students too young to write, who can’t express themselves any other way but through art. It was a very healing experience. As I thought about those elements passing over and under each other, the most simple of interlacements, the most basic tool of the weaver, I thought about how each of us must find a way to heal, to share, to communicate, and to move forward. I will go back to my loom; I will find comfort in the gentle rhythm of the shuttle. I will sit at the sewing machine again. Work will come from my hands again. I feel centered and strong and very, very grateful.

-Daryl Lancaster

September 12, 2001

Earlier this year, I wove this image using the technique I’ve been playing with for the last two years, an inlay technique, stripping treated silk fabric, printed with an image, and reweaving it back together again. I believe I wrote about this piece in an earlier blog. The piece is titled

“Remembering: On Top of the World”

Breeding Creativity

I’ve no one to blame but myself. And actually I’m wildly jealous. My daughter, whom I’d like to believe inherited all my creativity, actually soared past my ability to think outside the box a long time ago, somewhere around 3rd grade…

I remember getting detention in an art class in High School. The teacher made me stay after school and finger paint. She had given me detention because she thought I was much too tight. She wanted me to try and free myself and let go. Well, obviously this isn’t a problem for my daughter. Many of you have requested a picture of my daughter with her purple hair, dyed for the first day of school.

The first day of school always brings the dreaded books to cover, I remember saving my brown grocery bags, I am a pro at making perfect book covers from brown grocery bags.

Now, that’s as obsolete as a typewriter. My daughter uses book sox, they are stretchy colorful book protectors that just slip over the book, stretch to any size, and they can be picked up dirt cheap at Staples and wherever school supplies are sold. So, after bringing home her 56 pounds of text books the first day of school, she rooted through her closet and found a bunch of book socks, covered the books with the best of the lot, and then decided to piece the rest of them together to make a tank top. I don’t know what possessed her, I’d love to think I would have thought of something like that, and I lived through the 60’s. So, she hung in my studio last night, and tonight, and traced a tank top she already owned, that fit her well, and then she set about piecing together all the book sox, serging to connect everything, and then cutting out the pattern. She serged the tank top together, and here is the final result, and of course, the purple hair! I adore my daughter. She certainly marches to her own drummer…