Handwoven Magazine – Page 3

It lives…

Most of the handweaving community by now is aware of the F & W Media debacle over the past few months, F & W Media owned just about every craft, art, farming, woodworking, and a slew of other publications in the country, with the exception of Taunton Press, still valiantly publishing up there in CT (They publish Threads Magazine). F & W had been on an acquisition frenzy over the past few years, and had acquired Interweave Press, publisher of Handwoven Magazine, among other important fiber publications in knitting and spinning. F & W declared bankruptcy early this past spring. All of use who were owed royalties will never see them paid. More importantly, the fear in the fiber community of our print institutions’ survival was a complete unknown.

In June, a “fire sale” as the legal rep I talked to handling the whole affair called it, (I was of course one of the people who will never get paid royalties due from last spring) was held, I think somewhere in Delaware. I sat glued to my Google search engine for a week to find out what happened. The F & W Craft Division, was successfully bid on by a company…

Macanta Investments, a private-investment partnership for Terence O’Toole and his family, put up $2.85 million for F+W’s crafts group that includes a network of 10 knitting, sewing and needlework magazines, along with nine quilting titles.

O’Toole is a managing partner of Tinicum Inc., an investment firm that bought a majority interest of F+W in 2014.

This mediapost article has a few more details, but F & W Craft Division including Interweave’s Handwoven Magazine will live on assuming the goal of this acquisition was to keep publishing. The book division was sold just prior to the auction to Penquin Books, so hopefully it is in good hands. A quick perusal of the Interweave Press website shows all the books gone, but digital content is still available for sale and is being heavily promoted. These would include my five webinar series on Sewing with Handwovens.

There is a lot of buzz on social media that makes me sort of sad. Full disclosure, I was the Features Editor for Handwoven Magazine from about 2002 to around 2007, writing in every issue for 35 issues straight. Madelyn van der Hoogt was my editor and I enjoyed every minute I spent under her careful and watchful eye. I’d like to say she was responsible for my career as a journalist, as I’ve now written more than 100 articles in various publications and have even branched into video.

But it all started at Handwoven Magazine. The buzz on social media complains that the magazine isn’t what it used to be, that the projects are mostly for rigid heddle weavers, that there isn’t a lot of content, that it is very thin, and a discussion ensues about cancelling subscriptions in protest, or stopping advertising, because, well no one reads the magazine anymore. In fact I stopped writing for them because of the reduced rate of author compensation. That said, Handwoven Magazine has been around for 40 years. How do I know this? An advance copy of the September/October issue is sitting on my desk because I have an article in it.

There has been no other weaving publication that has hung in for so long and provided so much content as Handwoven Magazine. I have every issue on my shelf and it is an incredible wealth of knowledge. Many of the issues are available digitally, so they don’t take up shelf space, but I’m a paper kind of gal. My art and weaving library is huge, because I’m a writer and a researcher and a creative person and well, there is nothing like a spread of a half dozen reference materials across my floor or cutting table as I compare content for an article. I did a quick perusal of this issue, their 40th anniversary, Issue XXXX number 4. (Yeah I know that the Roman Numeral for 40 is XL which is also a size, and XXXX reads better!)

The issue is thin. Publishing print isn’t what it use to be. My favorite current weaving magazine is of course Heddlecraft, published by Robyn Spady, but that publication is digital only with no advertising. It is theme specific, provides extensive drafts, and has some lovely features columns. But I doggedly continue to subscribe to Handwoven because it still provides inspiration, articles, and advertising, so I’m on top of what’s new, who is selling what, who’s who and who is writing what, and I will often use one of their dishtowel drafts for my annual dishtowel warp. This issue is about remembering. It has a look back over the six editors of Handwoven Magazine, and comments from them. It has projects that reference many of those editors. It has a sweet article from Sherrie Miller, whom I adore, about the Weaving Hall of Fame, a look back over those who have contributed most to the craft. I get a mention at the end, which I totally did not expect. I have an article on Weaving a Memory. It is a technique I’ve taught in the past, and have a full monograph available for more content. (The link is for the digital version, there is also a bound paper version available.)

