The genius of Silvia Heyden

The tapestry world is abuzz with talk about the just-released book of the work and writings of weaver Silvia Heyden (1927-2015):  Movement in Tapestry by Silvia Heyden.  Her family and friends worked hard to complete this book that Silvia began in 2014, and they have done a beautiful job.  It's not a book that you read once and then put away on a shelf.  You'll want to keep it out so that you can dip into it now and again, enjoying and studying the gorgeous full-page color photographs of her work and re-reading her words.  You can see by the fringe of post-its in my copy that I found much to ponder here.  

As I was reading this book, I must have said out loud to Sam at least five times, "Silvia Heyden was a [flipping] genius."  During her studies in the late 1940s with Bauhaus veterans Johannes Itten, Gunta Stözl and Elsi Giauque,  she absorbed Bauhaus principles of the unity of medium, methods, and design.  But upon her graduation, Heyden's mentors discouraged her from pursuing tapestry because it had mostly degenerated by that time into the slavish reproduction of paintings by non-weaving artists.  Silvia's careful study of medieval European weaving led her to realize that in those tapestries the weaving and the image had evolved together, organically, under the fingers and vision of the skilled artist-weaver.  She determined to discover a new language for tapestry that spoke in fresh, modern visual terms, that united, in true Bauhaus fashion, materials, technique, and image.  "This particular harmony of content and execution, of art and craft, of means and meaning could be achieved only in my persistent dialogue with the loom" (p. 64). 

Silvia Heyden, Through the Grass, 38" x 42," 1999.
(Apologies for the scanner cropping the right side of the image.  
The book is bigger than my scanner bed!) 

Silvia recognized that she would need to develop her own vocabulary of woven forms to achieve this aim, and she spent ten years working on developing that personal vocabulary of triangles, half-rounds, stripes, chevrons and feathers.  Ten years.   For Silvia, a motif "is a weaving element that is not only repeated additively but that can in fact evolve into an entire composition" (p. 54).  This in fact became her primary means of developing her tapestry designs.  The motif IS the structure and image of the tapestry; not merely any repeated shape, it is a shape that organically grows from the weaving process.  Silvia also determined that the conventional rules of tapestry weaving--that it result in a rectangular, flat textile in which the wefts travel only horizontally and totally cover the warp--need not apply.  She favored colored linen warps that played an active visual role.  She usually wove eccentrically, and while she tried to more or less balance the weft forces pulling the warp out of plumb, she was not concerned with whether the tapestry lay totally flat.  

Silvia Heyden, Diagrams of Diagonal and Rounded wefts,
from Duke University exhibit catalog, 1972. 

Crucially, Silvia abandoned the traditional full-size cartoon attached to the weaving as a guide.  If the weaving were to develop organically rather than as a reproduction of a pre-existing image, she had to wing it.  "I must free myself from the dictates of the paper cartoon and rather depend on my inner eye and train my concentration."  One of my favorite things about this book is that her small preparatory sketches, usually not much larger than 4" x 6" or thereabouts, are often reproduced next to the tapestry they inspired.  We can see how the sketches, which are simply gestural indications of line direction and possibly value and color, often found expression in a new way in the course of the weaving.  To keep track of how she was scaling up such a small sketch to her full-size, often five-feet-square tapestries, Silvia would place tick marks along the margin of the sketch and corresponding knotted bits of yarn along the warps of the tapestry.  

Silvia Heyden, Red Rhythm, 60" x 60," 1976 and preparatory sketches, largest is 5" x 4.5"

For me, the prospect of weaving a large tapestry without a cartoon feels a bit like preparing to walk a tightrope over a river full of crocodiles.  I am comforted to learn that Silvia was only able to totally abandon the cartoon after making about 200 tapestries.  Her lifelong output was about 800 tapestries over 50 years.  Eight.  Hundred.  Tapestries.  If you are going to engage in a "persistent dialogue with the loom," you'd better, as Tommye Scanlin likes to say, "weave every darn day!"  Tapestry is a long game.  Learning basic techniques does not take long; learning to use those techniques in one's own voice is the work of a lifetime.  

Since my own interests lately have been moving toward relief and 3D work, I was delighted to discover that Silvia made a number of small studies along those lines.  She was always thinking "What if. . .," always exploring and pushing the limits of what tapestry can do.  

Silvia Heyden, Capriccios, approx. 21" x 21", 2006-2013

There is much to love about this book:  The gorgeous full-page reproductions of Silvia's work.  The inclusion of sketches, as mentioned above.  The inclusion of Silvia's own writings and interviews about tapestry in an appendix.  This is a definitive volume about Heyden's work and weaving philosophy; it completes in a most satisfying way the account in her previous book, The Making of Modern Tapestry:  My Journey of Discovery, published in 1998.

