R & D, or, Why I just crocheted an alligator

Warning: long post ahead wherein I talk to myself and invite you to follow me down multiple rabbit holes. 

The muse sometimes strays deep into the weeds, and you’re helpless not to follow. 

For a while now, I’ve been working toward making my tapestries more like objects in themselves, less like pictures. I’ve used collage not just as a design strategy for the imagery, but as a construction and materials approach to my weavings.

WUI 7: gas/oil (detail). Linen, plastic survey marking whiskers, blue grama grass.  17 x 12 x 1.5" framed, including fringe.  2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peachtree Boogie Woogie, 20" x 16" mounted.  Cotton, wool, linen, metallic; woven in three collaged pieces.  2021

The idea is for the materials, form and construction of the piece to carry as much or more meaning than the image. 

So.  I’ve been musing a lot on the state of our built and natural environment here in the high desert, recalling that a year ago, what became the largest wildfire in New Mexico history started—the result of a controlled burn that quickly got out of control under extremely windy conditions, thought to be a by-product of climate change.  For six weeks crews battled the fire and on some days we could see the smoke plumes from our driveway. I packed a “go bag” and made an evacuation plan for the first time in my life. 

Some of you may be thinking, Welcome to my world. This is not news to many people.  I have been learning that like millions of Americans in over 70,000 communities, I live in what firefighters call the Wildland-Urban Interface, the WUI, where human habitation butts up against forests, grasslands, and other wildfire prone areas. It’s not just a western phenomenon: there was a devastating wildfire a few years ago in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Back to art. So I was playing in my sketchbook recently, sketching shapes that looked like boats run aground on rocks, thinking of the old metaphor of the ship or boat  as a microcosm of the earth and all its people, when it struck me:  instead of making a picture of a boat

. . . why not make an actual boat?  I reflected on how my recent attempt to weave a "tapestry on a box" with wire warps and plastic wefts (possibly a bad choice for a first attempt) was frustrating.  

Wire warp, plastic dry-cleaning bag wefts, golden rain tree pods.  About 3" square

I made some paper-and-tape models of boats and canoes.

I wove a small pulled warp piece in a linen open weave, inserting for good measure some plastic wire survey markers and some grass. It pulled into a shape that looks more like a pod than a boat.  Plus, all those warp ends were a pain to deal with and I ended up just cutting them short.  Hmmm.

And so I was off, down multiple rabbit holes, looking at the work of Ruth Asawa and Norma Minkowitz, taking an online class in weaving with wire with Christine Miller, trying to figure out how to use the skills I have, weaving and possibly crochet, to make a 3D form that can stand up.  I got Kathe Todd-Hooker's book Shaped Tapestry off the shelf and studied how to make a pin loom for shaped weaving. 

Woven canoe in progress on pin loom.  28 gauge wire warp, plastic weft; 10 epi, 7.75" x 5.5".  The twining in the middle was to order and space the warps and eventually came out.  Wire warps are unruly!

 

Completed canoe.  7" L x 2" H x 2.75" W

My favorite bit is the tiny wire mesh hole on the top back side.  My least favorite bit was figuring out how to sew the edges together.  Plastic strips do not like to make construction stitches.  Sewing thread is very thin and slips out.  Further research needed!

I wove the strips below with a 28-gauge wire warp and various fiber and plastic wefts on the Mirrix Saffron.  (Wire is the perfect warp for the Saffron by the way:  no shredding!)

These strips are definitely shape-able and can even stand up!!

Looking at Ruth Asawa's work led me down the rabbit hole of wire crochet.  Her work, it turns out, is often erroneously described as crochet when in fact it's more of a looping technique.  A whole 'nother story.  Anyway, I made this little experiment and liked it but it feels like someone else's technique, not mine.  

 

Meanwhile I dove into the wacky world of amirugumi to learn how to use crochet to construct 3D forms.  Here's the experiment that makes me smile every time I see it:  

We call him the Elongator because I may have forgotten, I mean skipped, checking gauge so he turned out longer than expected.  

 

Next: a wool lobster!

I experimented with wire crochet as a way of making armatures and forms, but crocheting wire is incredibly frustrating for me.  Perhaps the irregularities would disappear with practice; perhaps not.  Where do you draw the line between appealingly casual and spontaneous. . .  and just plain sloppy?  I do have this sort of cool swatch collection though.

All samples use 28 gauge wire.  Clockwise from top left: single crochet (hook D), half-double crochet (hook C), double crochet (hook C).

 

So. . . what's next?  The obvious thing I haven't explored much yet is basket-making.  Basket-makers have been using weaving techniques to make vessels for millenia, duh!  I'd love to figure out how to use my tapestry skills to weave interesting surfaces in 3D forms.  That's the goal.  Stay tuned! 

Have you been doing any R & D lately?  Tell us!

7 things to do in the studio when you're out of ideas

Sometimes you're just not feeling it.  Not feeling the excitement of a new idea, not feeling the energy you need to do serious creative work.  Maybe Life has Intervened one time too many, or you've caught the dreaded plague, or you're just back from traveling and can't remember what you were doing before you left.  But you have some time you could spend in the studio.  What can you do that will feel productive, be useful, and make you feel better about yourself rather than inadequately inspired?  