And there are projects, one rigid heddle, one for a pin loom, and plenty for four shaft looms and one for an eight shaft. The ads are colorful and remind us of who is still out there selling supplies to handweavers. There is a great look back over the 50 year career of Schacht Looms. And a wonderful side bar about the decision to start offering projects at Handwoven Magazine, and why. I never knew that part of the story. And Tom Knisely has a great article on weaving borders. So here’s the thing. There aren’t many print publications left. Heddlecraft is digital only, and Weavers Craft will publish their last issue, #32 this year. They also had no advertising. You can still get back issues of Weavers Magazine (44 in total, have them all) and Prairie Wool Companion (16 in total, have many of them, still looking) and the Weavers Journal (I’m still collecting them as well). There is VAV magazine, a Swedish publication, really wonderful, which has been translated into English since 2006. You can get back copies of that magazine from The Loom Room. And so we have Handwoven Magazine. It is important for the handweaving community to rally around and support what we have left, because even though you can find anything you want to know on youtube, there is something to still be revered and respected about holding the latest issue of anything. I get very few magazines anymore. I get this one. And of course, Threads.

And since I have every issue, I still use them for reference. Especially my own articles. Especially the Color Forecast. I have almost all of the original content that was photographed for the magazine, the color chip cards and the yarn wraps. I use them all the time for instant color and inspiration. I just leafed through my binder and randomly picked the palette for Jan/Feb 2004 issue, called Retro, part of the Fall 2004-5 forecast.

And I gathered all of the yarns I had on all of my shelves, leftover bits in bins, hand dyed skeins, and wound a scarf warp in four parts… The last part was the supplemental ribbons.

I spent yesterday threading this baby, and this afternoon I’m going to get it beamed, mostly because I don’t want 14 yards of warp chains lying around the floor to tempt my animals. Hahahahah!

I often thought that it would be fun for Interweave Press to put together a digital collection of all of the forecasts I wrote, there are some pretty inspiring palettes. I would know since I researched and wrote them!

I’m heading off to renew the Handwoven Subscription for our weaving guild. I’m the treasurer so I get to write the checks. Keep those issues coming…

Stay tuned…

I’ve seen the future and it’s looking bright…

I’m writing this on the plane, flying home to Newark from an amazing four days in Northern California at the CNCH Conference. That would be the Conference of Northern California Handweavers for those not in the know… First, I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to be asked to teach at this particular conference. Eight years ago, I was scheduled to teach at CNCH 2002, and six weeks before the conference, with sold out classes, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had to cancel a number of teaching commitments that spring, and CNCH was one of them. Eight years went by without another invitation, and I always felt bad that I never had the opportunity to make up for having to cancel.

I taught four classes at the conference this past weekend, Friday morning I had a large group for my Photographing your Work seminar, followed by a class called Warp Fast, a seminar on warping techniques that involve methods using multiple threads, paddle warping, sectional warping, and using an AVL warping mill. I had a very large class for that seminar, and I got a lot of very positive feedback after both classes, which always makes me feel good, that I’ve inspired and encouraged others with new information and sometimes a new perspective. Friday night was of course, the fashion show. Always a conference favorite, I had a front row seat, which I appreciated, since I would be giving the technical critique of the garments on Sunday morning. I had spent Thursday afternoon previewing the garments as they came in, so I had a chance to look up inside, check construction details and techniques.

I had already sensed that there was something different about this conference, a different energy and enthusiasm I haven’t felt at a fiber conference in a very long time. The conference committee was doing an exceptional job, the facility, the Santa Clara Conference Center, attached to our hotel, the Hyatt, so we never had to leave the building, was first class, my classroom perfect for my needs, all my classes in one room, and the food at the Hyatt restaurants, outstanding and very reasonable.

So my weaving buddy, great friend and roommate Robyn Spady and I sat up front for the fashion show, and what a treat. I found the garments to be largely in one of two groups. There were a number of lovely jackets, beautifully tailored, made from exquisite handwoven, sometimes handspun and handdyed fabrics, and the makers of the garments, or their friends modeled them on stage. They were so proud of what they had done, and celebrated the moment. The show opened with the wedding ensemble, the year long undertaking of relatively new handweaver Tien Chiu, who has painstakingly documented every thread woven and every stitch taken on her blog.