There are a few quirks about the book that I found occasionally frustrating:  No titles, dimensions or dates are given on the double-page spreads with the reproduced works; the reader must flip to the "Index of Paired Tapestries" to find that information.  This was a deliberate decision to present the images on a clean white page, so fair enough.  There is a long section at the end of the book, with small color reproductions of Silvia's tapestries, sketches and studies arranged chronologically--but again, these works are not identified by title.  Finally, the text can be repetitive; we hear four times (in the Introduction and chapters 1, 2, and 4) how the Renaissance was the ruination of tapestry weaving.  It's not clear to me who wrote most of the text of the book in which Silvia is spoken of in the third person, though Stephanie Hoppe is credited as the author of Chapter 3.  And it took me awhile to figure out that italicized text throughout is Silvia's own words.   

But these are minor quibbles.  This is a book that every serious tapestry weaver will enjoy and learn from. Don't just take my word for it; read Elizabeth Buckley's blog for her take.  I'm sure others in the tapestry community will be chiming in with their reviews as well.  If you're wondering how to get your hands on a copy, don't waste your time looking for it online.  It's available through Silvia's son, Daniel Heyden (email him to order).  

It's fitting to close with Silvia's words:  "When we no longer see a tapestry as a static image, but instead allow it to continue to beat in its progression, when this happens with purely woven means through the textile structure and the color of the thread, when detail and overall form are in such harmony that the outer form is the consequence of the inner transformations, then weaving, with its unique connection to craft and technique again becomes an independent art form." (p. 120) 

This is wisdom born of a lifetime's dedication to the art of tapestry. 

Fiber Ancestry, part 2

In last month's post I wrote about our fiber ancestors, those teachers and artists who have taught and influenced us.  I described the impact Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, and Olga de Amaral have had and continue to have on my own work, even though I never took a class with any of them.  They are my "adopted" ancestors.  I also mentioned Silvia Heyden, Sue Lawty, and Agnes Martin.  Today I want to talk about them.  

Silvia Heyden, Weaving Dance, 2006, 35" x 41"
Courtesy the American Tapestry Alliance website Artist's Page

Many tapestry weavers cite Silvia Heyden as an inspiration.  Swiss-born, Silvia spent the last years of her life living and weaving near the Eno River in North Carolina.  Her work was commissioned for locations in Europe and the U.S. and featured in exhibitions world-wide.  If you haven't seen the documentary about her work, A Weaverly Path:  The Tapestry Life of Silvia Heyden--run, don't walk, to watch it HERE.  Indeed, one of Silvia's lasting impacts has been the concept of "weaverliness"--of approaching tapestry and image-making in purely "weaverly" ways to make objects that can only have been woven, not painted or produced in any other media.  She wove loosely and improvisationally, often on colored linen warps in an open weave that allowed the warps to show.  She wove eccentrically and innovated a type of wedge weave she called "feather weave" to create patterns that moved rhythmically across the tapestry. Exploiting the basic elements of triangles, half-rounds and slits, she developed a unique tapestry language.  Her work was deeply informed by the parallels she intuited between the strings of a violin, which she played her whole life, and the strings of the loom and between the movements of music and the movements of thread.  Silvia wrote a book about her work, The Making of Modern Tapestry:  My Voyage of Discovery, but unfortunately it is out of print.  Ask around at your local guilds and among your weaving friends to see if you can borrow a copy.  

I am fortunate to have a copy of Silvia's book and and a small study of hers in it was the source of my experimentation with exposed-warp triangles in this sample and later in my piece SkyGrass.  Thank you, Silvia. 

Molly Elkind, Sample inspired by Silvia Heyden's open-weave triangles. 
Linen warp and weft, 2020. 

Molly Elkind, Sky Grass, (c) 2020.  Linen warp; wool, linen and metallic weft.  26" x 45" 

I first stumbled across the work of Sue Lawty (see her other Instagram page here) on a visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in the mid-2000s.  I was gobsmacked by her tapestries then, and I wasn't even a tapestry weaver yet.  

Sue Lawty, Silent Witness, (c) 2002, 206 cm x 30 cm (approx 81" x 12"), 
linen, raphia, cotton tape

Sue Lawty, No Mans Land, (c) 136 cm x 137cm (approx. 54" x 54") 2004, linen, hemp, raphia, cotton

I adore the way Sue allows her materials and the basic structure of weaving to speak a quiet, nuanced, textured language that for me is endlessly fascinating.  A simple search online will turn up enough links to the Victoria and Albert Museum, West Dean College, and Browngrotta to keep you engrossed for an afternoon.  On the Browngrotta page if you scroll down you will find links to two books about Sue's work that I can recommend (among many other tempting books about contemporary fiber art):  Earth Materials and rock-raphia-linen-lead.  The titles of these books reveal Sue's abiding interest in her materials as her key inspiration.  In recent years she has moved away from weaving toward "drawing" with grids of tiny pebbles on white grounds.  These works also rely on subtle variations within repeated patterns and upon allowing the textures and shapes of her materials to speak for themselves.  

