Baltimore Consort – Daryl's Blog

The Cloisters

We left around 10:00am to head into NYC, with our friends Misa and Pat, just ahead of the blizzard that was making its way up the coast. The snow wasn’t suppose to start until around 12:30pm, so we figured we could get into Manhattan, have lunch at the New Leaf Cafe in Fort Tryon Park, and then hear the Baltimore Consort at 1pm at the Cloisters and be home before the roads got bad. The one thing working in our favor was the temperature. It was well below freezing, so the snow would be drier, and with the winds, it would blow around a lot before it started to stick, and there wouldn’t be the usual problem we have with ice.

The Hudson River view from the Cloisters, including the George Washington Bridge

What an amazing day. If you live in the NY metropolitan area, I’m sure you’ve been to the Cloisters, it is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but located about 100 blocks north of the regular museum, built by Rockefeller in the late 1930’s to house a fantastic collection of works of art from the Middle Ages, including architectural fragments that have been incorporated into the fabric of the building itself. The work here dates from 1000AD to about 1520AD.

For the rest of my readers, who don’t have a chance to see Manhattan, or if you do, you might not get a chance to visit this mythical place, I have lots of gorgeous photos, courtesy of my husband and his new camera. Wait, wasn’t that a Christmas present?

Twelfth-century chapter house from the Benedictine abbey of Notre-Dame at Pontaut

Can I say that the architecture of this place is truly breathtaking? There is a sense of reverence, and history that makes me feel like I am in a sacred place, and that each artwork has an amazing story, and that I could draw quiet inspiration from these hallowed walls.

The gardens of the Cuxa Cloister, in winter before the snow

Stained Glass from the 15th century Carmelite foundation at Boppard am Rhein

The Gothic Chapel with French and Spanish tomb effigies from the 13th and 14th centuries

Waiting in line with Pat and Misa, before the concert

We waited patiently in line, it was easy to be patient in a place like this, there is a calm wonder and awe that makes waiting in line a pleasure.

The concert was unbelievable. If you can imagine early music instruments and the ethereal voice of the soprano vibrating in a space like this chapel which contained a mid-12th century apse from Spain, it is the most lovely sound I’ve ever heard. Obviously I’m a fan of early music, I played with my recorder consort last night at a Christmas concert at one of the churches on the green in Morristown. But this is truly magical. The Baltimore Consort was founded in 1980 to perform the instrumental music of Shakespeare’s time and today’s performance covered Christmas carols in Latin, German, Spanish, Elizabethan English, Scottish, Finnish, and French. The works ranged from the 12th-16th century. I recognized one of the oldest of Latin/German hymns, In dulci iubilo, which I played with my recorder consort last night.

Entering the Fuentidueña Chapel for the Baltimore Consort Concert

After the concert, we checked through the stained glass windows at the gardens to see if the snow had begun, and if so, was it sticking yet? We saw a few flakes swirling around, so took advantage of the delay to see more of this spectacular building.

I had to take my husband in to the Gallery with the Unicorn Tapestries, woven in Brussels in 1500. The light in the cavernous space is really dim. And though photography was allowed, no flash could be used. My husband took that as a challenge to see what he could do with his new toy, and I am completely impressed.

Detail of the hounds in one of the unicorn tapestries

The colors remain rich and the detail, impressive. As a weaver I am more than impressed, I am overwhelmed. Every time I look at these tapestries, I am silenced by their detail, their expressive story, and their size.

The size of the unicorn tapestries is awe inspiring

One of the marble columns with a color palette

My husband had a great time photographing not only the architecture and the artworks of the Cloisters, but some of the details, textures and colors of some of the stone work, especially the marble. I looked at this photograph and stopped dead in my tracks. I ran over to my cutting table and pulled a couple of palettes from the pile I created yesterday, did a little shuffling, and came up with a gorgeous palette, straight off the marble column, and right in keeping with the spring 2010 colors I described yesterday. I think I am inspired enough to start mixing dyes.

Exiting down the vaulted corridor to the street entrance

We left the Cloisters as the snow was starting to stick, the roads weren’t hazardous yet, and we made it safely home. What an amazing day, and I am really excited about the inspiration for my first dyed warps.

We are expected when all is said and done, to get about 8-12 inches of snow. It is hard to say how much has fallen already, the heavy winds make the snow swirl around, but it is beautiful. We have the wood stove cranked up, and we don’t have to be anywhere in the morning. I have another recorder concert in the afternoon, actually we are playing one song as part of a Celtic Christmas Service at the Presbyterian Church on the Green in Morristown at 4pm, if anyone can shovel out and attend. It is a beautiful service, very seasonal, and I’m hoping the snow is cleared away by then.