Then came the rectangles. A large percentage of the garments were quite the throw back to the 60’s and 70’s when handwoven clothing was a series of pieced together rectangles. Yet, there wasn’t a single bog jacket, that Bronze Age shape made from a couple of strategically place rectangles, based on the garments found in highly acidic boggy ground water. When I started making handwoven clothing in the late 1970’s the yarns available for the average handweaver were nothing like the yarns available today. Colors were classic, understated, and dyed more for rug weaving and tapestry than clothing. As a matter of fact, my art school, where I first learned to weave, had bins of rug yarn, and carpet warp for our use, and not much else. The first garment I ever wove was from a coarse wool, and it was actually a modified bog jacket.

Note: this photo, of a garment I did in 1976 represents how NOT to take a photo of your work!

Fast forward some thirty years and the yarns available to the average handweaver would blow your mind. We have the knitters to thank for that, and the brave spinners out there who have taken handspinning to a new level, spinning with the most amazing fibers that didn’t exist in the 1970’s, (like bamboo mixed with Angelina and soy silk) and the rectangles that are coming out of small simple looms are anything but classic. I’ve known that the knitting community has found handweaving and is embracing it with an excitement and an enthusiasm never before seen, but I hadn’t actually seen this phenomenon in action. Armed with the Knitter’s loom from Ashford, or the Rigid Heddle loom from Schacht, and some incredible yarn, in unbelievable color combinations, these new weavers are single handedly resurrecting the craft of handweaving, and taking it to levels I could have never imagined. And by young women half my age with pink hair wearing lime green hand knit socks they very competently knit themselves.

I don’t know if there is a Project Runway influence here as well, but the rectangular shapes of the garments that came parading across the runway were not the shapes of yore… I’m going under the assumption that since home ec is not part of the current curriculum in most schools in the US, that these amazingly talented young women are learning fashion skills somewhere else. The influence is pretty clear, since the rectangular clothing up on that stage was thoughtfully draped over someone’s body (a dressform?) and folded and tucked and seamed, stitched and embellished into some extremely creative clothing.

Alas, I have no pictures. I’m hoping the CNCH website will eventually provide some shots of the fashion show, but trust me to say that I was SOOOOO excited by what was in front of me. And in many of my classes, including the Saturday workshop on making a jacket pattern, there were numerous new weavers, first time conference attendees, and some amazing enthusiasm. The torch has been passed. And to my complete delight, the aging handweaving community seems to have opened its arms and embraced the new blood and the new creativity that has blown in like a fresh breath of air.

Keep in mind that this is California. In my travels, every new trend seems to originate here. It will probably take some time to make it across the country, but even in my discussions with the HGA Convergence Albuquerque committee, an international weaving conference happening in July of 2010, registrations have gone beyond all expectations. I have seen the future for handweaving and it is very very bright indeed.

Saturday night’s keynote address was given by Syne Mitchell. I first met Syne probably five years ago, a 30 something former Microsoft programmer with a very young son, she took my class in making a pieced vest in Seattle. Syne was a new weaver, coming from the knitting world with a huge background in technology. It didn’t take her long to find a need, and Syne jumped right in there to fill it. In a few short years, she has united the global handweaving community, connected them to the knitting community, and turned the fiber world upside down with her podcasts called Weavecast, (I’m episode 26) and her online weaving magazine Weavezine. ( I have agreed to write a monthly column on handwoven garments for Weavezine, stay tuned for that.) Weavecast has been listened to on six of the seven continents, still waiting for Antarctica to come on board. Syne gave a keynote that brought the global sources of handweaving found on the internet into the laps of everyone in the room. She showed the conference attendees what could be found with just a few keystrokes and a couple of URL’s. Online weaving publications, like Handwoven Weaving Weekly from Interweave Press; handweaving.net, developed by software engineer Kris Bruland with over 60,000 weaving drafts; Weavolution, an online global community of handweavers, blogs, and resources and information have revolutionized how we think, create, and interact with each other. Syne ended her keynote with some weaving karaoke that you had to be there to see, and she had the audience laughing with her through the entire address.