In order of least amount to effort to most (in my mind anyway): 

1.  Stare out the window.  Or better yet, go for a walk outside.  Seriously.  Just stare out there/walk out there and daydream a while.  It's amazing what a relief this can be, just to free yourself for a few minutes from thinking and doing.  Try five minutes, and if you still are enjoying it, do it for as long as you can get away with.  Who knows what might happen?  You might get an idea or two!  At least you'll feel refreshed.

Morning light from kitchen window

You do not need to leave your room.  Remain sitting at your table and listen.  Do not even listen, simply wait.  Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary.  The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.   -- Franz Kafka 

2.  Tidy up.  Put stuff away you're not using at the moment.  Put things back where they belong.  See if you can clear at least one blank surface to open a sketchbook on or make a yarn pile.  For me this tidying  is ridiculously satisfying.  I tend to spread out everything everywhere, and then I find I have no open space at all when I need it, and it makes me itchy.   I am a born tidier and purger.  You might also discover you have stuff you forgot you have.  Yay!  If you stumble across UFOs and you aren't instantly inspired to finish them, put them away in a drawer or throw them away.  On the other hand, if creative clutter inspires you, skip this one.  

As clean as this table ever gets!

3.  Catch up on listening to podcasts and watching videos.  I have a folder in my email called "Watch & Listen" where I put links to programs I want to hear/see but didn't have time for at the moment.  When I'm doing rote tasks I go there and tick one off.  

4.  Read one of those books you've been meaning to.  Usually I don't allow myself to read until bedtime, and then on some nights I get maybe 5 minutes of reading in before I nod off.  I've just started this book and am looking forward to getting farther in:

5.  Finish projects that just need that little final push.  Hem that tapestry.  Make a label for it with your name, date, title and other relevant information.  Mount it or frame it.  Hang it!  Take a photo for your files.  Share on social media if that's your thing.  Add it to your inventory list.  Done and dusted!  SO satisfying!

Molly Elkind, WUI:  mark this.  
Linen, lavender, plastic survey marking whiskers.  12" x 15" x 1.5"

6.   If you sort of have an idea, or even if you don't, make a yarn wrap or three.  Just pull out some yummy yarns you haven't played with and see what looks good together and wrap them around a piece of stiff card or strip of mat board.  I can do this all day.  So much fun to play with putting colors together. . . and it might inspire a tapestry, who knows?  For me it was interesting to see how much better the grama grass showed up on the dark yarns than on the light ones.  Value, value, value.  

recent yarn wraps (with grama grass) while thinking of possible new weavings 

7.  If your yarn wraps get the juices flowing, weave a small sample (doodle, woodle, sketch tapestry--lots of names for the same thing).  Do horizontal stripes or wedge weave if you enjoy that, or just lots of squares or rectangles.  Just to keep your fingers in the yarn and keep that muscle memory active.  

recent sample: linen, paper yarn, blue grama grass

What do you do when you feel uninspired in the studio? 

Looking at the design process

Lately I've been preparing to teaching a class on the design process at the Southeast Fiber Forum conference at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.  I put together a slide show of several of my artworks, along with their inspirations and the samples or models I made while working on each piece.  It was really interesting to look back at my work in this way and to realize that like everyone I return to the same sources of inspiration and ways of working over and over again.

I started as a quiltmaker, and I literally started making art quilts twenty years ago by looking out the window at my own backyard.  We had lots of trees and bird life, and in the snowy Kentucky winters cardinals would practically line up at our bird feeder.  I knew I wanted to capture their vivid red against the snow.  I wanted to design my own original quilt block, one that was recognizably a cardinal and was also sew-able, without too much sobbing and gnashing of teeth.  Here are a few of my early sketches:

You can see these early ideas were all over the place, from semi-realistic to completely abstract, and they were hardly resolved, in some cases quite crude (I'm lookin' at you, triangle bird!)   I find that the hard thing at this stage is to keep faith and remain patient with yourself as the ideas do develop and resolve.

My fibers professor in grad school required that before we plunged into the construction of any piece, we had to make several samples, mock-ups using the actual design and materials, in order to test our ideas, materials, and methods.  Often we had to do half a dozen or more samples before we were permitted to proceed with construction of the final piece.  While this is not a project I did for school, I followed this process. So here are a few of the cardinal blocks I tried:

The last two examples are very close to the actual block I used, a diamond-shaped block that tessellated with background blocks in the same shape.  I decided that despite their drab coloring the female cardinals deserved to be seen too so I included them as well.  Often it's the duller, quieter colors in a piece that allow the brighter colors to really sing.  I added a wing that is a faced flap that stands out from the block, an idea I borrowed from the amazing quilt artist Ruth McDowell.   To add interest some of the background blocks are pieced in strips, and the quilt's border is irregular and interrupted in places by the blocks themselves. 

Here's the final quilt:

 Of course, you know what they say about the best-laid plans.  In this case, after I had all the blocks pieced together and had done the quilting--when the quilt was nearly finished, in other words--I added the large branch shapes, appliqueing them over the surface of the quilt.  It seemed that the birds perched on their tiny twigs needed to be connected to larger branches somehow.  Not all the birds are on a branch, but enough are.  The birds are no longer floating in space, and the branches lead the eye through the piece effectively.  And I like the disconnectedness of the branches, which would never have happened if I had designed them in from the beginning.

So it seems that both deliberate planning and then being able to respond sensitively to the piece in front of you as it develops are both crucial.  Hmmm.  This is one of those lessons I seem to learn anew with almost every piece I do. 

There are still some spots available in my class at Fiber Forum, April 16-19, 2015.  Email me for more information, or go here.