Molly Elkind, Sample in Blues, 2021. Linen warp;
wefts include Churro wool, paper, cotton, soy silk 

The third artist who haunts me these days, as she haunts many artists, is the late painter Agnes Martin.  She is often called a minimalist, but she herself felt she was an Abstract Expressionist.  Her work lacks the wild, spontaneous gestures we associate with that movement, but for Agnes it expressed deep emotions, as evidenced by her titles for her work such as Happiness.  Others have written far more knowledgeably and extensively about Agnes than I can here, but for me, it's the daring to strip her work back to barest essentials that impresses me.  That, and the dedicated exploration of horizontal stripes in pale tints of blue, pink and cream.  She swore her work bore no resemblance to the New Mexico landscape she lived in for decades, but having witnessed our winter sunrise skies here I see a definite resemblance:  there are horizontal bands of pink and blue and lemon just as in her paintings.  I can recommend two books:  a biography by Nancy Princenthal called Agnes Martin:  Her Life and Art, and a short memoir by Donald Woodman called Agnes Martin and Me that recounts the story of his tumultuous friendship with the painter when she lived in Galisteo, NM.  There is also a wonderful documentary called With My Back to the World in which Agnes speaks for herself about her life and work.  You can stream it  through Kanopy with a public library card or university ID.  

I reiterate my challenge to you from last month:  Spend some time thinking about who your own fiber ancestors are--not just those whom you have taken classes with, but the artists in any media whose work has knocked you out and inspired your own.  What would happen if you let go of your doubts and fears and strove to honor your own unique voice, as those inspiring artists honored theirs?  

From Ab Ex to wedge weave

In January I wrote about a visit to the Women of Abstract Expressionism show at the Mint Museum in Charlotte. Here's a detail of one painting by Joan Mitchell that I especially liked:

detail, Joan Mitchell, Cercando un Ago, 1957

I concluded that post this way:

"I was surprised to find that while gazing at work with so much energy, movement, and color, I felt a paradoxical stillness and calm.  A meditative reflectiveness that I feel in front of . . .  weaving.  Of course I started wondering if there was some way to bring the energy, movement and spontaneity of this kind of painting to tapestry weaving. 

But that's a story for another day."  

Well . . . today is another day!  At the recent retreat of Tapestry Weavers South,  Connie Lippert introduced us to her signature technique, wedge weave.  It's a lot of fun, seems to go quickly, and while it's quick to learn it has an amazing potential for variety.  Just check out Connie's website for some fabulous examples.  You can also see some lovely wedge weave tapestries on Michael Rohde's site, clicking here, on the "small tapestries" link under Galleries.

So this for this month's tapestry diary I'm doing wedge weave.  The "rules" are that I'm using only yarns from my scrap bag, and that there are five horizontal bands, one for each week of the month. Here's where the diary stands today, roughly in the middle of the fourth band:

I'm having fun playing with color, seeing how I can make disparate colors work together by using the right proportions.  You can see that I'm not weaving the full 7" width.  As I'm weaving, it is 5" wide and will be 7" tall.  It will be turned sideways in its final form, so that the long, scalloped edges will be the top and bottom.

I'm pondering whether I can use wedge weave in the background of my next Mary piece.  I'm immensely encouraged by these tapestries which fuse imagery with wedge weave.

Connie Lippert wove a map of the world entirely in wedge weave.

Connie Lippert, Paradise Lost?, wool, linen, natural dyes.  32" x 47"

Ruth Manning has recently finished Donut Man.  You can read about it on her blog.

Ruth Manning, Donut Man 

I am transfixed by the way Ruth has integrated realistic imagery into a wedge weave background. She has handled the wedge weave areas with such subtlety, blending colors and values so that they do not shout Zig! Zag!  I love the tones of white and beige in the upper right, and the hatching in the top center.  The man eating the donut is the still focal point in a busy, blurred background full of movement.  There is much to see and learn from here.  Thank you, Ruth!

I'm hoping I can achieve a similar feeling of the still, iconic Mary at the center of the tapestry I'm planning.  Here's a sample where I'm experimenting with yarns and colors. The large striped wedge at the top is my attempt to make one of Silvia Heyden's "feathers."  Click here and here for more about Silvia.  She worked improvisationally in something very like wedge weave.

Here's a few sketches of the next (last?) Mary piece.  I'm thinking of it as a companion to the Mater Dolorosa (sorrowing mother) I just finished--same size, similar Churro yarns, but with a different mood.  Working title:  Mater Potens (powerful mother).  I'm not finished with the design process yet, though, so stay tuned for changes.