Keep in mind that this conference is right in the middle of Silicon Valley, and it isn’t just the 20 something pink haired knitters turned weavers armed with a drop spindle that are revolutionizing the handweaving community. Sunday night, after the conference was over, I went out to dinner with Syne and Tien Chiu, of wedding dress fame, and Tien’s significant other. I’ve always been one of the youngest of the handweaving community, having been trained in college and shortly after making a career of handweaving, but now, in my mid 50’s, I sat back listening to the discussions at the dinner table over Pad Thai and Ginger Chicken, about solenoids and dobby’s and software and 24 shaft looms, by two technologically savy women and a non weaving soon to be spouse of a weaver, and saw that the technologically trained programmers and software and web developers have not only found handweaving, but are running forward with the available technology at a speed that has left me in the dust. Tien is a web developer so it isn’t a surprise that she began her journey into handweaving finding a medium that would challenge and satisfy her amazing brain and blog about the journey so that others around the globe have followed the creation of the wedding dress, every intimate detail of it. Syne, Tien, and others like them are taking handweaving to places I never thought possible. It is all so very exciting, and I feel oddly enough like I’ve simultaneously gone back to my roots while feeling like I’m peering in the window of something truly wonderful and I want to come in and play too.

I do know how to spin, quite well actually, and I had a real desire to dust off my spinning wheel and find my drop spindle, and try some of that wonderful colorful stuff available at the conference. I only had an hour or so to wander through the vast displays in the vendor hall, but I did manage to pick up some beautiful silk/mohair roving to spin, hand dyed in gorgeous purple and orange shades by Red Fish Dye Works, and in the back corner of the vendor hall, at the booth next to the pen with three alpacas, I bought the first fleece from Montana, a baby Alpaca, and I’m going to start spinning some yarn. It was hard not to get caught up in the new enthusiasm of the future of handweaving, and to my great delight, in addition to all of the wonderful things to spin and weave and knit available at the conference, there was a Janome sewing machine dealer who was doing quite the brisk business selling sewing machines. I heard more than one person telling me about retiring that old Singer from 1940 and moving on to something that would inspire creativity and get them sewing again. Along with the rebirth of handweaving is the potential for a rebirth in the sewing world as well. Which makes my heart sing, since I keep a foot in both worlds. I weave cloth, to sew into clothing, and suddenly the possibilities have exploded and I couldn’t be happier. I have seen the future and it is indeed bright.

This morning, I had breakfast with Nancy Weber, one of the key organizers of the conference, and she showed me the “conference scarf”, woven by a committee of weavers, as a gift for all the organizers. It was based on my weaving buddy and guild mate Sally Orgren’s article in Handwoven Magazine, Nov/Dec 2008, on eight shaft and four shaft dimity. Can I say they were exquisite? The colors were hand dyed, and can I say I coveted one? I have a loom, I have tencel, and I have that issue of Handwoven Magazine. In addition, the table runner across the breakfast table in Nancy’s home was woven from self patterning sock yarn. Who knew? The beautiful ikat effects were just yarn that was engineered to pattern a pair of socks. My head is spinning with possibilities. These are perfect projects to put on all my baby Structo looms. Can you tell it was a mind blowing weekend? So now I’m heading back to NJ, on my last leg of the trip, sitting in first class, with my wine, and thinking that life is really good. And the future is very bright indeed…

Almost home…

I am writing this on the plane, winging my way back to the east coast, after an exhausting but remarkable 7 guild tour in four states in just over four weeks. It seems like just a dream that this time last month I was just finishing up in Southern California, on my way to Arizona, and this last stop in Missouri, in the middle of America’s heartland, brought a very special closure to a very special trip.