Severe Weather Alert…

The little stop sign with the exclamation point in the lower right hand corner of my Firefox Internet screen on my computer has been staring at me all day, with dire warnings of the impending nor’easter on its way up the coast. I’m checking the predictions, sort of, every once in awhile, largely because we have tickets to the Baltimore Consort at the Cloisters in northern Manhattan tomorrow afternoon, when the storm is suppose to hit, but I’m not paying too much attention, because weather patterns are unpredictable around here, they make better headlines than true predictions. At the moment, there is a 3-6″ prediction of snow for our area, which by Jersey standards is pretty nothing, if it turns out to be more like 3″. An hour south of us, there is a prediction of 6-12″. But the winds are suppose to be fierce, so weather patterns can shift a few miles and come in faster or slower, and the whole prediction ends up causing a lot of eye rolling and unnecessary panic. Nevertheless, I sent my son out to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store, that we desperately needed, like half and half, because you can’t have coffee in this house without half and half, and he came back to report that the grocery store was mobbed, and shelves are being cleaned off like there was a severe famine on its way up the coast.

So, I decided to spend the day, keeping an eye loosely on the radar, in my pajamas, in front of my computer, researching colors for next spring. Sounded like a good antidote to stupid headlines and dreary bleak weather. I have a couple of favorite sites, Design-Options, and Pantone, both have information about colors for the upcoming seasons, and I get an idea of the general direction of the trends. Not that it is that important, but I’m always curious, and sometimes I get inspired by a particular palette. I found a very cool You Tube Video on the Pantone site, and I watched it about 8 times, sitting with my little fan of Color-aid papers, getting a feel for the combinations. If you watch the video, which talks about how the colors are forecasted, make sure the sound on your computer is on, the adjectives the narrator uses are important, but comical at times, like the Thesaurus was brought out and dusted off. There were some great phrases like “subtly sumptuous”, “halcyon days”, tapestries of experience”, “adaptive attitude”, and “symbiosis of hues”. I particularly liked, “inventive integrity” and “soul searching and sustainability…”

I have a large block of Color-aid papers, there are 314 colors in all, and I lopped off the top one inch of each paper and put them on a screw post, so I would have an easy reference for playing around, while maintaining the paper order. Each of the papers in the full set has a code on the back that helps identify the color. So I watched the video, and pulled palettes that I thought I’d enjoy dyeing, I’ll spend more time this weekend tweaking and narrowing down, but I had a good start. Also, ProChem, where I buy my MX Fiber Reactive dyes, has a PDF on their website that gives the Pantone colors for Spring of 2010, with directions for how to dye each color. How handy is that!

And I spent the day just playing with color. I outlined the eight palettes as I interpreted them from the Pantone site, comparing them to the Spring 2010 colors from Design-Options, and I cut little Color-aid chips, and played around with arrangements.

This is the sort of thing I would do twice a year for Handwoven Magazine when I use to do the articles for them on Color and Fabric Forecasting. I’ve heard during my travels, how many mourn the loss of the column, but the reality is, the column was costly to produce and you the reader can easily with a handy computer and your own block of Color-aid papers, do your own search and experiment. Google “Colors Spring 2010” and see what you get…

Now that I have a bunch of potential palettes in front of me, I started looking at space dyed skeins I had laying around the studio, to get a feel for narrower palettes and more monochromatic possibilities, and largely this was just fun to see the palettes next to yarn. The skeins are from Cherry Tree Hill and they are a funky novelty knitting yarn. I think these were from the batch of novelties I picked up last summer at the Midwest Conference.

I may be housebound this weekend, but I have a bunch of white warps, and a cabinet full of dyes, and I can crank up the wood stove to keep the room temp about 70 degrees for curing, and I can have a colorful weekend in spite of the frightful weather outside!

The social season is in full swing…

The last days of any year are always a mixed bag. I find it hard to get any meaningful work done in the studio, there are so many social events on the calendar, some seasonal celebrations, some gatherings of friends, and on the other hand, there are so many social events on the calendar, seasonal celebrations and gatherings, that I’m forever grateful that I have opportunities like this to celebrate and see the world outside of the four walls of my studio.

Almost every night, since my last post (was it really almost a week ago?) I’ve had a major event on the calendar. Saturday had three events back to back! Friday night, I attended the reception at the NJ Center for the Visual Arts in Summit, NJ, for the artists who donated work for the Blank Canvas Benefit. You may remember my blog post last month while I worked on my piece. Since the handwoven scraps used in the artwork were from one of my jackets, I thought it would be fun to wear the jacket to the reception.

It was great to see all of the other interpretations of the claybord we were given to work with, we could pick the size, and many of the artists chose to use the claybord as a flat box/container, as a standing shadow box, as a canvas, some two sided, and there was my piece, wrapped like a present, completely encased in fabric. The food was delicious, and in any art venue, there are always interesting people to meet and chat with.

Saturday morning was the holiday party for my American Sewing Guild neighborhood group. It was a pot luck luncheon, and a lot of fun.

One of the members had been to a book sale, and she saw this little tome and because it said Hand-Loom Weaving on the front, she thought it was something I could use. She herself isn’t a weaver. It is little kindnesses like this that make the world a better place. I was THRILLED! I have never seen this little treasure, written by Mattie Phipps Todd, in 1902. The book was revised in 1914, and that’s the version that you see here on the right. It is a small little book, and it primarily focuses on teaching weaving in a classroom situation, using the new modern loom, which looks remarkably like one of the 25 small frame looms I have stacked up on a shelf for those occasions when I am demonstrating to a school group. They have end rods that run through the frame to keep the weaving square, and adjustable end caps so the weaving can be sized. The book, discarded from the New City Free Library, in New City, NY, (I’ll bet that’s a story in and of itself!), starts out with a fascinating chapter called “A Chat on Weaving”. Small phrases in the side bars act like little highlighters, phrases like, “Community feeling continued”, and “Nature knows no hurry”. Since this is a teaching manual, there are lots of phrases like “A child’s work should be suited to his capacity, without regard to grade”, and “If you would develop morality in a child, train him to work.” This particular paragraph gave me a huge smile:

“The child not only recognizes the value in honest labor, but his sympathy with all labor is aroused through his own efforts and through the stories told of weavers in all lands. He realizes, also, although in a limited way, the interdependence of the whole world. If the sun did not shine, and the rain fall, there would be no grass. If there were no grass, what would the sheep do?…

Could it be this little treasure, discarded long ago from a library in an unknown city, holds the key to world peace? 🙂

Saturday afternoon my husband and I drove to western NJ, where we attended an annual holiday gathering of friends, more interesting people to meet, share, and enjoy. We raced back home, in time to meet my step-sister and her guy, have a quick bit to eat, and race over to the IZOD center to watch the holiday extravaganza of the Trans Siberian Orchestra. Wow! I actually had never heard of this very popular orchestra, a combination of rock, opera, classical remakes of the greats, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, with an added twist of pyrotechnics, fireworks, laser lights, and some pretty mean guitar work. The newest member of the Orchestra was a keyboardist from Russia who began his number with a rapid fire run on the keyboard of the third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata!

Our seats were amazing, and the moving banks of lights, parts of the stage rising up, and walls of video images, made for quite the show. I enjoyed it a lot, and it really set the stage for the holiday spirit. The whole first half of the three hour show, with no break, was a lovely Christmas story of an angel flying the world in search of world peace.

Sunday I set out for my recorder consort rehearsal, we have a performance Friday night, and was horrified to see the havoc the unexpected freezing rain was having on the roadways. I almost turned around a half dozen times, but decided it was more dangerous to do that than just keep on going. I’ve never seen so many accidents. When SUV’s are creeping along at 20 miles an hour on a slick interstate, with their flashers blinking, you know something is up! And once I made it to Morristown, the sidewalks were complete sheets of ice. I teetered along, digging the four inch spike of my new killer boots into anything I could to stay upright. I made it to rehearsal, late, but safe, and by the time I headed home, the road crews were out spreading copious amounts of road salt and the traffic began moving at a steady pace of 45 mph.

Sunday afternoon, my son returned from his weekend at the Army National Guard. This is his last weekend there, before he ships out to Boot Camp on January 4th. It is the first time I’ve seen him in uniform, and I will say, there was a little bit of pride and a misty eye, my son has grown up. That’s me over there lurking by the front door.

Sunday night, I had the annual holiday gathering with my “mom’s group”. This is a group of six powerful women who all raised their kids together, meeting monthly for lunches for about 15 years, and then, once jobs took over, and crazy school schedules took over, a quarterly dinner is about all we can manage. Still, there is a bond there that goes back 20 years, and we celebrate each time one of us hits a birthday milestone. We celebrated Patty’s 50th birthday as well as the holiday, and everyone loved my coiled hot mats I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks.

This morning, I’m about to shower and head out to the Frances Irwin Handweavers annual holiday luncheon, I’m really looking forward to that, and I actually bought an additional luncheon ticket for my husband, he has never attended a guild function, and I know there will be other DH’s there, so I decided it might be fun to have him along and accompany me on the hour long drive to Pennsylvania.

Tomorrow night is the High School Holiday Concert, my daughter will be playing the trombone. And Friday night is my recorder consort performance. Saturday we have tickets for a performance of the Baltimore Consort at the Cloisters in NYC, you cannot imagine how spectacular an early music performance is in this particular venue, the vaulted stone ceilings of the 15th century cathedral like space, it is positively haunting.

And tomorrow is the one year anniversary of this blog. I have completely enjoyed the year, writing about my creative adventures, as they parallel my life and all of its crazy meanderings. And I find it a great resource for me when I can’t remember how I did something. Makes for a great record keeper… Stay tuned…