I love what I do, I fly to all sorts of places in the United States, and occasionally Canada, and I meet so many different people, all devoted to creating something with their hands, and I meet the people who love them, daughters, sons, husbands, and occasionally wives. I meet many folks who are retired from one part of their lives, who have recreated themselves again in another. I get the privilege of staying with some of these wonderful people, who open their homes and their kitchens and their bottles of wine to me, and we share a little bit of each other’s stories, and I can’t imagine my life being nearly as full if I didn’t have this opportunity to travel.

This trip ended with an address to the Columbia Weavers and Spinners, and to my delight, they let me pick the topic. So I chose my standard keynote address, which is my story, as it parallels the work from my hands, and from my loom; the two intertwine, warp meeting weft. I love telling this story, because when I am finished, I am flooded by audience members who come up to me and tell me small pieces of their stories, that have unfolded as I told mine. We all have a story, and I always feel privileged when I am able to tell mine, and have someone listen, and then share theirs.

On Sunday, the guild members worked feverishly to finish up their vests in the two day vest class, sewing machines were chugging along, and I ran from student to student trouble shooting where I could, and helping to make each vest turn into a personal statement for each of them. It was great that eight of the eleven students came wearing their vests at the Tuesday night guild meeting, even though there were still quite a few pins, and unfinished handwork. And I took a photo of Bonnie’s vest, since she was the lone felter in the group, and I am always thrilled when I have a felter in a group of handweavers because the end result is so organic and freeform. Bonnie’s vest, coupled with the silky teal shirt, looked like she was swimming in a coral reef.

My hostess Mary Jane endured a lot having me stay with her, because I arrived last Friday evening, with the beginnings of a cold. She provided many boxes of tissues and many bowls of hot soup, fresh bread, and a comfortable room where I could disappear and recover. I hate when I am on the road and I get sick. But I was lucky to have some down time on this trip, and I was able to curl up with my laptop, or a good book, and take some time to recover. I did go to Facebook as often as I could, since the news from home was grim, a weekend storm caused severe flooding in my town, we lost one of our maple trees in the back yard, which took out the chain link fence on the side of the back yard, preventing the dog from using the yard until my husband got out there with the chain saw. I saw photos of homes surrounded by water, landmarks I recognized from home with parking lots filled with water, and my son’s friend and another friend’s father, canoeing down the road using brooms for paddles. I am sad for the devastation and for those still evacuated from their homes and their lives. I was safe in the middle of the country, but my heart was heavy for those who couldn’t escape.

The highlight of my trip, was a dinner with Amy D. Preckshot, who is a member of the Columbia Weavers and Spinners Guild. Amy is a special person and a testament to the spirit of the handweaver. Amy is in her mid 90’s, and has a 24 shaft Toika loom visible from the parking lot in her apartment in a retirement facility. I want to grow old and be just like Amy. Most handweavers will recognize Amy’s work, if you have seen an ad for Webs Yarn Store, recently, you’ve seen Amy’s work. The inside cover of the current issue of Handwoven Magazine features two of Amy’s giraffes in the Webs ad. Amy is known for her clever handwoven stuff animals, and has written a book called, “Weaving a Zoo”, describing the animals and how to make them, and they are the first thing to sell at the annual guild sale. My hostess Mary Jane had a collection that spanned years. Amy graciously let me take some pictures of her whimsical animals. She was planning the next one, I hear she is working on a red fox. Amy told me that I praised her garment in the fashion show when I did the technical critique at Convergence in Grand Rapids in 2006, and that she never forgot that experience. She hadn’t identified herself in the audience, so I never knew Amy was connected to the work I was critiquing. She is an accomplished tailor, years of training behind her, and I was privileged to reconnect with her, and meet however briefly on the crossroads of our journeys. I hope our paths cross again.

So I am winging my way home, only to turn around in Newark airport and meet up with the rest of my family and head south to the Carolina’s for my son Eric’s graduation from boot camp Friday. More than likely I’ll need another box of tissues to get me through graduation, I know I’ll not be able to get through that ceremony without shedding a few tears. Stay tuned…

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!

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

Tag: Handwoven Magazine

It lives…

I’ve seen the future and it’s looking bright…

Almost home…

Severe Weather Alert…

9/11

“Remembering: On Top of the World”